by Joan Aiken
‘Why, had Lord Camber married somebody else?’
‘No, my dear, no, he had not. But somehow, when he came back from the Americas, he and Lady Ursula never took up from where they had left off before. Tastes alter, I daresay. A young man of six-and-twenty perhaps has a different notion as to what he wants in a wife, from what he fancied at eighteen; and he certainly don’t want a starched old maid of eight-and-twenty who has been at her last prayers for years and had her own way in the running of the Earl’s household for much of that time, since Lady Elstow never troubles her head about such matters. Or so it is said.’
‘Poor Lady Ursula.’ (Though she still could not avoid a shiver when she recalled that grim figure.)
Hatty’s sister Frances – now twenty-three and the only member of the family who ever troubled to correspond with her – wrote to her of life at Bythorn and Lady Ursula’s active part in it.
I am come home from Mansfield Park to Bythorn, for there was nothing doing at Mansfield. Life there had grown sadly dull, now my sister Maria has one child and is increasing again; for Sir Thos will not permit her to go out into company or up to town; nor, in truth, does she at all wish to. She seems quite content with this interdict – as you know, she was never one to bestir herself unduly – she is happy to recline all day upon a sopha, making fringe. And the house lies shockingly remote, I can tell you, in the middle of its park, and there are no Beaux to be found in the village of Mansfield. The only company we saw, from one week’s end to the next, were the Parson and his wife, Mr and Mrs Chauncey, and he is a gouty old Dodderer in his eighties, so you can picture to yourself how diverting that was. (If he should die, which seems not improbable, the living would pass to a friend of Sir Thos, a widower, a Mr Norris, and Maria and Sir T have it planned that our sister Agnes should marry Mr Norris and come to Mansfield, but I truly pity her if this should come about, for I have met Mr N & he is most disagreeable, besides which I have it from Katy Sharp, one of the teachers at the Bythorn school, that our sister Agnes is sweet on a Bailiff named Daggett!! Imagine! I am sure Papa would never permit such a match. – But who else is there? She will have to take Mr Norris.) Mrs Chauncey, the Mansfield parson’s wife, much younger than her husband is, I am bound to say, a pleasant friendly creature, and she has some kinsfolk in Portsmouth called Price, she told me; so, if I can ever persuade Papa to allow it, I may come to visit you and Aunt Polly and Uncle Philip one of these months & hope to make the acquaintance of Mrs Chauncey’s friends the Prices. Life here at Bythorn is no better than at Mansfield – by far too quiet for my liking. After those happy weeks at Bath with my sister and Sir Thos on their wedding journey I have acquired a decided taste for Town Ways. And I have no wish at all to dwindle into an old maid as our sister Agnes bids fair to do, if she will not have Mr Norris; only imagine, she is twenty-eight! Lady Ursula, who comes over from Underwood Priors two or three times a week, is on at her for ever to accept Mr N. (Between you and I, it is Papa that Lady U has her eye on & I do not doubt but that she will fix him in the end if he will stay at home from hunting long enough to pop the question.) I do not think that Agnes will at all enjoy playing second fiddle to Lady U once the lady is mistress of Bythorn Lodge. And I myself detest the notion of such a Stepmother. You are by far best off where you are in Portsmouth, Hatty, I may tell you.
Yr affc. sister,
Frances.
Hitherto, Mr Ward had refused permission for Frances to travel to Portsmouth, though Aunt Polly, when shown her letter, had cried, ‘Lord! yes, poor thing! She may come to us and welcome. I daresay life at Bythorn Lodge is mopish enough, with your poor dear Mama no more, and Lady Ursula hanging over them like a thunder-cloud! I only wonder why in the world the knot has not yet been tied. Does she still have hopes of Camber, can that be what is in her mind? But it is useless to conjecture. When you next write to Fanny, Hatty my love, tell her she may come here as soon as she pleases. I know that Price family a little – they are respectable enough people.’
