Sweet's Folly

by Fiona Hill

  “Your Aunt Mercy displays the most astonishing talent for chess,” he informed Honoria conversationally. “I understand, though, that Miss Prudence does not play at all. I trust it was you who partnered her in Bench Street, clever as you are?”

  “No, sir, I did not,” Honor returned evenly. She felt she was acting very rudely in saying no more on that point, but Emily’s predicament swayed her and she immediately turned to her friend saying, “You must let me come back to Sweet’s Folly some time soon, so I may sit for you again. I am frightfully eager to see how my portrait will be finished: I know it will be very true—”

  “And consequently very beautiful,” Claude interrupted. Honoria was most dismayed by this interjection, for she thought she had hit upon a topic to which he would have nothing to say. Taking a deep breath, she tried again.

  “My husband is half-way through his monograph,” she began, addressing Emily again. “He hinted once he might let me edit it—not the mathematics, of course, but the grammar and so forth. I should be so glad to think I had a hand in it somehow.”

  “I am sure you have already had a hand in it,” Claude said wickedly, since he knew what he said was extremely unlikely to be true. “No husband could fail to be inspired by a wife such as yourself.”

  Honoria, aware of his unpleasant intention in saying this—for she was too shrewd to imagine he had not noticed Alex’s utter disregard of her—blushed deeply and said nothing.

  “I have frequently felt the same,” Emily said, and though this was known by all three of them to be perfectly false, even ridiculous, she said it with such pride and dignity that the subject was let drop.

  “I hope my aunt is well?” Honor said, when the silence that had ensued among them at last became unbearable. “It seemed to me her colour was not quite what it once was, when I visited yesterday,” she added, for she had indeed gone to call on Mercy almost every day since the accident. Mr. Kemp had, of course, taken advantage of these visits to pursue his friendship with her—and he had sometimes become insolent, she thought—but he had never been so brazen and offensive as he had shown himself tonight in front of Alex. Not the least of Honor’s worries was that Alex might think his wife willingly permitted Mr. Kemp to take such liberties with her, and refrained from intervening in deference to her supposed feelings. Her common sense, however, told her that it was more likely Alexander simply had not noticed Claude’s untoward conduct, and though this reflection was small comfort, it was something.

  “She improves daily,” Mr. Kemp now assured her. “I believe I shall have the honour of conveying her back to Bench Street tomorrow or the following day. My father seems to have taken quite a fancy to her, by the by; it must be an affinity in the blood of the two families,” he closed, staring at her with an intense, admiring expression.

  “I am sure I do not know,” Honor murmured weakly. The threesome again lapsed into silence. They continued thus—brief spurts of conversation followed by periods of wordlessness, during which time Claude never failed to gaze rapturously and ardently at Honoria—for about an hour, at which time Dr. Blackwood proposed billiards to the male company, and the four men once more left the ladies. This time both Emily and her friend were too absorbed in their own musings to converse much: Honor resumed her place at the pianoforte, playing a few rather melancholy airs by Bach, while Emily sat listening, her hands folded loosely in her lap. When the gentlemen returned it was almost dusk. Mrs. Blackwood offered them tea, but Captain Drinkwater thought it wise to depart before night fell completely, and Mr. Kemp was more or less obliged to follow his lead by agreeing with the wisdom of this. When the guests were gone at last, the family retired severally to different parts of Sweet’s Folly, each with his own concerns and sentiments, and did not meet again until supper. Honor took to her bedroom early, for the following day she was to move to Stonebur, and she would need her rest.

  Meantime, at Colworth, Mercy Deverell’s health was improving with what seemed to her sister to be alarming rapidity. “If only that nasty Charles Blackwood would not be so loud and cheerful about your progress,” she complained sourly, “Sir Proctor would have no idea of your mending so well. As it is, he will expect us to take our leave at any moment. O, do not try to walk, Mercy,” she added, as she noticed her sister trying her ankle gingerly. “You will only make matters worse.”

  Reluctantly, for as her health improved she had begun to grow restless, Mercy sank back again into the pillows. “Dear Prue,” she began timidly, after a moment, “are you certain matters are really so bleak? They do not appear so to me—”

  “Much though I love you, my pet,” her sister replied, with rather more candour than usual, “you have never distinguished yourself by the penetration of your mind. Pray do not concern yourself with assessing our success thus far; I can do that alone more than adequately.”

  Much less discouragement than this would have sufficed to silence Mercy. With a fretful pout, she turned her attention to the pattern embroidered into the edge of her bed-linens, tracing her finger along the intricate design. After several minutes had passed, Prudence addressed her again.

  “Of course, you are not to blame, my love,” she said, “but your acquaintanceship with Kemp is not at all what I hoped it would be. You were meant to win his heart; instead, you are become a sort of playmate, a companion who might as well be a man as a woman. I know men: the only way to persuade them to act generously is to incite in them that state of temporary madness called love. They are friendly to their friends, but they do not do favours for them as women do. No,” she added, shaking her grey head firmly, “it will not answer. You must endeavour again to win his affections, Mercy. You must attempt to seduce him.”

