Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I

by Meredith Allady

  Heaven having once again turned a deaf ear to Ann’s pleas for divine intervention, the proposed Thursday duly arrived and brought with it Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, Miss Robinson, and Miss Georgina Robinson. Miss Robinson was to come out the next spring, her sister to possess her soul in patience for another year; but Miss Georgina was the taller of the twain, and there was little to tell them apart as they sat side by side on a sofa.

  Ann remembered them as sly, indulged children whose preferred pastime was hiding things from their governess, and then denying any knowledge of the article until she had been forced to obtain a new one, whereupon they would suddenly “discover” the original in some obvious place, and chide the poor woman for her carelessness. This winsome trick had been practiced likewise upon their cousin, but without success. Ann, not being dependent on them for her livelihood, and having a curious lack of humor where naughty children were concerned, had merely boxed a few ears, and warned them that if any more of her property went missing while she was there, be it only a hairpin, the consequences would be of the kind which linger unpleasantly in the memory. The Miss Robinsons, eyeing the visage of a Parry-deprived and subsequently morose Ann, had believed her assurance, and thereafter left her goods and chattels alone.

  It was therefore with no less surprise than relief, that Ann observed the sisters to be pretty, polite young ladies, whose only conspicuous fault seemed to be chronic insipidity. Mrs. Robinson disclosed to everyone how delighted the girls were to see their dear cousin Ann again, and it was well that she thought to do so, for otherwise her daughters’ reluctance to display the extravagance of their joy in the reunion might have led those present to surmise that Miss Robinson and Miss Georgina had never before met Ann, and would not have cared two straws if they were never to do so again. Ann, not to be outdone in decorum, managed to curb her raptures as well.

  Ann’s memories of Mrs. Robinson were more kind, for Mrs. Robinson had been kind to her, in an effusive, easy fashion, which required no other exertion than was involved in uttering excessive compliments, and various promises to do this or that which somehow were forgotten as the time for their fulfillment drew near. But Mrs. Robinson abandoned her integrity with the greatest goodwill imaginable, and laughed so tolerantly at herself as she exclaimed upon the poorness of her memory, and the constant trouble it caused everyone else, that few had enough fortitude to dislike her; and the few that had were they of her own household.

  This was very hard on Mrs. Robinson, for it was clear to the meanest intelligence that she was filled with admiration for her husband and her daughters. Indeed, she overflowed with it, slopping it about on everyone who came near, like an ill-regulated fountain. But she had not the wisdom to know how to attach them in return. She talked at and about her daughters, rather than to them, extolling their accomplishments and beauty, and pestering all those around until they were compelled to mutter assent. Such, however, was the strength and elasticity of Mrs. Robinson’s mind, that these words of wrenched concurrence found themselves speedily contorted into spontaneous exclamations of praise, to be recounted, with suitable embellishments, for the encouragement of later acquaintances, who might prove backward in their appreciation. Her daughters sat silent under this adulatory gush, their faces stamped with small, empty smiles; but Ann, searching for embarrassment and finding only boredom, could feel little sympathy for them. Only once did she perceive a flash of feeling, as their fond parent voiced a particularly unlikely accolade--a look of utter derision, a sharing of contempt, conveyed by the flick of eyelids, and lips fleetingly curled, quickly straightened. Ann, herself suffering the pangs of vicarious shame at the continued flow of her aunt’s fatuity, could not blame them for it; but she could not like them for it either. She began to think almost with gratitude of her own parents’ well-bred disappointment.

  Mrs. Robinson’s pride in her husband took another and more deferential form. His merits she sought to underscore by the simple method of agreeing with everything he said, be it a eulogy on the fish or a gripe against the ministry, and without regard to whether it was addressed to her or not. Her approval consisted mainly of short phrases of agreement--“So true!” “It is just as you have always said, dear!” “That is so, indeed!”--which seemed to Ann to have become so instinctive, that Mrs. Robinson was hardly aware of uttering them. She interjected them into the midst of her conversations with other people, tossing them toward her husband at select intervals, attending all the while to her companions with a warm smile on her lips, so that often they would hesitate, wondering at the reason for her sudden comment. The question of which conversation was actually receiving the use of the majority of her mind was probably immaterial; it was doubtful that either lingered in her thoughts longer than it took to make the correct rejoinders. As for Mr. Robinson, her approval, far from gratifying him, seemed to go unheard, or when heard, rather to vex him than otherwise. He never spared her a glance, and his sole response to her remarks was a brief, irritated compression of the brow.

