Daphne

by Beaton, M. C.

  The squire repressed a shudder at the thought of the vicarage cooking. ‘It is most kind of you, Charles, but Ram is preparing one of his special curries.’ Ram was the squire’s Indian servant.

  ‘Really hot?’ asked the vicar wistfully.

  ‘Very hot. You are welcome to share it with me.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Thankee,’ said the vicar eagerly.

  They parted at the lych-gate.

  The vicar recognized Lord Sylvester Comfrey’s carriage standing outside the vicarage.

  The lamps in the parlour had been lit. When he pushed open the door of the parlour, Daphne rose to meet him. She had shadows of fatigue under her eyes. She signalled to the maid, Betty, to retire and waited until the housekeeper, Mrs Hammer, had set down the tea tray.

  ‘Have you told Mrs Armitage you are home?’ asked the vicar.

  ‘No, nor Diana. I am very tired and would simply like to have a dish of tea and go to bed. But I am glad to see you, Papa.’

  The vicar moved forward to embrace her and then stopped short as Daphne shrank back in her chair.

  ‘Do not touch me,’ she said in a quiet, even voice. ‘There is something I must ask you.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the vicar. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I understand that Annabelle’s baby is not Brabington’s,’ said Daphne, pouring tea with every appearance of composure.

  The vicar sat down heavily. Daphne raised her large eyes and studied him intently. Inside she was praying desperately that he would exclaim, be shocked, tell her she was talking nonsense.

  But he said nothing for what seemed an age. Then he said, ‘So you know,’ and taking out a handkerchief, he mopped his brow. ‘Well,’ he added with a weary sigh, ‘I had better explain.’

  Daphne looked at her father with a sort of terrible pity. ‘No, Papa,’ she said, putting down her tea cup, rising and walking to the door. ‘The matter is closed. You may congratulate me. I am to wed Mr Archer.’

  ‘But Daphne …’

  Daphne went out and quietly closed the door behind her.

  Summer had fled before a chill wind. The sea was steel grey. Everything was grey. Grey sky, grey buildings, grey people.

  Mr Garfield walked alone along the promenade at Brighton.

  He had called again on Lord Sylvester, only to be told that neither Mr Armitage nor Daphne had returned.

  Pride stopped him from asking Minerva whether Daphne had told her of his proposal of marriage. For it had been a proposal, he thought savagely. He had told her he would call on her father the next day.

  Sharp, angry waves thudded on the beach and a seagull screamed overhead.

  The Brighton Season was over. The Fashionables had already packed up and returned to London to prepare for the rigours of the Little Season. Even Mr Apsley had left, nursing a sore jaw, a reminder not to interfere in his friend’s affairs again.

  Why had she left without a word? Mr Garfield turned the problem over and over in his head. Had she believed that silly actress that Edwin had hired?

  It was evident she had changed her mind, and yet he had been so sure she was not indifferent to him.

  Then he saw, too late, that the Colonel and Mrs Cartwright were bearing down on him. They had been late arrivals to the seaside resort, the colonel having been persuaded by his doctor that the sea breezes would alleviate the pain of a disordered spleen.

  ‘Afternoon, Garfield,’ said the colonel. ‘Surprised to find you still here. We’ll all be damned as Unfashionables if we stay much longer.’

  ‘The Prince Regent is still with us,’ pointed out Mr Garfield.

  ‘Ah, yes, indeed,’ said the colonel, turning and saluting the Royal Pavilion.

  ‘I was most startled at the news in the papers this morning,’ said Mrs Cartwright. ‘Do you remember Miss Daphne Armitage? The young lady who cooked dinner at Lady Godolphin’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Garfield, with seeming indifference.

  ‘She is to wed Mr Cyril Archer, you know, that rather stupid young man. Very handsome, of course, but her sisters made their name by marrying looks and brains and fortune.’

  ‘I have heard that rumour before.’ Mr Garfield looked out to sea with a little shrug of his broad shoulders as if dismissing the matter from his mind.

