Sweet's Folly

by Fiona Hill

  “Did you wish to get out, sir?” the coachman was asking through the window. “It’s miles more to the Rose and Crown—”

  “Stop that infernal yelping!” Claude commanded.

  “But sir—” insisted the coachman, much stung.

  “Not you, the dog—stop it! Be silent, I say!”

  It was some while before order was restored in the ill-fated carriage, but at last, by dint of everybody’s saying what to do at once a score of times or more, the situation was got into hand. Claude’s arm was bandaged with the coachman’s rather greasy cravat; Fido was restored to a state of relative calm on the floor of the carriage; the driver was instructed to turn round to Pittering and return directly to Stonebur Cottage; and Honoria was satisfied that she would soon be safe at home where she belonged. Of the four involved, the originator of the excursion was the least pleased with its outcome: he had had plans, not one of which had come right, and now his arm ached like the very devil.

  “Well, that’s outside of enough,” he muttered as the arm began to feel stiff. “I shall have to see your saw-bones of a father-in-law,” he added.

  “We might go to Sweet’s Folly first,” Honoria offered with extraordinary generosity, extraordinary because for her own part she was extremely relieved to see the expedition at an end, for whatever reason, and the drive to Sweet’s Folly would only delay her return home.

  “No,” said Claude, then “Yes,” as he felt a pang travel from his forearm to his shoulder. “Tell the driver.”

  “Coachman! Coachman!” Honoria called again. Again there was no response.

  “Damn that man’s eyes!” Claude shouted. “Can’t he see the game is off? Jimmy, you scoundrel, Jimmy!”

  The driver answered his master’s signal and was told to go to Sweet’s Folly instead. From then it was only a matter of waiting until they arrived at their new destination, although at one point Honoria noticed the dressing on Claude’s arm was proving inadequate.

  “Blood,” she pointed out faintly.

  “Wrap it in my cravat,” he directed; and so Honoria was obliged to untie the intricately knotted neck-cloth under Claude’s chin, and to wrap it round the old bandage. Fido was about to take exception to this unwonted closeness between his young mistress and (so he perceived Claude) his rival in her affections, but Honoria silenced him with a sharp command before he could get too very excited. Minutes later they drew up before Sweet’s Folly. Honoria sprang unattended from the carriage and ran inside to summon Jepston. Ten minutes later Mr. Kemp was submitting to examination by the doctor, and Honoria was consulting with her mother-in-law.

  Mrs. Blackwood had drawn her new daughter into the breakfast-room, a handsomely panelled apartment that was yet rather too square to be elegant in its proportions. Mrs. Blackwood had furnished it with a round table in order to draw attention from this fault in the room’s dimensions, and it was to this table that she now took Honoria, seating her on a chair next her own. Corinna Blackwood was far too overset herself to enquire, or even to wonder, by what chance Honor was in Mr. Kemp’s company. On the contrary, she allowed Honoria to say no more than good-day before launching into an account of what events (so far as she could tell) had taken place that day in her home. “But I cannot imagine,” she ended by saying, “I simply cannot imagine what in Heaven’s name they might have quarrelled over. Can you, my dear?”

  Honoria could imagine only too well. “I, think, madam … Might I speak with Emily?”

  “But no, my dear!” the elder Mrs. Blackwood exclaimed in evident consternation. “I tell you she is locked up! Shut away, under strictest orders from my husband that she is not to receive visitors. There is the problem, you see,” she repeated agitatedly.

  “Clearly, the first matter for you, dear madam, is to calm yourself,” Honor said. “It can serve no purpose to anyone to see you succumb to hysteria.”

  “I do not feel hysterical—” Mrs. Blackwood began, but she looked very much as if she did. “Perhaps you are right.”

  “I suggest some ratafia,” Honor went on. “And then …” But she truly could not think what to advise other than a draught of the soothing liquor.

  “Honoria, you know something about all this, do not you?” Mrs. Blackwood said, when the ratafia had been fetched and drunk.

  “I—You must wait,” said poor Honor, who was loth to say any more than she had to. “I am so terribly sorry; you will understand …” she murmured. “Might we not send to learn what has happened to Mr. Kemp?” she asked suddenly.

