Gentlemen and Players

by Frances Vernon

  This was not true, so she was treating him as a child. He walked past her and into his study, but he did go to the picnic, although he arrived after his guests had begun to eat.

  He had been drunk the night before, which was perhaps the sixth time in his life he had really drunk too much. Thursday evening and Friday daytime had gone very well: women had been sweet to him; men, when there were no women present, had consulted his opinions when they were in conversation, and had extended general invitations. Everyone had seemed to admire the house, the garden and the park and one man had told Augusta that she must be glad to see the park and gardens in shape again after so many years, which she was.

  Before dinner yesterday, Nicholas had had a little work to do and had retired to his study, It was not until the work was done and he was alone there that a panic had gradually developed, and he had started to drink brandy so that before and during dinner he could talk with ease and wit. He rather thought it would be clever to own, in open speech, his vulgar origins; certainly it would be clever enough to discomfit his gentle-mannered and dull guests who tried to put him at his ease. It was in his study that he hit upon the word ‘dull’ to describe the strangers.

  At dinner Nicholas had twice boasted belligerently, and annoyed the Marchioness of Lowestoft by becoming sentimental over the pudding, not so much towards her, though she was very pretty, but about his wife and son and daughters. When the ladies retired he had returned to silence, and was ignored, not politely but almost sympathetically, by the gentlemen; and then one of them had helped him reach his study, where he had begun to cry.

  He did not want to attend the picnic because, this morning, no one had sneered at him, ignored him, looked askance or openly made allowances: and this had bewildered him. It made Nicholas very determined never to hold such a party again, and he wondered now whether to go to Augusta and Sophie (for Susan would understand and would not care) and tell them to make the most of this.

  In the long grass and under the beeches the picnic was under way.

  ‘Oh, the dear little rain-beetle – Jack, isn’t it a rain-beetle? Prissy, how can you shriek? Only look how sweet he is, I can’t think why people hate insects,’ said a girl, sitting in Sophie’s group as the beetle crawled over her half-empty plate.

  ‘Why do people always exclaim over creepy-crawlies and other bits of nature on picnics?’ said Sophie.

  Octavius Potter, kneeling on the ground some four feet to the right of her, and looking very young, smiled at her, then said to the girl who admired the rain-beetle: ‘You can hardly like all insects, Miss Mauleverer. Would you like to find a cockroach in your bedroom, I wonder?’ he laughed.

  ‘Oh, you are too absurd,’ she replied, but not flirtatiously.

  ‘Thank goodness we haven’t had any wasps yet,’ said someone.

  ‘I understand your feelings,’ Octavius said to Prissy, who had shrieked, ‘but alas I cannot kill it for you, because it’s supposed to be bad luck!’

  ‘Dear me, are you superstitious, Octavius? But it’s spiders one mustn’t kill, isn’t it?’ said Sophie. It was the first time she had addressed him by his name since the party began.

  ‘No, beetles,’ said a young man on her left. ‘Rains if you step on those, Miss Sophie. Best be careful – don’t want to spoil this picnic. It’s a splendid picnic,’ he said, as though she were the hostess, and Sophie gave a drawling sigh.

  It was not a very casual picnic, for they were using the second-best plates, of white bone china with the Paget and Fitzwilliam crests in blue in the centre, the engraved champagne glasses, the new rose-embossed silver fruit knives and fruit forks. The food and drink had also been laid out carefully by the servants before they withdrew, leaving the guests to help themselves in an easy way. Silverman was in the folly, where Augusta could find him if there was any upset, with a spare hamper and cases of wine.

  Augusta, suffering from a hot flush, spent several minutes in there with ice in a handkerchief on her forehead. When she had recovered a little she put an ice cube down her front and one down her back and asked the butler to pour her a glass of the stout he was drinking. ‘I came to tell you that Miss Sophie’s set has finished the champagne – no, don’t take it yourself, I want to speak to Miss Sophie, I’ll take it. Thank you, Silverman. Never again, I promise you, oh, I do promise you.’

