Sweet's Folly

by Fiona Hill

  Lady Jane had had no opportunity of informing Honor of the victory she had won for them both, so there was not even that to comfort her. Alex’s absence now made two nights in a row. Without even saying as much to herself, Honoria decided she did not care to witness the third, and began packing to leave long before Alexander’s return.

  “But you can’t just run away,” Emily pleaded with her. “I know my brother is abominable—and I can’t think what Lady Jane meant by inviting the countess to Vauxhall—but you mustn’t run off, really you mustn’t.”

  “I am writing to Lady Jane just now,” Honoria told her, sitting down to a rosewood escritoire in one corner of her bed-chamber. “I will beg her to take you into her home, and to look after you as I would. I am certain she will.”

  “But that’s not the point,” Emily argued. “I don’t want to be with Alex, or with her. I want to be with you. Please, Honor—if I promise to speak with Alex? I can make him stop this outrageous behaviour, I am sure of it. He has run quite mad of late; a sound lecture will bring him to his senses.”

  “It makes no difference,” Honoria answered, dipping her pen into the crystal standish. “His behaviour only reflects his feelings, and you cannot alter those no matter what you do. I am not interested in a husband who carries on discreet affairs; I had much rather be alone than force him to such measures.”

  “But, Honor, it is your right as his wife! He has no business shaming you as he does. You mustn’t allow him to run you out of town: if anyone leaves, it ought to be he.”

  “I do not care to wait for that event,” Honor replied. She signed her name to the note before her, and folded the letter carefully. Then she took another paper, and began to write again.

  “What are you writing now?” Emily asked sullenly.

  “A note to Alex. I suppose I could as well entrust my message to you, but this seems more civil.” She was silent for a time, and only the sound of her pen scratching the paper was audible. Emily sat brooding on one corner of the bed until her sister rose and whisked her aside. “I must pack, if you’ll excuse me. You may sit there,” she added, indicating a chair.

  “Honoria, I have never known you so stubborn.”

  “And I have never known you so unrealistic. It is clear that either Alexander or I must leave London, and since I have nothing to keep me here, it may as well be me.” She had begun this speech with a certain amount of spirit, but by the end of it a tell-tale tear had escaped her, and her voice shook.

  “Honor, really,” Miss Blackwood said gently, crossing the room at once to embrace her sister. “Delay this at least until the morning. You are fatigued, and ought to sleep on it.”

  “I wish to leave tomorrow,” the other answered quietly, though she leaned a little into her sister’s embrace.

  “You will leave soon enough,” Emily soothed her, “only do not hurry yourself so. At least Alexander ought to be warned of your intentions—”

  “No,” Honor interrupted suddenly. “Do not tell him, please. When the matter is brought to his attention, he will undoubtedly offer to accompany me, out of duty, or to quit London himself. I do not wish to inspire such courtesies in him.”

  Emily released her friend and reseated herself on the small chair that stood near the door communicating to Alexander’s chamber. She felt rather defeated, and sighed.

  “Traubin tells me I may be on a post-chaise heading towards Pittering at noon tomorrow. I shall travel first to Sweet’s Folly, and stop there until servants can be found to help me at Stonebur. You will kindly see to it that Alexander receives this note, and Lady Jane this one. Your parents will be surprised to see me, naturally, but I shall think of something to tell them.”

  “Honoria, you are being very silly,” Emily said listlessly, while her sister pulled the bell-rope that summoned her abigail.

  “Maria will be here in a moment to help me with my valises. I will ask Mrs. Traubin to send my trunks after me when there is time. Maria will come with me to Pittering, of course. You may as well go to bed now; you have said all you can to dissuade me, I think, and you see its futility.”

  Emily stood reluctantly and went to the door. She wanted to talk longer with Honor, but Maria arrived too soon for her to say anything more than that she would speak with her again in the morning. “You will see things differently then, I know,” she added.