  ‘But it is not a rumour. It is in all the London journals as well as the Brighton ones. Do you think she has made a wise choice? I did not quite take to that young man, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ Mr Garfield sounded unutterably weary. He raised his hand briefly to the brim of his beaver hat and strolled off down the promenade.

  So she is like all the others, he thought, feeling anger begin to mount inside his head. Marry Archer! Daphne Armitage was empty, silly and vain. He thought he had sensed a rich seam of honesty and courage and decency in her. What a fool he had been. He had been bewitched by a large pair of eyes, a trim figure, and hair as black as midnight.

  He reminded himself he had business to attend to in London, business which would occupy all his mental energies. Mr Garfield came from an old aristocratic family and yet he had plunged into the world of trade some ten years ago, shortly after his twenty-first birthday, and had built up a prosperous concern, importing goods from the Far East.

  The world of the City fascinated him more than the world of the West End.

  He had neglected his duties sadly of late … and all over a silly little girl.

  SIX

  By the time the Little Season had begun, the brief, blazing glory that had been the animated Daphne Armitage of Brighton had flashed like a comet across the social scene and burned out.

  People who had attended a very long and very boring opera just to get a glimpse of the latest Armitage pearl pronounced themselves vastly disappointed.

  She was like a wax doll. Mr Archer, as everyone already knew, was like something out of Madame Tussaud’s. So much beauty, they mourned. Alas, that it lacked the spirit to set it alight.

  Daphne was once more armoured against the cruel world in careful fashion and a mask-like face. She rarely smiled, or cried, or showed any animation whatsoever. Heartless society said it could only be grateful that two such beautiful pieces of empty vanity had found each other, thereby sparing some unfortunate from marrying either one of them. Mr Archer was always straightening his waistcoat, or fiddling with his cravat, and Miss Daphne was always studying her face in a hand mirror to make sure some small spot or errant strand of hair was not marring the flawless perfection of her face.

  Before, she had at least appeared charming in her silence. There had been something fresh and appealing about her. Now she looked as if a vital force had shrivelled and died within.

  Mr Garfield, emerging briefly from his City labours for one last look at his lost love, heaved a sigh of relief and congratulated himself on a narrow escape. But he longed for the pretty, vital girl he thought he had loved, said a few mourning words over her bright image, and returned to his chores, feeling as if he had just attended a funeral.

  The disappointed vicar had washed his hands of the whole affair. Certainly, he had promised God that Daphne could marry whom she chose. But Mr Armitage could not help feeling He had a warped sense of humour, and once more the vicar’s prayers became mechanical and the beauty of the cold, crisp mornings no longer moved him.

  Minerva was disappointed in Daphne but not very much surprised. She had never known Daphne very well, having been more concerned with the older girls. Minerva was still rather moralistic and assumed anyone as vain as Daphne appeared to be must be remarkably devoid of sensibility. It was just as well Daphne had not formed a tendre for the elusive Mr Garfield as it had once seemed she had. He was too vital and masculine a man to settle for a pretty doll.

  Only Lady Godolphin began to wonder if there was not something very serious troubling Daphne. Daphne was not to be wed until the following year – Mr Archer being quite comfortable with the engagement – and there was no great fuss about h
er debut in the Little Season since she was already engaged. No one in their right mind ever put out a great deal of money on a daughter who was already off the lists.

  The vicar and Mrs Armitage, together with Diana and Frederica, remained at Hopeworth. Daphne was lodged with Lady Godolphin at her house in Hanover Square. A sum of money had been paid to that lady to chaperone Daphne to various social events, Minerva and Annabelle being too taken up with their babies to find time for the social round.

  Lady Godolphin found it a very undemanding sort of job. Mr Archer would always arrive on time, beautifully dressed, to meet Daphne, who was always on time, and always beautifully dressed, and then she would proceed to accompany them to whatever rout or ball she had selected for them since they seemed to have no preference of their own.

  Off they would set, hardly speaking, Daphne sent on her way by the now perpetually bitter and sullen maid, Betty.

