Deception

by Joan Aiken

  Setting aside the basic improbability of anybody’s ever being able to dissuade Sir Aydon from a course on which he had determined, Alvey could not help wondering if his wife had secretly hoped, on that occasion, for some kind of disabling accident; perhaps even for her husband’s death? When we lightly wish misfortune upon those close to us, and our curses come home to roost, we learn to bitter effect what the long-term results can prove to be, where we had looked no further than the immediate outcome.

  I must note down that idea, reflected Alvey; though I do not quite see how it can apply to Wicked Lord Love, who never plans ahead at all.

  Meanwhile, to her great relief, Lady Winship seemed to be overcoming her doubts and prepared to think favourably of the proposal.

  “Only, how shall I ever broach such a suggestion to your father?” was her next difficulty. “What time of day do you think would be most propitious?”

  Alvey could think of no time that was better than any other. An added impediment to the success of James’s proposal was the circumstance that, since the recent train of misfortunes, for some reason only known to himself, Sir Aydon appeared to entertain hard, angry, hostile feelings towards his wife. He seldom spoke to her unless it was absolutely necessary to do so; never looked in her direction; spent as little time in her company as possible. Alvey feared that the very fact of James’s communication having been addressed to Lady Winship in the first place might render it unacceptable to his father.

  “Perhaps at noon, when he takes his glass of Malmsey in the library?” Alvey suggested doubtfully. “I do not think at breakfast; and then, by dinner-time, he is always fatigued and—and in pain—” And tries to drown it all in wine, without success, she thought.

  “He is never pleased to see me enter his library,” Lady Winship said simply.

  “Perhaps it would be best to ask some third party to make the proposal? Mr Thropton, for example? Or even Amble? Sir—my father is so fond of Amble.”

  “Amble? We could hardly apply to him in the matter.”

  “Then it had better be Mr Thropton. Shall I ask Parthie to step down with a note?”

  Parthie no longer made the least attempt to cultivate Alvey’s good opinion or court her company. She was rude, hostile, and disobliging. But, since the wedding and Mr Thropton’s attention to her when she was hurt by the stone, she had on several occasions made excuses to see him, and brought his name into the conversation whenever possible.

  “Parthie is sweet on Mr Thropton,” Tot had remarked bluntly one day.

  “No she isn’t,” said Nish. “She just hopes that he will dig up a treasure in his garden and that she will be there when he does so, so that he will be obliged to give it to her. Why, the Rector of Corbridge dug up a whole jugful of gold coins and precious jewels in his garden; I daresay Mr Thropton expects to do likewise. Remember how disappointed he was when that little box the men found turned out to have nothing in it but ashes.”

  “He did give a jet bead to Parthie.”

  “Much she cared about that! She was hoping for gold or rubies. She said it was a dirty little object.”

  Alvey had little doubt that Parthie would not refuse the chance of a visit to the Rectory.

  “Very well,” said Lady Winship after another long, thoughtful pause. “Send for Mr Thropton. I fancy that will be best.”

  But she sighed again, as if she did not have high hopes of the outcome.

  Mr Thropton was all eagerness to serve Lady Winship in any particular. He came hasting up to the Hall, his ruddy colour flushed to an even deeper shade by the rapidity of his pace. Lady Winship, who now spent the larger part of the day downstairs, received him in the drawing-room and disclosed to him the contents of James’s letter.

  To her dismay, he was not at all enthusiastic as to the desirability of performing this operation upon her husband.

  “Dear ma’am, how can we be sure that this is God’s will? We know that suffering brings purification and strength—if our Maker had intended Sir Aydon to live without suffering, He would not have caused the accident in the first place.”

  This seemed to Alvey very suspect reasoning. She could not resist intervention, for Lady Winship was looking beleaguered and might, by this unexpected rebuff, be persuaded to change her mind.

  “But, Mr Thropton—firstly, anybody can see that suffering hasn’t purified or strengthened my father; quite the reverse, it has only made him bad-tempered and miserable; secondly, why should not this suggestion from James and his friend be another evidence of God’s will—just as much as the accident was in the first place?”