  “I must?” asked Mercy, with a gasp of surprise.

  “For our small friends,” the other returned solemnly.

  “That is all very well for you to say, Prue,” Mercy began petulantly, but stopped as she saw the look of righteous wrath that had begun to cloud her sister’s face. After a very little more discussion between them, it was settled. When Squire Kemp arrived that evening to play his customary game of chess with Miss Mercy, Prudence would quit the room on a pretext and leave them alone. From that time, it was up to Mercy to employ all her wiles to provoke and secure his tenderest regard.

  Consequently, just as twilight fell on the wintry landscape outside, Miss Prudence Deverell rose from her embroidery and announced to her sister and the squire that she begged to be excused, but there was some correspondence she simply must attend to in her own room. The squire, his whole attention concentrated on the chess board, merely nodded absently in answer. Prudence left the room, pausing at the door to make a silent gesture to her anxious sister, a gesture that was intended both to reassure her and to urge her to battle. Then she left.

  Mercy permitted a few more minutes to pass by quietly, but when the squire at last made his move, she uttered a pitiful “O!” and put a hand to her forehead as if something troubled her. The squire, still intent on the board, said nothing. “O!” Mercy repeated, this time more audibly.

  “Is something the matter?” Sir Proctor asked finally.

  “O, I am—it is nothing, I suppose,” she murmured, with a charming, rather mournful smile.

  Proctor Kemp appeared satisfied with this explanation and seemed about to resume his thoughts about his remaining bishop. To prevent this, Mercy again cried, “O!” aloud, and this time put both her hands to her forehead.

  “What is it, eh?” he inquired. “Foot troubling you?”

  With the same mournful smile, she gazed dolefully at him and shook her head softly. “Sir Proctor,” she commenced in a faint voice, “Sir Proctor …” Hardly knowing where she found the courage, she put a frail hand out to him and touched his arm gently. Her hand immobile on his sleeve, she whispered, “It is so long since I had a friend I could trust, I hardly know how to begin. But may I—my dear sir, may I speak to you as a friend? May I presume so upon your goodness?”

  The
elderly gentleman, not a little surprised, merely stared back at the fragile woman who so importuned him.

  “You are so—so strong, dear sir, and kind. You ask if there is something troubling me: I must admit—in confidence, of course—that there is.” Then, with a sudden graceful turn of her silvery head, she withdrew her hand and continued apologetically, “But I must not burden you with my sorrows. They are mine to bear alone, as they always have been. Forgive me for speaking.”

  She had succeeded in rousing his curiosity, and he answered, “Now, now, my dear madam, if there is anything I can put right, you must tell me. Eh?”

  Smiling tremulously at him, Mercy replied, “You are all kindness, all kindness! But no, there is nothing to be done. I only thought perhaps if I might confide my poor worries to someone, perhaps the load would seem lighter. No, nothing could be done,” she murmured gently, allowing her voice to fade away.

  Sir Proctor said nothing.

  Miss Mercy permitted a single tear to course down her careworn cheek.

  Sir Proctor entreated her to rely upon his confidence and share her woes with him.

  Miss Mercy relented. “O sir, since you are so good, I do not know how to refuse you. It is my sister, sir, my poor, dear sister!”

  “Your sister—?” the squire prompted.

  “Yes, yes,” she went on, in a faltering voice. “She is—she had always been my everything, my all—my one companion and dearest friend, you see—and now—!”

  “And now—?” he urged again.

  “And now she grows so old!” Mercy wailed piteously. “She loses her memory, forgets the simplest things—it is natural, of course, but you see, sir, when Prudence believes she is right, and finds herself contradicted—O, she gets so very cross! She shouts at me and is harsh, harsh—!” Her voice broke on a sob. As if struggling to maintain her composure, she breathed rapidly a few times and continued at last, “So, you see, it is often very hard on me. Prudence says we must have supper—I reply that we just did have supper—she says but of course we did not (for she has forgot it entirely) and I am obliged either to submit to her temper or to go and fetch supper all over again. It is very very hard. When Honoria was with us, it was better, for then I had another witness as it were. But now, I am all alone with her, and bear the brunt of her anger.” She lapsed into silence once more, tracing again the design of the embroidered edging. “You are very good to listen to me,” she said, finally looking up with a smile, and laying her hand over his. The charming, mournful smile once more appeared on her countenance as she concluded, “But, you see, there is nothing to be done.”

  Sir Proctor, an eminently practical man, was not quite convinced that this was so. Miss Mercy’s plight seemed to him uncomfortable, but her tears and sighings did not strike him as picturesque. Consequently, he spoke to her as he might have to anyone who had come to him with a problem, and since he was magistrate of the district, people did frequently bring their grievances to him. In the brisk, terse language of common sense, he said, “Seems to me you might easily overcome such a difficulty. Why don’t you hire a companion, somebody young like your niece? She’ll keep peace between you.”