  “Good night,” said Honor, and resolutely went to work with her abigail, laying out and packing what she would need. Her valises stood ready for her departure at the end of an hour, and still Alexander had not come home. Knowing nothing else to do, she dismissed Maria and went to bed, though she felt very certain she would not sleep. She could not help but picture to herself where Alex was, and what he said to the countess, and what she said to him. She would have been astonished indeed to learn how far her imaginings strayed from the truth.

  For at that moment Alexander was excessively annoyed with the countess, and though he was indeed within her boudoir, he was stalking up and down its length, and glancing at the lady now and then without the least tenderness. “I agree it is a very pretty story, Annabella, but that does not make it accurate. How could you learn in one evening what I have been hoping to know for years?”

  Lady Willoughby’s head drooped with fatigue; she was simply aching with boredom and annoyance, but she felt she must persuade Alex of her argument or fall asleep in the endeavour. “For the hundredth time, my dear boy, I learn it through instinct. I know it as absolutely as I know my own name; any idiot can see it at once.”

  “Any idiot—” he snorted. “Then apparently I am not an idiot, for I do not see it at all. And I have been looking for it all the time. I tell you, you are misled by her.”

  “Alex, how much longer can we tread this weary circle? You do not see it precisely because you look for it too hard. Trust a scholar to overlook what is directly beneath his nose,” she added disgustedly.

  “Well then, why does she say nothing of you to me?” he demanded. “I have been absent three nights out of seven—four now—and she has never breathed a word in question of it.”

  “I don’t know why she is so quiet!” the countess exploded in return. “Perhaps she is frightened of you; perhaps she thinks a wife is meant to suffer in silence. How could I know why that is? I only know that it is not because she is indifferent to you. Will you do me the kindness of believing that finally?”

  “And what of Kemp?” he challenged.

  “What of Kemp?” she repeated. “Anybody can see he is nothing to her.”

  “You are trying to rid yourself of me,” Alexander accused her after a pause, still pacing the room furiously. “You are tired of me, and do not know how to send me away but by telling me my wife loves me.”

  “Why on earth should I go to such lengths? Don’t you think I have sent dozens of gentleman away? And I promise you, never once have I bothered myself about where they would go afterwards. When I met you again at the Throstles’, and heard your account of your marriage, I believed you. I was foolish to do so; this is the first time I have made such an error. I ought to have looked closely at Honoria that very evening—and now I have done so, I see my mistake.”

  “But our marriage came about exactly as I told you,” he persisted, striking the mantelpiece with his fist. “Exactly! Honoria needed to be married; my sister informed me of it; they both believed me to be utterly indifferent to her, and on those terms she accepted me and took me for a husband. Now you chat with her for a quarter of an hour, and come to me insisting she is mad for me, and dying of lovesickness. It is doing it a bit too brown, Annabella; surely I, who have observed her manner towards me for years, am in a better position to judge.”

  “And here we are back again at the start,” Annabella yawned. “You refuse to believe what is crystal clear to everybody else, and what she herself—by your own admission—has told you. If you will not credit my appraisal of the situation, you will at least be obliged to allow me to believe it. Your wife is in love wi
th you; and that being the case, our connection is broke and behind us. It is against my principles to proceed in such circumstances, and you very well know it. Think as you like; that is my decision and you must abide with it.”

  “If I am to believe you,” Alexander began carefully, “at this moment Honoria is off her head with worry about me, and certainly incapable of sleep. But every time I leave you, I go home to find her retired; she never acknowledges my entrance, or even my exits. It is contrary to every known fact,” he concluded abruptly.

  “Do you ever look to see if she is truly asleep?” Lady Willoughby inquired. Her own beautifully lashed eye-lids drooped heavily, but she forced herself to maintain an erect posture, and to put her question energetically. “I will lay you a hundred pounds she is not asleep, but only feigning.”

  “I never looked,” Alex muttered incomprehensibly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I say, I never looked!” he shouted at her, and the circular dispute was off again in a fresh round. It lasted till well past three, and even then Alexander did not go directly home, but wandered the streets of London, gazing at lamp-posts as if they might speak, and knocking into not a few late pedestrians. Some time near four he reached Albemarle Street and let himself into his own house. He flung his cape and hat onto a convenient chair and mounted the stairs slowly. If Honoria were awake … he might knock at her door, quietly, and see … but it would be painful if there were no reply. He arrived at his own bed-chamber still undecided, and discovered there a note that his sister had penned, directly in contradiction to Honoria’s request.

  “Alex—” it said. “Honoria means to return to Sweet’s Folly alone, tomorrow morning. It is all on account of your revolting unkindness to her, I know, and your flagrant neglect. If you do not dissuade her from this project I may never forgive you.

  “Emily.

  “P.S. She begged me to say nothing of this to you, so pray destroy this letter.”

  Alexander’s first impulse was to go to his wife, whether asleep or awake, and insist on an explanation. To drive her away from London was most certainly not what he desired. He stood poised at the doorway between their apartments, ready to knock, when he decided on second thoughts to re-read Emily’s letter. This time he noticed her phrase, “I know,” and inspected the postscript more closely. It might be as Emily said, but more likely she went only on guess-work, just as Lady Willoughby did. If Honoria was in love with Kemp—as Alexander was still persuaded she was, in spite of everything—she was not likely to take her husband’s sister into her confidence, friends though they might be. He sat down with the note in his lap to deliberate further. At once the image of Lady Jane Sperling departing from the box on Claude’s arm that evening came to his mind. That was it! he told himself, triumphant and bitter in the same moment. Lady Jane had stolen Claude from Honoria, and Claude had complied; now she wished to remove herself from her faithless lover, and that was the explanation of this precipitous departure. There was no more question now of his interrupting either her sleep or her plans. She was at liberty as always to pursue what course she chose: at such a juncture as this, Alexander was a meddler and nothing else.

  These surmises pained him, but at least they justified what he had always believed. His sister would simply be obliged to learn to forgive him; Honoria’s sentiments and decisions remained, as ever, beyond his sway. Emily would see that in time. For now there was nothing to be done but go to sleep as well he might, and hope to rejoin her in Pittering when the sting of Claude’s rejection had dulled somewhat. With a dejected sigh he climbed under the coverlet, and with another extinguished his candle. For some while silence reigned in Albemarle Street, and Mr. Blackwood fell into an uneasy sleep.

  His repose, such as it was, was disturbed most startlingly by the sudden eruption of a piercing shriek from his wife’s room. It was followed by another, and another; before the third Alexander had leapt from his bed and—not stopping to wonder how or why—had burst through the door that separated them. Flinging back the curtains that sheltered her bed, he discovered Honoria sitting upright there, her face contorted with effort (for she felt a scream rising again, and could scarcely control it), and on the point of relapsing again into her pillows. The sight of her husband helped her to check the scream-supplanting it with a gasp instead—but it did not stop the tears that had begun to course down her cheeks. Still without thinking, he threw his arms round her and clasped her as best he might, presently sinking to the bed himself, and rocking and consoling her with inarticulate compassion. She was far too distraught to do otherwise than yield to his embrace, and no more asked herself what she was doing than he did. He held her for a full minute, nothing of significance being said between them—but everything communicated—before Maria arrived at her mistress’s door. She bore a candle, and was too much alarmed by what she had heard to knock before she entered. She checked at the door-way, however, and Alexander rose to meet her, pausing before he did so, though, to place a kiss on Honoria’s neck, and embrace her once more.

  “Mrs. Blackwood is well,” he told the distressed abigail. “If anything is wanted I shall ring for it. You may go back to bed.”

  Maria nodded, begged the master’s pardon for intruding, and departed. She met Emily as she started down the corridor—for Honoria’s ear-shattering cry had awakened the whole house—and repeated what Mr. Blackwood had told her: Mrs. Blackwood was well, and required no attention.