  Mr Thropton gave her a very wintry look. Up to this moment he had been studiously ignoring her presence. He said, “I do not believe, Miss—Miss Louisa—that this matter is any proper concern of yours. It is entirely a matter for Sir Aydon to decide—with the help of prayer and the advice of myself and Lady Winship.”

  Lady Winship said, “I asked Louisa to advise me. And I am sure that she has been most sensible and helpful.”

  At this, Mr Thropton seemed a little put out of countenance.

  “Well—then—in that case, ma’am, what would you have me do?”

  “If you could just broach the matter to my husband,” faintly urged Lady Winship. “And—and lay before him the advantages of the operation.”

  He was still not pleased, but could not help preening himself on this important role of intermediary.

  “Very well, ma’am. Shall I do so directly?”

  Lady Winship rang the bell for Amble, who came in and told her that Sir Aydon had just returned from the stables and gone to his library.

  “But he’s in a twitty mood, my leddy, and no’ wishful for company, I doubt.”

  “Never mind, Amble. Just tell him that Mr Thropton is here, with an important communication to make to him.”

  Amble retreated, shaking his head, and presently from the direction of the library could be heard the sounds of Sir Aydon thumping with his sticks and shouting in an enraged tone which boded most unpromisingly for Mr Thropton’s mission. Even the Rector’s rubicund countenance paled a little at the prospect before him.

  “Perhaps—some other day?” he suggested.

  “No, no, my stepson insists on the need for haste. Pray, do go now, Mr Thropton, and get it over.”

  “Very well, ma’am.”

  Mr Thropton went off nervously on his errand. Soon the sounds of Sir Aydon’s disapprobation became considerably louder. Alvey, moving unashamedly out into the hall, heard through the open library door, his voice, roaring:

  “What? Go and have my bones broken again, by some damned horseleech in Scotland? I thank you, no! I’d as soon offer my carcass to the body-snatchers straight away and have done with it. And I’ll thank my puling whining coward of a son to attend to his own business—he and that friend of his. I can endure an injured leg—two injured legs—better than he can, seemingly!”

  This speech made Alvey so indignant on James’s behalf that she walked into the library, uninvited, bent on speaking her mind, for once, to Sir Aydon.

  She arrived at a moment of crisis. The footman, Stridge, had been on the point of handing Mr Thropton a glass of Marsala, but it was evident that Sir Aydon, waving his sticks in furious endorsement of his argument, had accidentally dashed the glass from the salver on which it was presented, and straight into the unfortunate footman’s face. Now the man was bleeding copiously from a severe gash on his cheekbone.

  “Quick—lay him flat!” exclaimed Alvey. “Amble—do you run and fetch some linen while I hold the cut together to stop the bleeding.”

  Amble gave her a rather odd look, she thought. But he only said, “Yes, Miss Emmy,” and departed at speed, while Sir Aydon and Mr Thropton, almost equally disconcerted, stared at each other over the recumbent body of Stridge.

  “What a—what a shockingly unfortunate mishap!�
�� ventured the Rector after a moment or two. “Are you all right, my man?”—to Stridge. He himself had turned quite pale at the sight of all the blood.

  “Damned careless idiot,” growled Sir Aydon; it was not clear whether he referred to himself or to the footman.

  “Did any of the glass go into your eyes?” Alvey anxiously asked the young man. “Do you feel any pain in them? Can you blink?”

  “I—I think they’re all reet, Miss Emmy, I feel naught i’ them. But my heid fair swims!”

  “Just lie still then, don’t talk,” said Alvey, and stanched the blood with her wadded handkerchief, pressing it hard against the cut. Amble hurried back with a handful of linen table napkins, one of which Alvey swathed round the boy’s head, tying it over her handkerchief as tightly as possible. By this time Mrs Slaley and a couple of the maids were in the hall, hovering distressfully.

  Alvey said, “It would be best if he could be carried to a bed.”