  It could not be supposed that any connection of Mrs. Northcott’s would fail to have a due regard for the Family Name, but Mr. Robinson’s pride was of the sort that is content with taking ready offense, perpetuating minor squabbles, and causing unpleasantness in his household if things did not go according to his wishes, and he did not scorn to sprinkle his discourse with “Lord So-and-so said this to me,” and “When we were dining with Lady Such-a-one.” Ann, who had in former years been unwillingly awed by his intelligence, was disconcerted to find, as the evening wore on, that the learning which had intimidated a very young and unhappy niece, consisted almost entirely of a stock of Greek and Latin aphorisms, with which he seasoned his talk whenever he ran short of lords and ladies.

  “But then,” he said on one occasion, with a kind of ponderous airiness, “I was able to comfort myself with the reflection that ‘felix qui potuit rerum cognomine causas.’”

  As Ann’s knowledge of Latin was confined to tempus fugit, mollia tempora, and in vino veritas, she could discern nothing wrong with this and the other phrases which served to make her cousin’s conversation periodically incomprehensible to most of the table; but Mr. Parry, whilst he had for the greater part of his life found Persian of more use than the dead languages conscientiously entombed in his head as a boy, was known to keep St. Augustine by his bed and Homer in his carriage, and with the progression of the meal he bent upon Mr. Robinson’s quotations an ever more quizzical gaze, in which surprise was superseded by exasperation, and that in turn by a sort of cryptic amusement.

  Ann observed this succession of sentiments with disquiet, and entered the drawing-room a prey to numerous qualms. She felt little affection for her cousin, but dreaded any further strain upon his affability, for fear of what its disintegration might reveal. His good-humor had already been vigorously tried at dinner. A penchant for expounding, with the greatest assurance, statements and beliefs which were supported only by his own assumptions, and the writings of men whose names he could not quite remember, had brought him into repeated opposition with his host. Mr. Parry would not for the world deliberately discomfit a guest, but neither was he the man to let error go unchallenged. He found Mr. Robinson’s logic unclear, and his authorities insubstantial, and so did not scruple to state, very courteously, his total disagreement, and his reasons for it. Mr. Robinson, failing to see in this an invitation to buttress his arguments, and sharpen his wits on the iron of the other’s intellect, instead killed both the subject and his reputation stone-dead, with a pleasant nod and the words, “Oh, yes, I am in entire agreement with you on that head.”

  Conviction without dispute was not at all what Mr. Parry expected; it was not what he was accustomed to, nor even what he desired. The first time Mr. Robinson so handsomely resigned every previous assertion, Mr. Parry had raised startled brows, and after a pause which spoke his bafflement, allowed his wife to turn the conversation. The second occasion provoked thinly-veiled disbelief, and the third, a dry look that dismissed M
r. Robinson as a disputant worthy of consideration. Ann, noting his polite smile and the inconsequence of his speech, could not doubt that Mr. Parry was saying to himself, “Shoddy, muddled thinking. Unsound judgment. Pray Heaven I need never again invite this shameless smatterer to my table!”

  And Ann, sitting with lowered eyes, felt acutely all the humiliation for her uncle, which he did not appear to feel for himself.