  ‘You ought to rest, madam, you know you ought.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  Nicholas saw her wander from the folly with a glass of stout in one hand and champagne in the other, still dazed-looking and flushed. He turned away from the gathering and went over to Susan, who was beneath one of the furthest trees, whispering with her little brother Thomas. ‘Your stepmother seems to be unwell,’ said Nicholas, polishing his spectacles and looking urbane. ‘Could you go and persuade her to lie down, do you think, my dear? I trust, if you take my meaning, that it is only that she is a trifle out of sorts.’

  Susan looked up from Thomas, whose limp hand she held, and saw Augusta bending over Sophie. ‘Oh, Father, for heaven’s – I mean, really, she can’t possibly be intoxicated. It’s her age, that’s all.’

  ‘She ought to retire, in that case.’

  ‘I don’t doubt Sophie will be able to persuade her.’ She knew that Sophie would not try to persuade Augusta, who was always angered by any suggestion that she was weak, although she did own to suffering from gout.

  ‘It makes things very difficult.’ Nicholas was sweating heavily, a vein in his temple was beating, and he looked as though he wanted to yell at someone.

  ‘Oh Father –’ muttered Susan.

  ‘Are you quite well, son?’ he said to Thomas.

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Thomas, whose head was hanging.

  ‘We are all of us feeling the heat.’ said Susan. ‘Father, Lord Blentham told me this morning that he has some problem about which he wished to consult you – stocks and shares – I don’t know – and there he is, not talking to anyone. Isn’t this the moment?’

  Nicholas paused, then pinched her cheek as though he were not her father but one of the old gentlemen of the party, and said she was a managing sort of miss. She had spoken with extreme gentleness. As his father left them, Thomas told Susan to stop nagging him and leave him alone. She said she had not been nagging, which was true, but she went, and joined the group next to Sophie’s.

  Thomas watched her slowly moving away and sitting down with her friends, and thought that she was the best of his sisters. He hardly knew Sarah at all, for she had married when he was not quite five. He was now seven years old, a sturdy child, tall for his age, with curly hair which was now chestnut, but which would probably darken as he grew older. Like Sophie, he had a tendency to freckles on the nose, it was not yet clear which of his parents he would come to resemble.

  Thomas knew that, when he returned to the house, he would be scolded in front of the strange children and put to bed for the rest of the afternoon. The children – both those who had been invited for the first time with their parents to stay, to make friends with Thomas, and those whom he had met already, who had just come for the picnic – were having a separate luncheon on the other side of the folly: egg sandwiches, potted shrimps, jam tarts and ginger beer. During the meal Thomas had pulled a girl’s hair. He had been slapped, and had then run away to the other party, where he watched the adults and waited for his nanny or the nursery governess to come and find him. He stayed sufficiently close to the group for a nanny to be unable to make a loud fuss right there, and sufficiently far away not to be noticed.

  Susan had seen him and asked what was the matter, and he had asked for a slice of raised rabbit pie. She had brought him a very thin sliver, for the pie was rich and she knew that he was supposed to be liverish. He had complained about her meanness. She had asked him again what was wrong, and then Nicholas had come. Thomas had almost expected his father to notice his behaviour and send him back to the children’s party, but he was being allowed to stay where he was. He had no wish to
join in the grown-up party, to giggle or flirt or impart views. Thomas got up and walked back through the garden, and went up to the empty schoolroom. It was not until he arrived that he remembered there was to be a photograph taken of the whole house party, including the children, after the picnic guests had gone, and that he would be missed. He set off again and arrived at the folly with a hot face.

  ‘That frock is charming, Susan – it’s Aesthetic, isn’t it?’ said someone.

  ‘I suppose it is, yes.’

  ‘You’ve changed your style,’ smiled the girl. ‘You used to wear ordinary things.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I found that I was – that I am not able to wear very elaborate, tight things, you know. Simplicity and flowing lines are becoming to me, I think. They are to most people. And you know, I like to be comfortable, I care more for comfort than for elegance. I never could be elegant, either.’ She looked down at the swirling flower-like pattern of her raw-silk dress.