  During her first week back in London, Daphne had certainly caused one night’s alarm by screaming in her sleep about insects. Lady Godolphin had had Daphne’s bedroom almost buried under an avalanche of Keating’s powder in an attempt to soothe the girl.

  But what had sharpened Lady Godolphin’s senses to Daphne’s underlying distress and despair was when her ladyship fell in love again. And nothing sharpens the senses so much as unrequited love.

  They were to attend a rout that evening at the Brothers’ mansion in Portland Square. Lady Godolphin usually avoided routs these days, damning them as a waste of time. Perhaps some other members of London society thought the same, but it did not stop them from attending in great numbers.

  And there was something very exhausting and quite mad about a society rout.

  Great assemblies were called routs or parties, although the invitation only said simply that such and such a person would be at home.

  The house in which the rout was to take place was stripped from top to bottom; beds, drawers and all but ornamental furniture being carried out of sight, to make room for a crowd of well-dressed people received at the door of the principal apartment by the mistress of the house whose job it was to smile at every newcomer as if they were a long lost friend.

  Nobody sat: there was no conversation, nor cards, nor music; ‘only elbowing, turning and winding from room to room’. Then at the end of quarter of an hour you had to battle down the crowded staircase you had battled up such a short time ago and then stand freezing on the threshold, spending more time with the footmen than you had done with their masters upstairs, as you waited for your carriage to be brought around.

  Ten o’clock, the time Lady Godolphin and her small party set out, was the time of day when fashionable London really came to life. Everything that had gone on earlier was a sort of overture to this grand moment.

  For social London did not begin to stir out of doors until four in the afternoon. Apart from the milk maids and the other street vendors, the only sound to be heard earlier was the drum and military music of the Guards, marching from their barracks in Hyde Park; at the head of the procession, four negro giants crashing cymbals.

  After paying calls and lounging in Bond Street, society returned at six to change for dinner. At six the street lights were lit; a long line of bright dots which hardly did anything to dispel the gloom.

  Then at eight the first wave of carriages rumbled across the cobbles, two wavering red flames of light like eyes in the front of each. The very way in which your footman alighted to knock on the door was a social art. As the American visitor, Louis Simond, described it: ‘Stopping suddenly, a footman jumps down, runs to the door, and lifts the heavy knocker – gives a great knock – then several smaller ones in quick succession – then with all his might – flourishing as on a drum, with an art, and an air, and a delicacy of touch, which denotes the quality, the rank, and the fortune of his master.’

  For two hours there was a pause, and then at ten o’clock the noise of carriages in the cobbled streets became deafening.

  The Brothers’ mansion blazed with light, all the curtains back and the blinds up.

  Daphne was wearing the very latest thing in acrostic hats. That is the hat was embellished with silk flowers which spelled out the letters of her name – dahlia, aster, peony, hyacinth, narcissus and eglantine. Her gown was of blue and white striped gauze and her bare shoulders kept warm with a pereline of richly embroidered muslin.

  Lady Godolphin was wearing a round gown of vivid green cambric cut low enough to expose what seemed like an acre of withered flesh in front and behind. Her squat neck boasted a necklace of rather dirty diamonds, and she wore a turban with two striped feathers waving about the top and looking as if they did not belong there – which, in fact, they did not, Lady Godolphin having thrust them in at the last minute.

  Mr Archer was very correct in knee breeches and swallow tail coat with his chapeau bras tucked under his arm. Lady Godolphin told him he looked quite tunnish, which made that gentleman glance at his own waistline in an alarmed way as if expecting to find he had sprouted an embonpoint overnight.

  Lady Godolphin could only marvel at the way her two charges negotiated their way through the crowd seemingly indifferent to everyone and everything.

  When they were pushing their way downstairs against the tide of people pushing up, Lady Godolphin all of a sudden came chest to chest with Colonel Arthur Brian, her late inamorato who had so callously left her for the charms of a vulgar Cit.

  She tried to edge past, turning her head away and giving him the cut direct, but a very fat couple chose that moment to come abreast and so Lady Godolphin was pressed up nearly as close to the colonel as she had ever been.