  The interlude before tea arrived was chiefly spent by Ann and Julia in an unavailing attempt to coax from the Miss Robinsons any reply other than demure monosyllables. Julia persevered cheerfully in her efforts long after Ann had resolved to abandon her cousins to their own vapidity, and at last succeeded in awakening in them a semblance of animation by encouraging them to describe to her the plot of Mr. Curties’ latest tale of persecuted virtue and immoderate sensibility. The vital questions of whether Unna was the wife of Uglio or Uberto, and if Sigismorn had been visited by the specter of his father on the first or second night after having nearly been murdered by his half-mad uncle, kept the sisters occupied in an almost lively disagreement with one another for a good three-quarters of an hour; and it was impossible to tell, from Julia’s face of sympathetic interest, that her own estimation of that gentleman’s literary merits, was at best indifferent. Having perused one of his earlier works at the urgings of a neighbor some years before, she had confided to Ann, of his being “the sort of author, who is never satisfied with one good, serviceable adjective, if there is the slightest possibility of cramming one or two more into the text. His much-tried characters are never ‘pale,’ or even ‘pale as death’: they are ‘pallid with the livid and ghastly hue of those unhappy wretches who have quitted this present earthly realm of sorrows to lie cold and waxen in the comfortless tomb.’”

  The gentlemen came in at last, with Mr. Robinson’s insouciance intact, and Ann was able to exchange her uneasiness concerning him, for the more general anxiety caused by having all members of the Robinson family in one room again, with the consequent increased opportunities of vexing each other, and wearying their hosts.

  But not the most harrowing ordeal can wholly prevent time from passing, although it can detain it to such an extent that one begins to think bitter thoughts of the servant who neglected to wind the clock, and of the jeweler who sold one this watch which has (apparently) ceased to operate with any exactitude; and the moment reluctantly arrived when those incomparable words “departure” and “late” aroused Ann from the discreet stupor which she had embraced as preferable to continual chagrin. Her cousins eventually drifted away on a wave of thanks and compliments and diffident smiles from the girls, leaving Ann with the certainty that the phrase, “When we were dining at Merrion House” would sound regularly in the ears of her cousins’ acquaintances for many months to come.

  The door was shut behind them. It was borne upon Ann that Thursday had come and gone and she had survived. Feeling her knees suddenly weak, she sat down, not knowing where to look, or what to say. She, who knew so well the Parrys’ distaste for pretension and any form of insincerity, had been the means of inflicting both on them for endless hours, in an almost unadulterated form; and worse, by her own presence and friendship, she deprived them of their only possible compensation, that of laughing at it.

  They began to speak, and Ann marveled that they could do so without word or hint of relief. Lady Frances first remarked on the pleasant originality of spending an evening at home, and praised the cook’s exertions in the matter of sweets, pleased to note that Mrs. Robinson had seemed particularly to relish the orange and almond cheesecake. Julia mentioned the prettiness of the Miss Robinsons, and the affability of their mother, and was supported by Lady Frances, who added her hope that Ann had enjoyed herself, and that she would not hesitate to arrange another visit with her cousins any time she wished. Mr. Parry, perceiving that every gracious thing that had the merit of truth had already been seized upon, spoke only to state his intention of retiring to bed, and recommend an early night for the rest of the household. Ann was only too grateful to comply.

  It was Ann and Julia’s invariable custom, after a party or a dinner, to review the whole evening and appraise any incident of uncommon interest; but Ann had no fear of having to take part in a commentary on this particular evening. There are boundaries beyond which truth and tact must go singly if they go at all, and in any discussion of her cousins this border must be reached all too swiftly. In noting the blessings bestowed upon the female Robinsons in looks and temperament, Julia had come perilously close to it already, and she would not venture further unless Ann were to urge it.

  Ann was not so foolish. It was her heartfelt desire that the Robinsons might be allowed to slip into that shadowy realm of Things Once Endured, in company with the smallpox, the breaking of her hip, and the time the dentist had taken three quarters of an hour to extract one of her wisdom teeth.

  **

  Chapter XI

  “If Julia Parry had a rich uncle who intended to make her his heiress,” said a certain good-natured young lady, herself of substantial fortune, “I should hate her with a complete and utter hatred, and have done with it. Or if she did not possess four sisters. As it is, her portion is said not to exceed six or seven thousand, so I suppose I cannot detest her completely.”