  ‘Oh, Susan, no.’ Susan smiled.

  ‘You’ve been reading William Morris, have you, Miss Pagett?’ said a man who admired her. ‘Do you look forward to an Aesthetic revolution in taste?’

  ‘No, we’ll always be regarded as eccentric.’

  ‘You must want to abolish the colour mauve,’ he continued, looking down upon her, polishing his spectacles. ‘And magenta and sulphur yellow are also, I believe, anathema. Your world will be peacock blue and sage green, will it not? And there will be rushes in vases in your drawing room, and blue-and-white china on every wall. And pictures, naturally, of red-headed drooping ladies with broken hearts. Now, have I not got it correctly?’

  ‘Not quite, I think, Mr Deniston.’

  ‘Enlighten me!’

  ‘No, indeed, it would bore you very much if I did so.’ She rose brightly, widely smiling, because just before she had had, she thought, a sulky edge to her voice.

  She joined Sophie’s set. They were discussing the differences between the sexes and Madam Bovary, in loud, lively voices which only occasionally sank to amused and disinterested laziness.

  ‘Have you read it, Susan?’ said Octavius Potter, inching towards her.

  ‘Madame Bovary?’ said Susan. ‘Yes, twice. I believe it improved my French a great deal.’

  ‘Oh did it?’ They both gave little smiles and looked down then at the half-reclining figure of Sophie.

  ‘It is not at all a lascivious book,’ said Susan.

  ‘No, indeed it isn’t.’ He had not taken his eyes away from the flirting Sophie. ‘But in fact, I never finished it. It’s not the sort of thing I enjoy.’

  ‘No, I would imagine not – but one can’t but be sorry for the woman taken in adultery,’ said Susan. It was not a remark to shock, she did not grin at him as she spoke as Sophie would have done. He stared at her, and she was not even looking at him. ‘Can one?’ said Susan.

  ‘Well – it would be uncharitable not to be sorry for her,’ he said. Susan was planning a conversation with him so she did not reflect, as ordinarily she would have done, that had he been speaking with Sophie he would have replied with levity.

  – Octavius, you mustn’t let Sophie’s conduct disturb you. I know she flirts, but she means nothing, there’s no one here she cares for. How should she care for any of them, she hardly knows them? She is far fonder of you than of them, but she’s so young and pretty, that she wants to enjoy herself – it’s just thoughtlessness.

  – Yes, she is very young and very pretty. And I am not pretty at all.

  A pause.

  – Sophie always says that there’s something rather off-putting about excessive good looks in a man.

  – Does she indeed?

  A pause.

  – Susan, I want you to tell me the truth: your judgement is very sound, I believe. Is there hope for me?

  – Oh, indeed there is. But you must be patient, you must wait until Sophie is ready to settle down.

  – She rates fidelity in a man very high, then. Cynicism, possession.

  – Yes. She will only flirt with a rake because she’s so young and gay.

  Susan did not add in the conversation, ‘Too young and gay and proud and vain to be seen to have an affection for an ugly, nervous country parson,’ but she repeated the sentence to herself as she watched Sophie with the greatest indulgence. Because she had had more freedom and practice than was usual in the year before her coming out, Sophie’s first London Season had been quite a success. Susan could see her in five or six years’ time, living not at Lynmore but in some very pretty Cathedral Close, still young and gay and much admired, and slightly disapproved of by certain other women, with an adoring husband to indulge, but without a family. She would talk a good deal about her London years as a girl, of how she had enjoyed them but was glad to have relinquished them.

  Sophie came up to Octavius, chattering about something, and led him to where she was sitting, and talked to him.