  Information was accordingly sought, through the good offices of Mr. Jepston, and word received that Mr. Kemp’s wound was a minor one, not to be fretted about. Owing, however, to his considerable loss of blood, Dr. Blackwood had administered a sedative and laid him temporarily to bed in one of the guest-chambers upstairs. Honoria, relieved to know there was no expectation of further complications, and particularly glad to find she could now do nothing for the unfortunate Mr. Kemp, asked her mother-in-law if she might be driven home by the Blackwoods’ coachman. “For truly,” she added, “Mr. Kemp’s coachman is the most peculiar man I ever heard of, and would not answer a how-do-you-do from me.”

  Corinna Blackwood obliged her daughter-in-law unquestioningly, for she had given up hope of learning anything from Honor. That young lady therefore arrived at Stonebur Cottage some quarter of an hour later, handed Fido into the care of Mrs. Traubin, and learned (almost to her dismay) that so far as anyone knew, Mr. Alexander Blackwood had not yet even noticed his wife’s prolonged absence.

  “And no one has called? No word from—from Emily Blackwood perhaps?”

  “Sorry, madam. Not a word from any quarter,” said the housekeeper, her fishy eyes looking rather smug than sorry in spite of what she said. “Am I to feed this dog?” she inquired.

  “Feed him, yes. I will send word to my aunts later,” Honoria said rather vaguely as she drifted up the stairs towards Alexander’s study. The door was closed, as it always was of late, and she hesitated long before she entered. She braced herself, finally, with the reflection that Emily had no other hope of aid than from herself and Alex and, straightening her back with savage self-discipline, she knocked and went in to her husband.

  Chapter IX

  The Misses Deverell were entertaining, a thing they rarely did except between themselves. Tonight, however, a guest was within the little house in Bench Street—a guest, moreover, from the highest rank of local gentry.

  “You do not think he will find our table wanting?” Mercy asked timidly, just after his acceptance of their invitation had been received.

  “Wanting? But wanting what?” Prudence was in a fine humour; her scheme appeared to be working famously.

  “Wanting variety,” Mercy suggested promptly. “Or richness. Or imagination.”

  “Do you find it wanting?”

  “O no!”

  “Then he will not.”

  “That is very sensible, Prudence,” said the other musingly. “I should never have thought of that. I do not, so he will not. It is very sensible. And symmetrical,” she added. “I like that.”

  “Good, my dear. Then you run upstairs and prepare your toilette, while I confer with Mary. She must be reminded how to serve a dinner, I daresay. She appears to have forgot the proper fashion.”

  “Do you know, Prue, I thought that!” Mercy agreed, much struck. “Just yesterday she held out two dishes to me at once, and neither of them equipped with a ladle, and I said to myself, ‘Mercy, I do believe Mary has forgot how to serve a proper dinner.’ I said those very words, Prudence!” she went on, wondering mildly. “Though only to myself, naturally.”

  “Naturally, my dear.”

  “Naturally.”

  Miss Mercy mounted the stairs as she had been bidden, and descended not long after looking very fresh and trim in a light blue muslin gown. She was in plenty of time to greet the squire, which was well, since Prudence had forgot to dress until she heard his knock upon the door.

 
“Do come in,” said Mercy cordially, leading the way into the cramped parlour. The squire looked about himself for a moment, searching for a person to whom he might hand his cape and hat and so forth.

  “Harrumph,” said he, regarding Mercy’s heedless back as she left him to himself in the tiny entrance-way. “So there you are!” he cried, finally espying poor Mary, who stood cowering in a dim corner of the hall, alarmed at the magnificence of the gentleman before her. For Sir Proctor had chosen to dress formally for dinner this evening. He rarely went out, and therefore had no notion of distinguishing between a banquet provided by the local politicos for his benefit and a dinner for three cooked in homely fashion in Bench Street; he never went to London, nor perused any modish journal, and therefore had no notion whatever of trousers; and in consequence of all this, he was attired in the most correct of outfits—according to his lights. He wore knee-breeches, buff in colour, silk stockings, and shiny, buckled pumps. His white cravat was plainly but most neatly tied above a white waistcoat, and his coat was elegantly cut. With his superb head of snowy hair, he looked excessively handsome (though slightly out of place in the shabby little house) and rather like a fashion plate from a magazine ten years out of date. He handed Mary his things and hastened after his disappearing hostess.

  “I look forward to our game of chess,” said he, trying for the sake of politeness not to ejaculate something untoward about the cats. There were more of them than even he had expected, and he had been prepared for many. They mewed and cried and purred, rubbed their sleek backs against his silk stockings, pounced upon his pumps, and hurled themselves, when he sat, into his lap.

  “So indeed do I, sir,” Mercy replied, gazing fondly at her small friends. “That is Tiger on your knees, sir. Is not the weather fine? I so enjoy open weather. And how dull it was when I stopped at Colworth! Do you not recall, sir? The rain simply poured, and poured—and—poured,” she rattled on, failing to find a verb other than pour. “You must find your daily ride more cheerful now the sun shines again. Though it is dreadfully chill, for all that … I so often wonder how it is that the fiercest sun in winter will not warm the earth half so much as the most leaden of summer skies. Do not you wonder, sir? I am sure I have no notion. The oven in the kitchen, the fire in the fireplace—they do not burn less brightly in winter! On the contrary, I have frequently remarked that the warmth of a fire when one truly stands in need of it is even greater than when one might do without. Of course, we haven’t nearly the number of fireplaces you have at Colworth. If we did, we’d have nothing but fireplaces! That is Muffin licking your pump, Sir Proctor. Taking little thing, is she not?”

  “Very taking,” he lied. Cat fur flew everywhere about him, it seemed; his clothes, impeccable when he had entered, now had grown quite woolly.

  “Prudence will be down in a moment,” Mercy continued pleasantly. “We have been so looking forward to your visit. And here you are! I find it so odd, the way we will anticipate events. All day Prudence and I—Prudence is my sister, you know—Prudence and I have been rushing about preparing one thing and another, saying, The squire will want this,’ and The squire will like that,’ and so forth, as if your arrival here signalled the start of a new century or—or something like that, and yet here you are! Here you are and the grandmother clock continues to tick just as it did before; the kittens still purr and the dogs yap … and you and I sit here just as if nothing at all were happening. And then, I am sure I never thought Prudence would take so long at her toilette; I am sure when I imagined your reception here I thought of Prudence welcoming you, and yet she is not here and life goes on very much without her! Is it not most peculiar?”

  The squire agreed obligingly that it was most peculiar. For all he had been prepared, he was shocked at the shabbiness of the place. He had always lived in comfort, and though he was aware of poverty and squalor as things abstract and distinct from himself, he had never once considered how it would be to live in straitened circumstances. Miss Mercy Deverell seemed to him singularly cheerful for one confined to such uncomfortable quarters. His thoughts had run on this theme all through her prattle, and only broke off at the arrival of Miss Prudence.

  “Sir Proctor, I am delighted to see you,” said she, her hawkish nose wrinkling at the bridge as she smiled. She crossed the threshold into the tiny parlour and extended her hand towards him. He rose and bowed over it, murmuring his thanks for her invitation.

  “And did you—did you arrive alone?” she asked coyly.

  “I did, madam,” he said puzzled. “Save for my coachman, I mean.”

  “And there was … you did not bring us any little gift?” she suggested, with a sly smile. She was thinking, naturally, of Fido.

  “Prudence, what do you wish to say?” Mercy exclaimed reproachfully. She had utterly forgot about the dog, and was (for all intents and purposes) as ignorant of him as was Sir Proctor. “My sister is very odd sometimes,” she explained to that gentleman. “She never has had any notion of propriety, either. Prudence, it is really too ill-bred of you to ask for gifts.”

  “I do not—” Prudence began, then broke off, glaring at Mercy. To say more would be to reveal what their scheme had been. Evidently it had miscarried; evidently too, Mercy no longer recalled what it was. Poor Prudence was forced to wonder in silence what had happened to her coup de grâce, and wonder she did, all through dinner and coffee and the tedious, tedious chess game. And it was most vexatious of Mercy to have forgot all about it—even more vexatious, perhaps, than the knowledge that it must have failed. Mercy and the squire were able to enjoy their dinner—in spite of the fact that it was awkwardly served, and rather poor fare to begin with—but Prudence could find nothing to like in the whole of the evening. It was all very frustrating. The elder Miss Deverell was exceedingly glad to see her much-anticipated guest depart.

  “And stay away!” said she, when the front door had been shut upon the visitor.

  “Prudence!”

  Miss Deverell reminded her sister of Fido.

  “O my! Is that not the oddest thing? Wherever can he be?”

  Prudence muttered darkly of irresponsibility on the part of certain small friends.

  “Well, it cannot be helped now,” Mercy said calmly. “I am sure he will return tonight. He is a very good doggie.”

  “And what of Sir Proctor?”

  “He is very good, too,” she answered mildly. “O! You mean, will he return? I think he will. He said he would, Wednesday next.” For the squire (in spite of his having been beaten again) had so liked his game with Mercy, he had settled with her to establish it as a weekly routine.

  “I have a headache,” Prudence announced severely.

  “Poor dear! I am so dreadfully sorry. It must be the way Sir Proctor carried off my bishop so unexpectedly; it came very near giving me a headache as well. Do go to bed,” she went on soothingly. “I shall wait up for Fido.”

  But Mercy had long to wait, since Honoria, in whose keeping Fido then was, found herself by far too abstracted in other matters to remember to send him to Bench Street. Alexander had received her into his library with that same exaggerated courtesy she had noticed in him the day before, and begged her politely to sit down.

  “Thank you,” she said, drawing up a small chair near to his desk and seating herself on its gold-and-blue brocaded cushion.

  “There is some household matter you wished to discuss?” Alex began, a strangely cold, almost sardonic light showing in his green eyes. “Or, is this merely a social call?”

  “Alex, please …”

  He ran an unconscious hand through his fair curls. “Honoria?”

  “My dear, this is neither a domestic conference nor an idle chat. Something dreadful has happened to Emily.”

  Alexander’s interest was sparked now, and he dropped his affected manner at once. The chilling gleam went out of his eyes, to Honoria’s great relief, as he turned his full attention to what she said. As rapidly as possible, she gave him an account of what her couns
el to Emily had been, and how she guessed Dr. Blackwood had responded.

  “And you say she is shut up alone?”

  “Absolutely. Alex, I know she must ache for our help, but she is too proud to capitulate to my father-in-law. And too obstinate,” she added regretfully.

  “I do not see what we are to do,” he returned flatly. “We must go and speak with your father. You must go,” she amended.

  “What shall I say? He is quite right.”

  “Quite right!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Alexander, imagine your feelings if your work were taken from you. Imagine what your life would be had your father refused to send you to Cambridge. Imagine,” she said hotly, “being obliged to plod along with your geometry in the deepest ignorance, the profoundest darkness, at the mercy of country schoolmasters and outmoded texts. And imagine being informed it was quite right that you should do so, all on account of your having been born of a certain sex, in a certain family! Quite right!” she nearly shouted. “Quite impossible!”

  “I believe,” Alexander said slowly, after a long silence during which she simply stared at him, “I believe you are correct. I am sorry for my former heedless statement. Life would be utterly intolerable without the possibility of achievement in my field. I will go to my father.”

  “Alex,” she said anxiously, putting out a hand to check him as he began to rise from his desk. “Alex, tell your father we will take Emily to London. Tell him we will chaperon her, and be responsible for her.”

  “I do not see—”

  “Tell him she will never be alone,” she went on pleadingly. “Say I will be certain to find my parents’ friends there, and to introduce her into good society.” Her face became very sober and proud as she mentioned her parents. “I am not without friends, you know, though I have never met them.”

  “I will say so,” Alex promised. He jumped from his desk and rang for Mrs. Traubin, then instructed her when she came to ready the carriage and have Traubin lay out his driving clothes.