  Many, of course, could not afford such charity; but of these Julia knew little, as their detestation was of the theoretical kind, and only thrived apart from her actual presence. Even those young ladies who were forced to watch half-snaffled swains amble away in a Juliaward direction, found bitterness hard to maintain in the face of her obvious innocence in the matter. One might as reasonably criticize the moon for having the attendance of the tides, as Miss Parry for pulling susceptible gentlemen to her side; and I dare say, if one could but ask it, one would find that the moon has as little use for the salty depths of the oceans, as Miss Parry had for her “Look-Greenly Club.”

  The members of this club--so named by Clive, from their determined habit of “gasping out their eloquence” in praise of his sister--were an imposing assortment of lords, honorables, and hopeful misters, united only in the regularity of their assertions of timeless devotion to Miss Parry. Deprived of lances, swords, dragons, and other means of impressing the princess of the hour, they leapt to fetch glasses of insipid refreshment, as if bent on avenging a deadly insult to her honor, and vied fiercely with one another, in devising fulsome titles to present to her. If one designated her a seraph, the next must needs address her as “fair goddess”; if one likened her beauty to that of the luminescent moon, then another was sure to murmur something about a “bright, particular star,” leaving a third no choice but to argue the negligible display of the sun, when compared to the brilliancy of her eyes--or her smile, or whichever feature happened to strike him most vividly at the moment.

  It must be confessed, that this in-some-way-celestial being was herself inclined to listen with rather inattentive indulgence on those who waxed metaphorical in her praise, and to recount their more improbable flights of fancy for the diversion of her family. Her wit, though of the kindly variety with which an adult laughs at the unintentionally comical statements of a small child, did not spare the dignity of her admirers, and in the younger Parrys, for whom “Love” and its attendant symptoms was still largely a matter of either indifference of derision, she found an audience to appreciate her efforts; but poor Kitty was often torn between relief that Julia was so far unmoved by her suitors as to find them a source of amusement, and sympathy for the infatuated gentlemen. One day she was even moved to suggest, in tones of gentle reproach, that these must assuredly be hurt and humiliated, did they know that the object of their devotion sat laughing impenitently over their most fervent tributes.

  Before Julia could answer, Clive took it upon himself to observe, that as the Greenlings were “forever burbling” about their desire to serve Julia in some selfless fashion, it was grossly unfair of Kitty to question their sincerity, by thus implying that they could be
anything but deeply gratified to know that they had at least been able to provide their beloved with a great deal of merriment.

  Julia hushed him, and assured her sister, that she had not the slightest desire to humiliate anyone, “but if they wish for me to treat their pretty speeches seriously, they must construct them with more care, and not say the first thing that comes into their heads. It is the height of folly for Mr. Butler to be calling me ‘the Grosvenor Square Angel,’ when he must know as well as I do that angels always appear, at best, as men of fierce aspect, and at worst, as four-faced creatures all over wings and eyes. What could he expect but that I would immediately picture myself as some sort of gargoyle, frightening callers away from Merrion House?”

  In vain did Kitty suggest that the gentleman had doubtless not been thinking in terms of Holy Writ, but rather of some vague Greek or Roman being, a beautiful woman with wings and long flowing robes.

  “And how does that improve the matter, pray? I have not got wings, and if I had I do not suppose they would be in the least attractive--molting all over the floors, more than likely, and knocking people over whenever I turned about in a crowded room. And as for the robes--well, these dresses are said to be in a classical style, but I cannot say that I think they flow at all well. They merely hang there, looking limp and compliant, until one tries to go for a walk on a windy day, when they suddenly turn on one in the most traitorous fashion, and have to be taken home in a carriage.”

  Even those “pretty speeches” that did not divert Julia by their absurdity, failed to find favor with her. The truth was, that having grown up with her looks, and that in a family in which physical beauty was not only customary but also regarded as of little temporal and no eternal weight, Julia was disposed to suspect the strength of any intellect that dwelt upon her appearance as something to be unduly prized. She confessed that the more fervent the accolades, the more Cowper’s lines addressed to an aging beauty ran through her head: