Most women have a natural ability to recommend themselves to a man by little arts of feminine allure. In Maria, this ability was unfortunately almost totally lacking. Her disposition was so frank and open, her approach so rational, that she failed to realise how to employ such powerful weapons as a fluttering fan, a provocative smile, an arch glance or a seemingly accidental glimpse of a shapely ankle. She might have learnt much from that Miss Cavendish with whom Neville had danced at the ball. But still she persevered in her own way, watching eagerly for any sign of a change in his attitude towards her, and all the time falling more deeply in love with him.
CHAPTER V
Close on two months had passed since Neville had parted from his wife, and still he had not found the courage to inform the Earl of the marriage. During this time he had written only one brief letter to Dorinda, giving her no address to which she might reply. He told her that he was unable to leave home at present as his father was gravely ill. It was the only excuse he could think of to explain his continued absence; and, try as he would, he was unable to discover any way of leaving Alvington at present without antagonising his father.
Fortunately, the Earl himself at last provided the much desired opportunity. Early in October, he departed for Yorkshire to join a party of sportsmen friends for several weeks.
No sooner had his father left the house than Neville hastily packed his bag and set out for Rye.
He was rapturously received, and had no difficulty in making Dorinda and her mother believe that he had so far been unable to communicate the news of his marriage, owing to his father’s weak condition.
“I waited only to see him out of danger,” he said, his arm lovingly around Dorinda, “before hastening to you, my dearest. To stay until he was strong enough to receive my news — which, however much he may welcome it in time, must come as a shock at first — to stay any longer, I say, was more than I could bring myself to do. My one overwhelming desire was to be with you at the earliest possible moment.”
Dorinda had no wish to argue with this, and he breathed an inward sigh of relief that everything had passed off so easily. But before he had been in the cottage many hours, he learned that yet another complication had entered his life.
Dorinda was pregnant.
It was only to be expected, of course, yet the news dismayed him. Some absurd notion had lingered at the back of his mind that he might be able to continue keeping his marriage a secret. Now there was small chance of that, with a possible heir to Alvington on the way.
His depression was deepened by a change in his wife. She was still as gentle and loving, as uncritical of him as before, but she was now frequently ailing. The sickness and nausea which sometimes attend the early months of a pregnancy afflicted her sorely. She tried hard to be cheerful, but was forced to spend hours lying down on her bed with her mother in attendance. A faint resentment began to stir in him, the beginnings of regret for his hasty marriage. Why was it that nothing ever seemed to go right for him?
By the time he had spent three weeks in the cottage, he was finding it as much a prison as Alvington Hall had been. He soon made up his mind to go back to Buckinghamshire; in any case, the Earl would return before long, and it would not do for him to find his son absent. It would require some finesse to extricate himself creditably from his present situation, but he trusted to his own ingenuity — and to his wife’s affection — to achieve it. Anxiety for his father was the excuse he used; and if Mrs. Lathom felt that a wife’s claims should come before those of a parent, however dear, she held her tongue for Dorinda’s sake.
The poor girl was extremely dejected and cried for most of the evening before his departure, a fact which made him all the more eager to go.
She tried hard to present a braver face in the morning; but her mother realised the strain she was under, and persuaded her to lie down on her bed for a while, after Neville had gone.
She rested there for some time, racked by a grief that was all the more poignant because she remained dry-eyed. Presently she rose, moving quietly so that her mother would not hear, and went to a special hiding place where she had been in the habit of concealing her most valued possessions. It was a small ledge inside the chimney breast, completely concealed from view and unknown to anyone other than herself.
She put her hand up the chimney and drew forth an intricately worked wooden box which had been brought back from foreign parts by her father as a present for his little daughter. Opening it, she disclosed the signet ring which had been used for the wedding ceremony. Although Neville had since bought her one which fitted properly, she had begged to be allowed to retain this, which she thought of as her true marriage ring.
She lifted it out, pressing it to her lips; and now the tears began to fall. Sobbing, she replaced the ring and drew forth from the bodice of her gown the only letter he had ever written to her. She read it again, although she knew it by heart, then tenderly laid it in the box beside the ring. She replaced the box in its hiding place. Even Mama could not share these precious pledges of his affection.
Meanwhile, Neville thankfully set his course for home. He was relieved to find that his father had not yet returned and was not expected until the following week. He rode over to see Edward Lydney and to acquaint him with the latest news.
“Well, there’s no help for it now,” remarked Lydney. “You’ll be obliged to open your budget to the Earl, no gainsaying it.”
Neville agreed grimly. “And there’ll be the devil to pay, Ned, I needn’t tell you. The fact that I’ve kept it from him till matters have reached this pass won’t help my case, either. What in God’s name can I do if he turns me off?”
“Shouldn’t think it’ll be as bad as that,” said the other, judicially. “Not now that there’s a legal offspring in prospect — might be an heir, too. A man don’t put his heirs in penury.”
“You don’t know my father,” retorted Neville bitterly.
“One thing to turn you off without a penny in the heat of the moment, but quite another to let your brat starve. He’d have to come down with the blunt to provide for the child. Besides, I don‘t think he’d deprive you of funds for very long — only long enough to get rid of his spleen.”
“That might be too damned long for me! No, I tell you I can’t face him with it — not yet, at any rate. If you think” — Neville paused, turning over Lydney’s words in his mind — “if you really think, Ned, that the birth of a child might make a difference to the old man — well…”
Lydney shrugged, already tired of the subject.
“What I really think is that you’d do well to tell him without further delay. There’s Miss Cottesford to consider, too. The Earl’s bound to try and push the match forward, being in the dark about this other business. Devilish awkward all ‘round, I’d say.”
Edward Lydney proved right. As soon as the Earl returned home, he urged his son to pursue the courtship in earnest.
“Here we are nearly into November, and nothing settled yet between you,” he said briskly. “She’s had time enough to know her own mind, so you’d best get round to poppin’ the question, m’boy.”
Neville tugged at his cravat, which suddenly seemed too tight. “I — I can’t do that — that’s to say” — his courage evaporated before the fierce glare in those steel-grey eyes — “that’s to say, I don’t think the time is yet right for a declaration. I — I would rather leave it a while longer—”
“God give me patience!” exploded the Earl. “What a namby-pamby generation this is! Why, devil take it, boy, I’d wedded, bedded and got your mother with child in half the time it’s taken you only to strike up a mere acquaintance with this chit!”
Neville stammered an apology, but held, if only feebly, to his point of view.
“Oh, very well, I have done! It’s no matter, after all, if the wedding don’t take place till the Spring, just so long as you don’t let the gal slip through your fingers. You’re only one and twenty, when all’s said, and not half the
man I was at your age. But mind you see plenty of her, for how else is the chit to fall in love with you? Fall in love!” The Earl snorted in disgust. “Cottesford’s an old woman to insist on such a romantical notion — as though you weren’t a devilish good catch for any female, let alone one that’s as good as on the shelf.”
The months that followed were amongst the most uneasy of Neville’s life. Since returning home, he suffered increasingly from feelings of guilt concerning Dorinda. It was bad enough that he could not, through his own lack of moral courage, give her the position to which she was entitled and openly acknowledge her as his wife. It was worse that he had run away at a time when she needed his support and comfort. Selfish though he was, he was not a brutal man; and he loved Dorinda as much as he was capable of caring for anyone except himself. When he recalled the happiness of their brief honeymoon, he knew that she deserved better of him, and the knowledge did nothing to enhance his self-esteem.
He made up his mind to visit her as often as he could find an excuse for quitting Alvington, and enlisted Edward Lydney’s help in this purpose. The visits were brief and infrequent, but they helped soothe Dorinda, who was having a difficult pregnancy. Mrs. Lathom felt less satisfied with her son-in-law’s lengthy absences, but was obliged to accept his explanation that his father was still too ill to be told the truth; and that moreover many of the duties of the estate now fell upon his shoulders, which meant that he was constantly needed at home. She came to the conclusion that Mr. Stratton’s father was most likely on the verge of death, and that therefore it was only a matter of time before Dorinda would have her full rights. They had only to be patient, and all would turn out for the best. This was an essential part of the good lady’s philosophy.
Although Neville was able to salve his conscience with these visits, he still had a most difficult part to play with Maria Cottesford. It was not made easier by the fact that he was now finding her a more interesting and stimulating companion than poor Dorinda, who did her best to be cheerful for her husband, but often suffered from sundry ailments which made her feel low. Now that his obsession for Dorinda had faded to a lukewarm affection, he was better able to do justice to the other girl. She was too much of a bluestocking for his taste, but she had a lively sense of humour and frequently made him laugh when he had previously been feeling glum. Although her looks seemed to have improved lately in some subtle way, she was still far from being a beauty; and in her company he never felt the faintest stirring of his senses, although several other females of his acquaintance could produce this effect readily enough. Still, it was no longer quite so tedious to be obliged to pay her the formal attentions required of a suitor, and at least his performance of these civilities kept his father content. More than once he noticed the Earl’s eye rest on him approvingly when he had turned a pretty compliment to the lady or had danced with her several times at a private ball in one of the houses of the neighbourhood.
Maria, watching always for any sign from the Viscount which she might interpret as awakening love, noticed the change in him, and wondered how optimistic she could allow herself to be. There was no doubt that he now paid her more heed than formerly, when, at times, he had scarcely seemed to be aware of her presence at all. He had always been punctilious in all those attentions which a gentleman should pay to a lady, but he had performed them automatically; his compliments, though chosen with wit and taste, had been obviously studied and carried no conviction. Now he appeared to enjoy their conversations together, though these were usually light-hearted and inconsequential, since Maria had decided that serious discussion bored him. There could be no doubt that he was at last becoming conscious of her as a personality, but was he falling in love?