  “Then they are together,” Emily thought sleepily, with satisfaction. “I knew that note would bring him round; really, I have never seen such a baby.” She stayed in the corridor long enough to encounter Mrs. Traubin, who was hastening to her mistress on the same errand as Maria, and to instruct her not to enter the bed-chamber.

  “But that wail, miss,” Mrs. Traubin objected. “I never heard the like, I am sure. Are you certain I mustn’t enter?”

  Emily looked into the fishy eyes, made fishier by sleep, and issued her order more clearly. “Mr. Blackwood will ring if anything is needed,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

  Mrs. Traubin looked suspicious. “I don’t know,” she said disapprovingly. “A body could lose her post over a thing like this. A housekeeper has responsibilities, you know, and—”

  “To bed,” Emily hissed furiously, for they stood directly outside Honoria’s door. She saw Mrs. Traubin draw away reluctantly, and watched until she had disappeared up the staircase. Then she retired again herself, hoping Honor’s screams had not been occasioned by anything Alexander had done, or said.

  Quite the reverse was true, of course. At that moment Alexander was enfolding his wife’s hands in his own, and it would have been difficult to determine who was the more relieved. “I had a dream,” Honoria told him, when she felt she could speak coherently. “In the dream you and Emily and I had gone to a ball, or something—only it wasn’t really a ball, it was a sort of examination, where people came to be tried in what they knew. And there was an inspector—at first I thought he was Lord Sperling, or maybe your father—I know they are not much alike, but in the dream …” She looked at him and was obliged to pause for a moment, so deeply concentrated was the regard with which he had fixed her. It was precisely the gaze she had seen him bend on his studies, and which she had wished he might turn upon her that night—ages ago, it seemed—at Sweet’s Folly. He kissed her temple and encouraged her to go on.

  “You’ll feel better once you’ve told your nightmare,” he assured her. “That’s always how it is.”

  “Well,” she recommenced, “we were all doing well in our examinations—or whatever they were—except for Emily. I felt so dreadful for her: there she was among everyone we knew, and she could not remember anything. So I drifted over to where she stood, as surreptitiously as I could, and tried to gain her attention. Only she would not look at me, nor hear me, and I realised all at once that it was not she who was failing the examination, but I myself. Emily was gone—I don’t think she returned during the rest of the dr
eam—and there was no one I could turn to but you. It sounds silly when I say this—” she broke off suddenly.

  “Not silly, not at all,” he murmured. He brushed a strand of dark hair from her eyes, and took her hands in his again.

  “For some reason it was terribly important that I do well in the inspection,” she resumed. “It was crucial, the most important thing in my life. You were the only person left to turn to, and as I began to look about for you, all at once I realised the examiner was not Lord Sperling, or your father, but Claude—Mr. Kemp. Alex, it was awful, just awful! I knew he would disgrace me, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I had had all the answers, I was sure of it—but now I seemed to know nothing; and as soon as he put the first question everyone would see that, and despise me. I began to cry, and Mr. Kemp observed me. Alexander, he took such delight in my tears—he started to laugh, and to point at me, and all the time he kept shouting ‘Your husband! Your husband!’ You see, he knew I was looking for you, and he was so glad I would not find you. So I shouted at him, too; I knew I would be ridiculed forever after for it, but I had to do so. I screamed at him, ‘I will find him, I will—’ and that was when you heard me, I guess, for I do not remember anything more. I must have awakened myself, but I couldn’t stop screaming for a while—O, Alex, I am so ashamed,” she ended suddenly, and buried her head on his chest.

  He received her gladly. “For what? It is I who ought to be ashamed.”

  “For waking the house—for waking you—I should never have cried out, if I could have helped it. You know that, don’t you?”

  Alexander nodded mutely.

  “Why do you say you should be ashamed?” she asked after a pause. “You have not raised the house.”

  “But I have very nearly destroyed it,” said he. “Honoria—from your dream—in the dream you turned to me. Do you—mind my holding you?”