  By the tone of his voice, poor Mercy realized immediately that she had failed to evoke any tender passion in the gentleman. The situation she had confessed to him was pure fabrication: if anything, it was Mercy who forgot things and Prudence who recalled them. However, it seemed to her that if her tale were true, what the squire suggested would be precisely the most reasonable, direct, and practical solution. Though she wondered how she had failed to move him, she admired his immediate grasp of the imaginary situation. Her intention to appear pathetic having proven quite useless, she replied in the same calm, businesslike tones he had used, “Thank you, sir. I see, you are very right. That would be the simplest answer, indeed! I wonder I never thought of it.”

  The squire took her hand, which was still resting gently on his own, and shook it briskly. “There—if you played chess as foolishly as you managed your life, I wouldn’t have a partner, now would I?” Since he had in fact grown quite fond of her, there was no hint of annoyance in his voice; on the contrary, he spoke very kindly. He restored her hand to her adroitly and dismissed the entire episode from his mind at once. “It’s your go,” he reminded her, adding craftily, “I shouldn’t be so sure of my knight, if I were you, Miss Mercy!”

  And so the game continued from where it had been left off. Prudence, who entered Mercy’s room as soon as the squire quitted it several hours later, was excessively displeased by her sister’s account of what had passed.

  “I promise you, I looked just as pretty and pleading as possible,” Mercy defended herself. “He simply did not care for it.”

  Prudence frowned with disapprobation. “Now he will think I forget things, in addition to all our other difficulties. This is very bad, Mercy. He will be all the more inclined to think my hospital scheme merely the whim of an infirm mind. I cannot like it.”

  “Well, I am very sorry—” Mercy began, with more than a touch of plaintiveness, but her elder sister interrupted her.

  “Never mind now, shhh, please! I must think of another scheme.” And refusing either to forgive Mercy or to scold her, she sat quite still in severe silence for many minutes, debating and deciding within herself.

  Stonebur Cottage, if anyone had had high hopes of it (and Dr. Blackwood had at least), must be confessed to have proved a disappointment. It had been the physician’s expectation that his son and daughter-in-law, once isolated within its sturdy walls, would become better acquainted with one another and make of their marriage what a marriage should be. Unhappily, the first night of their residence there was very inauspicious, indeed, and extremely disagreeable both to Alex and to Honoria.

  The cottage, though it was called so, was really not a cottage at all, but rather a cottage ornée—which is to say, a house of substantial size masquerading as a peasant’s dwelling. Sheltered from the road by a fair lawn and a low stone fence, the house was situated very pleasantly at no great distance from Sweet’s Folly. The downstairs consisted of two small kitchens, one rather large bed-room, and a dining-parlour. Upstairs were the drawing-room—or rather, parlour—a tiny library, and a sitting-room that contained a pianoforte. Above this were four very small chambers with sloped ceilings; these were the servants’ quarters. French doors opened from the back of the dining-room onto a pretty, terraced garden; a meadow lay beyond. Mrs. Stonebur’s sense of elegance was not much above the common, but she had evidenced reasonable taste in her choice of carpets and draperies, and not much had had to be altered before the Blackwoods moved in. The cottage was above all cheerful, with large windows everywhere and a pleasant southern exposure in most of the principal rooms. Honoria had, of course, seen it—as everyone in Pittering had seen everything in Pittering—but she had never been inside until after her marriage, and it struck her as a quite delightful place. Alexander, previous to their moving, had also expressed his satisfaction with it, and so one might think that their first evening there would be passed tolerably well.

  However, it was not. They had dined at Sweet’s Folly—another farewell celebration—and did not find themselves alone at Stonebur until well past six o’clock. Emily and Honoria, despite the fact that they were sure to see one another nearly every day, and were now in closer proximity to each other than when Honor had lived in Bench Street, had exchanged quite a tearful good-by. The elder Blackwoods took leave of the couple rather more calmly, though one might have observed a tear in Mrs. Blackwood’s eye as she embraced her son. Alexander, as usual, appeared not to know what was happening, and said good-by affably when he was told to. A small, neat carriage and pair, which had been a belated wedding-present to the couple from the doctor, bore them away to Stonebur, driven by a man named Wattles who was to function as coachman, ostler, and general odd-jobs man for them. The drive was very brief, and neither Alex nor Honor felt the need of making much conversation; it was when they had been admi
tted into their new abode that the discomfort began.

  They were let into the house by Mr. and Mrs. Traubin, who had been engaged several weeks previously to share between them the duties of butler, housekeeper, and cook. Both these good people welcomed their master and mistress profusely, though they had all seen one another upwards of a score of times during the bustle of the past se’ennight. Mrs. Traubin, though otherwise a pleasant enough woman, had rather a fishy look about her eyes that made Honor nervous. Traubin, middle-aged like his wife, seemed to make a study of appearing utterly noncommittal and bland, a thing that he did to perfection. They were ushered from the foyer up the carpeted stairs, and begged to wait in the parlour while tea was prepared for them. “For I’m sure you’ve had a day of it, ma’am; I’m sure you have,” Mrs. Traubin told her with a curtsey, “and a cup of tea is always just what’s wanting.” Honoria was grateful for her kindness, but she could not bear to look long into those wide, watery eyes, and she was glad when the Traubins disappeared again.