Such a visit, however, was not achieved by Fanny until the decease of Lady Pentecost and the opportunity of accompanying Lady Ursula in one of the Fowldes coaches provided sufficient excuse for making the journey and the means of doing so without any expense to Mr Henry Ward.
‘Though I pity her, poor thing, riding all that way in the company of Lady Ursula,’ said Aunt Polly, ‘I would not wish it for myself. And, according to Louisa, that one only comes for one particular reason – because she hopes that Lord Camber will be at the ceremony. She does still have a hope of him, so Louisa believes.’
Oh, how I pray that I may never love any body so painfully, thought Hatty, that I would travel over a hundred miles for the possible chance of seeing him at a funeral. Does she, can she, still hope that he may change his mind and have her after all? I greatly wish that he would! For it is true that he has remained single. And if Lady Ursula does marry Papa – as everybody seems to think is probable – I do not see how I shall ever be able to go home again.
Hatty grew quite curious to see Lord Camber, the object, it seemed, of Lady Ursula’s hopeless passion. He had grown up, she knew, at Bythorn Chase, the principal seat of the Duke of Dungeness, who also had various other properties scattered over England, and large estates in the county of Hampshire. Lord Camber, she understood from information let fall by her uncle, had also inherited an estate in Hampshire, from a recently deceased great-aunt, but, apparently, he planned to sell some part of it and give the money to the poor.
‘Camber is a strange, unconformable fellow!’ remarked Mr Philip Ward with measured disapproval. ‘Mind! I can participate in some of his views. His father the Duke has certainly laid out a preposterous, I may say a ruinous, sum of money on completely rebuilding Bythorn Chase and improving the park with lakes and grottoes and follies and plantations and I know not what. He has had to sell some of the Hampshire properties to pay for that, and if he is not deep in debt by now I shall be very much surprised. When he does go off, it is likely that Camber will inherit nothing but a fine mare’s-nest of encumbrances. I do not wonder that father and son are hardly on speaking terms. If Lady Ursula has any sense at all she will think no more of Camber.’
‘Lord! though, my dear, only consider her alternatives!’ cried his wife. ‘Lady Louisa has told me in a letter that she believes the Lady still dotes on Camber as much as ever, though they have not met for seven years. Mind – if you ask me – she would find marriage to him an uncomfortable business. Why, Louisa tells me that he has founded a Society, the New Stoics, or the Sophocrats, or some such thing, with his friends Wandesleigh and Kittridge, the two poets he grew so friendly with at Cambridge. They are to own no money individually, and will have all their goods in common. Preserve me from such an existence!’
‘Do they have their wives in common?’ asked Tom wonderingly. The family were sitting round the breakfast table, rather later than usual, as it was Saturday.
‘Be quiet, sir!’ snapped Mr Ward. ‘That is a most improper remark. Another word out of you, and you may leave the table.’
Sydney favoured his younger brother with a superior smile. ‘Stupid little boy!’ Sydney, now eighteen, attending college in London, took great pains – not without opposition from his father – to appear a smart young-man-about-town. He wore a striped waistcoat, elaborately tied stock, and his reddish hair was heavily pomaded.
‘Wretched young puppy!’ growled his father. ‘I only wish he had taken half as much pains over his studies.’ But here he hardly did justice to his son, who found the law an absorbing and diverting subject, and knew a great deal more about the affairs of his father’s clients than the latter supposed.
‘If Lord Camber should die, sir,’ Sydney now said to Mr Ward, ‘who would succeed to the title?’
‘His brother, Colonel the Honourable Frederick Wisbech – but we have no reason to suppose that Camber is likely to die, not the least in the world. He is a healthy, active m
an in the prime of life.’
‘Just the same, sir, if, as I read in the paper, Lord Camber intends to go abroad to America with his friends and found a co-operative society in Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Susquehanna river – such a life might be full of hazard, might it not, sir – serpents, bears, wild Indians . . .?’
‘Pish!’ said Mr Ward, impatiently cutting himself a final corner of pork pie. ‘For a start, that is a most ill-considered plan, and, in my estimation, it will never get off the ground.’
His two younger sons looked at him sadly. They longed to ask more about the co-operative colony on the banks of the Susquehanna river, but knew they would only be snubbed.
Hatty remained silent, as she mostly did during family meals. Her mind was full of pictures – wild forests, rushing cataracts.
‘In any case,’ concluded Mr Ward, folding his napkin, ‘if Camber should be removed from this life, his brother Colonel Wisbech is a sensible, down-to-earth man, without any of his elder brother’s whims or fancies, and, in my own view, would make a far better successor to the title. Not that I have anything against Camber in himself, mind you; he is a good-hearted, clever fellow, and, I know, was once a great favourite of your mother.’
‘Yes, indeed, bless him!’ cordially agreed Aunt Polly. ‘He was always so obliging, and gave the prettiest presents to his sisters.’
‘At what time, my love, is Lady Ursula expected to arrive with my niece?’
‘At about four this afternoon.’
Hatty could not help thinking, It is like asking, At what hour will Mont Blanc be with us? Involuntarily she gave a slight shiver. But, she thought, Lady Ursula should not frighten me any more. I am older now. And I shall be truly glad to see my sister Frances.
‘I wish you boys to be in the hall at that time, also,’ said their mother, ‘with washed hands and hair combed, to greet your relations. And you of course, Hatty; you had best put on your white muslin. That India spotted has faded sadly (as I told you it would) and I think it has shrunk also.’
If there was one area in which Hatty’s views diverged from those of her aunt Polly, it was in the matter of dress. Despite having passed so many years residing in a ducal household, Aunt Polly’s taste in fashion was somewhat gaudy; for her own attire she favoured such colours as salmon-pink, puce, vermilion, and royal purple – perhaps to distract attention from her very high colouring; Hatty, who preferred quiet, sober hues, was sometimes a little dismayed at the brilliantly coloured wardrobe of garments purchased for her by her enthusiastic aunt. But on this occasion she was relieved to find that Aunt Polly was anxious enough about the advent, and possible disapproval, of Lady Ursula, to subdue her spontaneous taste.
‘The white still fits me well,’ she told her aunt, ‘but I do think I have grown a little.’
‘Very like, child. No question, you’ve a far better colour than you had when you first came to us – bless me, you were a poor little ghost of a thing at that time! But you’ve more countenance now, and your hair is thicker – I fancy your sister will see quite a change in you. Poor Fanny! And so she found no beaux at Bath nor in Mansfield – well, ‘tis a thousand pities she is come to Portsmouth on such a mournful errand. But perhaps, even so, she may turn her time here to good account. I am sure she is very welcome to stop on with us after Lady Ursula is gone back to Huntingdon; I daresay your uncle Philip may furnish her with the stage fare later if she will only be a little cajoling to him. Frances used to be a very handsome girl as I recall.’
All the family were duly assembled in the hall to greet the guests at the appointed hour, Mr Ward having returned from his place of business expressly for the purpose of welcoming the titled visitor; and they were not obliged to wait very long before a carriage drew up outside. From it emerged two ladies, one tall, one exceedingly so. Hatty, who had been prepared to mock herself for her former childish dread of Lady Ursula, nevertheless felt a chill reminder of it touch her again, as the forbiddingly gaunt, pale-cheeked figure moved forward, swathed in grey wraps and veils, crowned by a close grey-velvet hat, which made her head more than ever resemble a skull.
Behind her Frances, tall, full-formed and golden-haired, seemed like a creature from a different species.
Mr Ward welcomed his aristocratic guest with formal civility, then speedily handed her on to the easier, kinder, more unpretentious greetings of his wife, who condoled with the visitors over their long journey and offered immediate rest and refreshment. Mr Ward, meanwhile, his manner sensibly softened by appreciation of his niece’s handsome looks, was bidding Frances welcome, when Lady Ursula’s grating, acerbic tones made themselves heard above the general conversation and chorus of greetings.
‘Good heavens, Harriet! How can you hold yourself so very ill? Why, it gives me a megrim to see you slouch so. Stand up, stand up properly! And pull your elbows in, and your chin back!’
Dismayed, speechless, Hatty drew herself up as bidden and did her best to meet Lady Ursula’s freezingly disapproving eye.
‘Harriet’s deportment at Bythorn was always deplorable,’ Lady Ursula told Aunt Polly, ‘due, I daresay, to sitting for hours together huddled up at her mother’s bedside. But I had hoped by this time to discover some improvement. I can see, however – ’ her eye swept over the gaping Tom and Ned, coming to rest upon Sydney, whose look of smug self-confidence changed ludicrously under her disparaging stare – ‘that manners, mien and deportment are not given the consideration in this household that should rightly be theirs. My dear woman, do they attend dancing classes?’
Hatty could almost have laughed at the looks of horror that passed over her cousins’ faces. Aunt Polly was obliged to confess that in this area the family’s education had so far been neglected.
‘In my opinion they should commence at once,’ said Lady Ursula. ‘That fellow – ’ she pointed with her chin at Sydney – ‘a great hobble-de-hoy, how can he hope to advance himself in the world with the posture of a rag-and-bone man, holding his elbows out so awkwardly as he does, feet turned in, and his whole aspect so gawky and graceless—’
‘Alas, dear madam, will you not come in and take a glass of wine?’ cried Aunt Polly. ‘All these defects must and shall be put right in time, but at the present moment your comfort is our chief concern.’ And, taking Lady Ursula’s arm, she conducted this critical guest into the house, while Mr Ward followed with Fanny.
‘My word, what a Tartar,’ he muttered, as Lady Ursula, declining immediate refreshment, asked to be led directly to her chamber, and was taken upstairs by Aunt Polly.
‘Sir, sir, you won’t really send us to a caper-merchant, will you?’ demanded Sydney, as the pair turned the corner of the stairway.
‘Certainly I shall, if Lady Ursula thinks it so essential,’ snapped his father. ‘Now, Frances, my dear – will you take a glass of wine, or do you too wish to retire to your chamber?’
On Frances declaring that she too would prefer to rest and change her dress for dinner, she was given into the care of Hatty, who guided her to the second-best bedroom.
‘I have brought you something I thought you would like to have,’ said Frances, withdrawing a small silver-paper packet from her muff. ‘It is a needle-pouch that Mama embroidered herself – with squirrels.’
‘Oh, dear Fanny, yes! Thank you, thank you! I shall treasure it!’
‘You look well, child,’ sighed Fanny, studying her. ‘Are you happy in this family?’
‘Oh – well – yes – Aunt Polly is as kind as can be. And I have grown accustomed to the boys. I think that my uncle still wishes that I were not here.’
‘Well,’ said Frances, ‘just the same, I believe you are better off here than at home. Bythorn Lodge, with Agnes in command, is grown quite insupportable! And Agnes takes all her ideas from Lady Ursula.’
‘But will Lady Ursula really marry Papa? Do you think it probable?’
‘I do not thin
k she loves him, not for one single moment. Nor does he have any of that kind of regard for her. But I believe that in the end she will have him, if – if nobody else makes her an offer. I think it is plain enough that Papa intends, sooner or later, to propose – hoping that by another marriage he may get himself a son, and so withold the inheritance from my uncle. But, manlike, he is in no hurry, he loves his present liberty too well to buckle himself up before he need, and so he dallies and procrastinates.’
‘You would expect,’ said Hatty, pondering, ‘that my uncle Philip would do his utmost to prevent such a marriage. Since the family here stand to inherit if Papa dies without a male heir.’
‘But what could Mr Ward do? I see no way in which my uncle could act in such a matter.’ Fanny looked bewildered.
‘No, he can do nothing,’ agreed Hatty sadly; and seeing Ned beckon from below in the garden, she left Frances to her unpacking and ran down to join him.
‘Lord, Hatt, what a she-dragon!’ exclaimed Ned when they met. ‘I don’t wonder she frightened you out of your wits at Bythorn when you was smaller. I just hope she don’t stay here beyond the funeral on Monday.’