  ‘I think we should recognize each other,’ said the colonel. ‘It breaks my heart to see you cut me so.’

  ‘Philanthropist!’ hissed Lady Godolphin.

  Colonel Brian had had quite a lot of experience when it came to translating Lady Godolphin’s malapropisms. He realized his lady-love meant ‘philanderer’.

  ‘You started it all,’ he said in a maddeningly reasonable tone of voice, ‘when you deserted me for that young jackanapes.’

  ‘But then you went off with that fat Cit,’ grated Lady Godolphin. ‘Allow me to pass.’

  ‘No, I shall not,’ said Colonel Brian, becoming agitated. ‘Our separation has all been very silly.’

  ‘Silly, heh?’ Lady Godolphin drew up her massive bosom until it stuck out like a figurehead. ‘Let me past, sirrah!’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘People is staring and you is becoming historical.’

  The fat couple squeezed on ahead. With surprising speed and agility, Lady Godolphin nipped past the spare figure of the elderly colonel and lumbered down the stairs.

  She was looking forward to having a deliciously impassioned scene with the colonel to enliven the tedium of waiting for her carriage – for surely he would pursue her.

  Great was her dismay when she eventually looked back to find Colonel Brian had gained the top of the stairs and was smirking down into the cleavage of a lady who was nothing more than laced mutton.

  All the old pain and anguish returned, and Lady Godolphin brooded on the doorstep of the Brothers’ mansion like some massive bulldog which has just seen its bone being snatched away by an ancient poodle.

  The idea of spending the rest of the fashionable night walking up and down her own bedroom dismayed her ladyship. There was a ball at the Ruthfords’. The Duke and Duchess had sent out invitations some weeks ago to which Lady Godolphin in her usual slapdash way had not replied. But if they turned up about twelve-thirty, the Duke and Duchess would no longer be receiving the guests and so would not be immediately around to make remarks about impolite and inconsiderate people.

  ‘We’re going to the Ruthfords’. Best get home and change,’ growled Lady Godolphin. ‘We’ll set you down and you can call for us later, Mr Archer.’

  ‘I had not meant to go out again,’ said Daphne.

  ‘Then mean it,’ snapped Lady Godolphin. ‘I’m fair wo
re to the bone squirin’ you pair o’ waxworks about so the least you can do is obleege me.’

  A flicker of pain crossed Daphne’s beautiful eyes and then was gone.

  Her sensitivity heightened by her own distress, Lady Godolphin noticed the look, and noticed for almost the first time that Daphne Armitage was not entirely the unfeeling, empty-headed doll she had believed her to be.

  Something impelled her to give Daphne’s hand a squeeze, and, by the flickering lights of the parish lamps outside, Lady Godolphin surprised the shine of tears in Daphne’s large eyes.

  ‘I do hope your carriage will not be long,’ said Mr Archer. ‘I have a speck of soot on my cravat.’

  Lady Godolphin suddenly decided she had had more than enough of Mr Archer for one evening. ‘I know you wanted to go on to the Alvaney rout, Mr Archer,’ she said. ‘Rumour has it the Prince Regent will be there. So why don’t you take yourself?’

  The carriage arrived and Mr Archer climbed in after the ladies, wondering when it could be that he had voiced a desire to go to Alvaney’s since he could not remember having said at any time that he would like to go to any particular event. But he had treated himself to a new swansdown waistcoat and it would be fine if he could catch the eye of the Prince Regent. Mr Archer had all but forgotten in his immense vanity that he had coerced Daphne Armitage into becoming engaged to him. She was all he had dreamt she would be as a fiancée: cool, aloof, and very, very fashionable. Not only did she seem uninterested in his occasional dutiful and chaste caresses but actually seemed to shrink from them. So in the dim workings of his brain he finally decided that, yes, it would be splendid to go, and quite safe to leave Daphne with Lady Godolphin. He allowed himself to be set down at his lodgings and barely remembered to raise his hand in farewell, so absorbed had he already become in planning his toilet.