  “Allow me to assist!” exclaimed Mr Thropton, springing into activity.

  He and Amble and Mrs Slaley raised Stridge and carried him away to the servants’ hall; and Mrs Slaley could be heard bidding Janet to fetch a stoup of water from the Lion pool and Becky to rin awa’ to the stables for a good thick hank of cobweb. Then the green baize door closed on them.

  Sir Aydon and Alvey stared at one another in a silence bursting with unspoken hostility. He was breathing hard, obviously furious at having put himself so signally in the wrong, and uncertain how to extricate himself from the situation.

  At this moment his wife entered the room, wide-eyed and pale, looking about her apprehensively.

  “What is it, Aydon?” At the sight of a blood-stained napkin she gasped with fright. “Mercy! What happened?”

  “Don’t distress yourself, ma’am,” Alvey said quickly. “It is nothing—merely an accident—no great harm has been done.”

  “You have blood all down your gown!”

  “Well it is none of mine—it is poor Stridge’s blood. And he is taken care of. I will go and change.”

  Alvey took herself off, thinking that, on the whole, it was just as well that her impulse to burst out into an indignant tirade had been frustrated. If, now, Lady Winship and Mr Thropton could only employ a little guile, a touch of diplomacy, perhaps Sir Aydon might be brought to admit the merits of James’s proposal. He was in a poor position to argue, and must know it.

  She changed her gown, handed the bloodstained one over to Grace, and explained the cause of the excitement to the interested children, who, from as far as his mother’s room, had heard Sir Aydon shouting, and had come out to hang over the banister rail as Stridge’s recumbent form was carried away.

  “Is Stridge dead?”

  “Did Papa mean to strike him?” said Nish, awestruck.

  “No, no, I am sure that it was a complete accident. And he is not badly hurt. How is Grandmamma?”

  “Oh, she is still just the same. She did open her eyes once, but she did not seem to recognize us.”

  Grace, taking the blood-spattered gown, said of Stridge, “Faith, Miss Emmy, the lad’s jist head-ower-heels grateful to ye. He thowt his eye was knocked oot for sure, till ye wiped the blood awa’ and set his mind at rest.”

  “It was a most unfortunate mishap,” said Alvey. “I am very glad he is no worse.”

  “Ay, he’s took no great hurt. But,” said Grace with a grim chuckle, “in the village they’ll be saying this is a hoose o’ misfortune. Theer’s enow rumours rinning roond a’ready. This’ll add tae them.”

  “Why, what do they say in the village?”

  “Ah, ‘tis nowt but blethers. I’d best pit this i’ cowd watter, Miss Emmy, afore it sets i’ the cloth and won’t budge,” and she hurried off with the dress over her arm.

  When Alvey next went downstairs, Sir Aydon was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Mr Thropton. Lady Winship was in the drawing-room, snipping dead heads off geraniums in a desultory fashion. She looked to be in very low spirits.

  “Would you care to be wheeled out in your chair now, ma’am?”

  “He will not be persuaded, Louisa! Indeed he declared that it was all a plot to make him even more lame than he is now—if not to do away with him entirely!”

  “Oh dear; I am very sorry for that,” said Alvey. She spoke no more than the truth. She had been thinking, rather guiltily, how very pleasant it would be to have a month’s respite from Sir Aydon, whose personality in the house was tiring, and always to be felt, like a nagging wind. And yet he was a good man, a well-meaning, high-principled man; it was sad . . .

  “What a terrible pity that my grandmother is—is not herself. I believe she might have been able to persuade him, if anybody could.”

  Lady Winship shrugged. “And Aydon has written to James—himself!—already—bidding James mind his own business and not meddle in family affairs, since, by his choice of career, he has voluntarily cut himself off, and can expect no sympathy or support from his father.”

  Alvey knew that for Sir Aydon voluntarily to bestir himself to write a letter was a very remarkable occurrence; usually he delegated all correspondence to a daughter—Isa had undertaken the task in the past—or to his bailiff, Lumley. She was inclined to think this quite a good sign. In her view, it meant that Sir Aydon still loved James—or he would not be so anxious to keep in touch with him, to quarrel with him.