  *

  After the picnic, when the luncheon guests had gone, photographs were taken of the party beside the folly. In the front of the picture there were the hampers and baskets and bottles and cushions and dogs and parasols, and also the five children of the party, whose eyes were wrinkled against the sun. Thomas was in the middle, red-faced, stoutly hugging his knees. Beside the children were Sophie and Susan and their friends, seated on the ground. The girls were leaning on one hand, their legs spread out at one side beneath their skirts, their feet crossed. The men mostly had their knees raised and parted and their hands clasped round their legs. Except for the Pagett sisters, the young women all wore light, pale, trimmed dresses. One of the young men was in his shirt sleeves, most of them were holding their hats. Octavius’s face was blurred in the finished photograph, because he moved, but his dark clothes made him noticeable.

  Behind the young people there were the elderly. The ladies were seated, except for Augusta and Lady Lowestoft, at the edge of the picture; the gentlemen, except for the very old, were standing. Nicholas was in the left-hand corner, looking ahead and standing very upright. In one of the photographs Augusta was leaning down and talking to someone. The edge of the folly was visible on the right-hand side, though it looked like a smudge. The beech trees formed the background and there was also grass, and some wild flowers, in the picture. Many of the girls idly held sprays of leaves for fanning themselves, or pieces of willow-herb. Most people were staring full at the camera.

  The two good photographs were mounted on backgrounds and they were framed, and on the cream cardboard Susan, who had the neatest handwriting, had written everyone’s name in order, and also, at her father’s request: ‘An Informal Gathering: Picnic by the Folly, 6th August, 1880.’

  CHAPTER 7

  SISTERS

  ‘So you see, we are not to entertain at all ever, in future, because of him,’ said Sophie. ‘Because he is ashamed of himself, he doesn’t think of us.’

  ‘I thought you said Mrs Pagett will be giving dinner parties for friends,’ said Octavius.

  ‘My dear, I don’t count Augusta’s hunting friends – old acquaintances, rather. There isn’t an interesting person in the county – outside the village.’ She waved her hand in front of her mouth as though it were a fan, because the fire was turning the left side of her face red.

  ‘Are there so very many in other counties, Sophie? Or in London?’ he smiled.

  ‘Oh, Octavius, let me have my little moaning session,’ she laughed at him after a moment. ‘And here’s Susan. I’ve only been alone with him for five minutes, dearest, please believe me.’

  ‘Naughty girl,’ said Susan, sitting down.

  ‘I know, of course, that that is time enough for the devil to find work for idle hands,’ said Sophie.

  ‘And so he has done! Complaining of one’s lot is a sin, Miss Sophie,’ said Octavius, wanting to press both her hands, now folded in her lap, hard between his own. ‘Susan, Sophie has been telling me that your father still refuses to countenance any elaborate entertaining.’

 
‘Yes, just like last winter, and very annoying it is for us all, especially poor old Sophie.’

  ‘So she has been telling me.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to mind too much, Sophie,’ said Susan. ‘After all, you’re going away several times this winter and you stayed with the Macdonalds in September.’

  ‘Oh, Susan!’

  ‘It is very dull for you here, isn’t it, Sophie? You do feel it much more than your sister.’

  She swung round on the sofa to face him. ‘I am nineteen and a half, Octavius. I am a frivolous young creature, yes.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Yes, I am, but I shan’t be always.’ She smiled then.

  ‘Of course you won’t be.’

  As soon as they paused Susan said, looking out of the window: ‘Isn’t it splendid November weather? I find weather such a – such a sensual thing. I shouldn’t like to live in a country with a climate which was not varied.’ She pressed a hand against the window pane and watched a white film spread round it on the glass. The sky was sapphire blue where there was no cloud, but much of the sky was smeared. Susan had admired the bare branches of the trees in the park, and the frost-grey sky and pale mist and strong bonfire smoke, earlier that day when she was alone, and she did so now.

  ‘Mists without the mellow fruitfulness, I find,’ said Sophie a moment later. ‘November, I mean.’

  ‘I enjoy the beginning of winter,’ said Octavius. ‘If only it didn’t last so long.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Sophie. ‘You ought to ride, Octavius, even if you think it wrong for you to hunt. If you live in the country it’s almost essential – don’t you find that it means you have less in common with people than you might?’