She sighed, gazing from her window into the garden where the shadows had lengthened, leaving the trees darkly silhouetted against a sky of grey and opal, in which one star shone high up — remote as happiness, thought Maria sadly, remote as his heart was from hers. What more could she do to win his love? She could think of nothing. Love is not won, after all, she reflected, but freely given — or as freely withheld. Witness how often it was given unwanted; there was poor, simple Phebe in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, yearning for Rosalind in the guise of a man. That was fiction, of course; but real life offered plenty of examples, one or two of them within her own circle of acquaintance. If he should speak now, would she accept him? She felt there was no real likelihood of a declaration at present, and wondered why he hung back from committing himself. Was it because he, too, wanted to be more certain of his feelings?
Christmas came and went. Maria’s grandparents had been staying at the Manor over the festive season, and they now begged her to accompany them for a short stay to their home in Oxfordshire. Reluctant though she felt in one way to leave her own home and the company of Viscount Shaldon, in another she thought her absence at this time might be no bad thing. It was said that absence made the heart grow fonder; perhaps if Shaldon could no longer see her whenever he wished, he might discover how much — or how little — she meant to him. Either way, it might serve to resolve a situation which was growing daily more painful to her.
Telling his father that he intended to take a trip to London in Maria’s absence, Neville seized the chance of paying a lengthy visit to Rye, where he had not been since before Christmas. All his former eagerness to go there had now completely vanished; he thought of his visits as tedious duties which he could not escape. His wife was no longer the captivating companion of their honeymoon days. Her ungainly figure, far from arousing his tenderness, only served to repel him; and her constant ailments made the hours he spent with her tedious in the extreme. He would have greatly preferred the visit to Town which was serving as his present excuse for visiting her; there, at any rate, he would have gaiety and diversion.
He found her far from well. Her hands and legs were swollen so that she was in discomfort most of the time, although she tried her best to make light of it. She was a little inclined to be plaintive because he had been absent over the Christmas season, but he won her over with the present of a finely woven Norwich shawl which he placed tenderly about her shoulders. He had brought a fur tippet for Mrs. Lathom which quite mellowed that lady, who nowadays was inclined to receive him with something of reserve in her manner. It was plain that she thought her daughter’s marriage unsatisfactory, but for Dorinda’s sake she seldom uttered a word of complaint.
He learned that the child was expected at the end of March, and was called on to admire the many small garments on which both women had been working during the past months. He praised everything generously, in particular a beautifully worked white gown with pintucking and insets of lace which he was told was for the child’s christening.
“And we must decide on a name, dearest,” said Dorinda, laying her head on his shoulder. “What would you like it to be?”
He smiled into her upturned, childlike face, but inwardly remained unmoved. The prospect of fatherhood held no appeal for him; his magical love affair with Dorinda seemed now as remote as a dream.
“You shall choose, my love. What are your favourite names?” he asked fondly.
“Why, Neville, of course — and William, after my poor dear Papa — that is, if you would not object?”
“Don’t forget,” put in Mrs. Lathom, with a smile, “that your child may be a girl. You’re choosing only boys’ names.”
“Well, if it should be a girl, then I would like one of her names to be Elizabeth, after you, dearest Mama. But Neville will naturally wish to give her his own mother’s name. What is it, dearest?”
“My mother’s name? Oh, it’s Jane.”
“Jane Elizabeth. Yes, it sounds very well, don’t you think? And now we have made our choice. It didn’t take very long, did it?” Her face changed, grew paler. “Mama, I — I feel unwell—”
Mrs. Lathom, ever watchful, shepherded her out of the room, leaving Neville sitting glumly on the sofa.
Conversations such as this, enlivened now
and then by a haphazard game of backgammon or chess, constituted his sole entertainment at the cottage. Without a deep affection to lend interest, these concerns seemed trivial and boring to the young man. After a fortnight, he felt he could no longer endure another day of it. He determined to leave and spend the rest of the time left to him in London, gaming at the Clubs and flirting with the lighter muslin company at Vauxhall.
They were now so used to his comings and goings that they accented this decision philosophically enough. According to his report, his father was still in very poor health and unable to stand the slightest excitement; and if Mrs. Lathom sometimes wished that the old gentleman would either recover fully or else succumb to his malady, she never mentioned this to Dorinda, who would have been sadly shocked at her mother’s seeming heartlessness. The fact was that Mrs. Lathom, although a gentle soul in all matters that did not concern her beloved child, had developed a protective shrewdness since Dorinda’s marriage. She had accepted Neville’s story of his father’s illness without reservation in the beginning; and at that time she had believed it to be a terminal malady which would resolve the young man’s difficulties. But lately she had begun to wonder how much credence could be placed on her son-in-law’s reports on his parent’s condition. Was the old man really in as bad a way as the son represented? If so, how had he managed to survive? It was now four months since Mr. Stratton had first written to tell them the unhappy news; people did linger on, of course. All the same, she had come to know Mr. Stratton well enough by now, in spite of the reserve beneath his surface charm, to realise that he was a vacillating person who always evaded unpleasant decisions. She must do nothing at present, however, to impair Dorinda’s happiness, which she sensed was already fragile.
A Regency Scandal Page 6