  “You do not think—if James were to come home in person, to remonstrate with his father—?”

  “No, I do not,” said Lady Winship with unusual firmness. “I think that would only make bad worse.”

  It was not James who came in person, but Guy Fenway, turning up unexpectedly, quite early one morning. Alvey and the children had taken a walk down to the river, to exclaim over the marvellous ice formations made by frozen spray glazed over the rocks and mosses; they were returning by a roundabout route when they were surprised to see a carriage carefully descending the slippery hill.

  “It is Major Fenway! Hurrah!” shouted Tot, who had taken a great liking to his brother’s friend; and the children raced through the pines and then alongside the carriage, shouting and capering. Its driver pulled his team to a halt, then dismounted from the box. He seemed delighted with the meeting.

  “Major Fenway! This is wholly unexpected!”

  “Good morning, Miss Louisa!—And you are afraid that it will be wholly unwelcome. It is not so to you personally, I do hope?”

  “Oh, no, not in the least. But I am afraid that—that my father will not be pleased.”

  “Papa was in a great rage with James when his letter came,” explained Tot, “and said that he was a meddlesome milksop.”

  “Well, that is a great pity, to be sure, and we must see if matters cannot be mended. Can you,” the Major said to Tot, “can you, do you think, lead my horses down the hill and into the stable-yard, and give them into the charge of Blackett?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I am quite sure I can,” said Tot, joyfully proud of the trust reposed in him.

  “Excellent! I am sure your sister will help you. And I shall look forward to a long talk with you later. Now I wish to have a short talk with Miss Louisa here—if she will permit?”

  “Of course,” said Alvey. “Though, if you can come up with any scheme to persuade Sir—to persuade my father to this course of treatment, you are a great deal cleverer than anybody in this house, Major Fenway, and must have the tongue of Demosthenes! But indeed we are all very much obliged to you for the kind consideration that prompted you to make the inquiry and to inform us about the skill of Mr Harle.”

  “The thing is,” said Major Fenway, as they turned by tacit consent and took a path leading upwards through the pine-grove, “the thing is that I have the greatest possible dislike of ineffectuality. I do not like to see objects put to wrong uses, or human beings consigned to pain or inconvenience which they need not suffer. In
fact it enrages me. The things that I saw and heard at Birkland Hall set me quite in a passion.”

  Alvey could not help smiling: his calm and even cheerful demeanour seemed so at odds with what he said. But he went on earnestly,—

  “It was really so, I do assure you. Oh, not you, or your part in the household—though we will come on to you presently—but the relations between Sir Aydon and his lady are so bad, so twisted, that they are plainly beginning to have an injurious effect upon the rest of the establishment. And much of this is due to the circumstance that Sir Aydon is not a well man. I am interested, Miss Louisa, in the link between a man’s physical health and that of his mind; I intend, later, to make this my study; I am sure there is a strong connection between the two.”

  “Of course there must be!” cried Alvey. “I have noticed so often, myself, how hard I find it to apply myself, to use my mind, when I am fatigued, or in pain.”

  “Just so,” he said, giving her one of his intent looks. “And in Sir Aydon there is little question but that the wrong functioning of one part has begun to impair the whole.”

  “But how can you ever persuade him to agree—?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “as to that I have a scheme in mind, but perhaps I had better keep it to myself at present so that afterwards, if any blame is flying about, you will be able to say truthfully that you had no hand in it, or any knowledge of it. I am aware, you see, of your somewhat equivocal position in the house; your sister Isa—if I may call her so—explained to me, when I was here before, about your situation; I refer to your entirely commendable and disinterested substitution—or exchange, should I say—with the other Miss Louisa.”

  Alvey’s heart gave a great thump. She stood still and stared at him, aghast.

  “You know?—Isa told you?—You have known, all the time?”

  “Well, not all the time. But since her disclosure, yes, I have. We went for a walk, the day before the wedding, and she told me the whole.”