Gentlemen and Players

by Frances Vernon

  ‘We shall soon be back, and I am so looking forward to being in the country. London at this season is very oppressive: you must know that well, for what it was like in St Giles, if it is smelly and stuffy in Marylebone, I dread to think! Has your experience of a London slum-cure given you an incurable distaste for town life, I wonder? That would be a pity. But if that is so, how much it (your experience) must enhance your pleasure in the Rectory, and the scenery and society of Lynmore. So, as they say, there are always compensations?’ She added the question mark because without it the last sentence seemed to her prim. Now it was arch. She left it.

  ‘Sophie is fractious because she is heartily bored of London and longing to be home. She and Augusta (who as you know detests town at all times) make each other worse as they share and exchange complaints. Thank goodness, in a week’s time it will all be over! Now that she is in her third Season, Sophie is no longer dazzled by fashionable life. She resembles me, in that idle chat bores her after quite a short while, and she does not take an excessive interest in dress or scandal. I believe, you know, that in order to survive in the fashionable world, a lady must be quite obsessed with her toilettes. Dressing and undressing need to occupy several hours of every day, and then there are long sessions with the dressmaker, and long conversations about clothes. Sophie and I are simply unable to sustain such a constant interest in our dress and really in some circles this puts us quite beyond the pale! I would not go quite so far as Sophie. Never will I forget her getting up in the middle of a long (and dull) discussion about hats and saying that she was quite uninterested in hats, or gowns, or muffs, and liked to wear her favourite clothes year after year, patched and darned as they might be! Everyone laughed because this was of course not quite true, but they felt rather stupid and were a little less attentive to poor Sophie afterwards. Sophie is not immensely popular with her own sex.’

  Susan looked at what she had written. The passage was not really about clothes and silliness but she had never written an ordinary, conversational letter to a man before she began corresponding with Octavius in the spring, and she was not sure whether she ought to mention toilettes and women’s talk in a letter to a masculine reader. The paragraph also gave an exaggerated idea of the limited nature of feminine conversation. Then she thought that this did not matter, as Octavius doubtless already had such an exaggerated idea, and would smile to see it confirmed.

  ‘All I could tell you about London would bore you very much – it would be largely an elaboration of what I have already said,’ wrote Susan truthfully. ‘Sophie (despite what she and I have said!) could give you a far more amusing description if you did require it.

  ‘I would rather think about home. I wonder, Octavius, how that cutting of your York-and-Lancaster rose is getting on in my “bower”? As you know, it failed me last year, but I followed your advice and so am full of hope. I find that people have such narrow ideas about gardening on the whole. I was glad that you approved of my planting sages and chives and marjoram for decorative purposes: my family was rather puzzled. To them herbs are herbs and should grow only in herb gardens, and so they did not hesitate to inform me although I did not ask for their opinion. Why, Octavius, is affection often expressed as criticism by one’s family?’ The gentle and commonplace intimacy of this worried Susan slightly, but she did not alter it because she believed that Octavius needed a friend, male or female: for he had few in the district. Sophie was another matter. He would not presume that she, Susan, was beginning to fall in love with him: Octavius was not really arrogant.

  ‘I hope the new schoolmistress turns out to be satisfactory. Really Miss Bray was a regrettable interlude! It seems that, indeed, a very fierce person is required to teach the Lynmore children, which is, I suppose, a pity. One would think that the children would be glad to be sitting in a warm schoolroom on a winter morning, instead of working in the fields as their parents did.

  ‘I do not envy you, but I greatly admire you for undertaking the spiritual education of these little rustics. You must indeed have been very frustrated when you tried to give them some understanding of the Athanasian Creed: I do know well that blank, stolid look which comes into (or over?) their faces when one tries to explain something. I think it is the lower classes’ version of the expression of bored civility.

  ‘And now I must go and dress for dinner, which will be followed, I believe, by an evening at the opera. I do not go out very much (because of our being in town for Sophie’s sake, of course) but I feel I ought to accept some invitations. People are good enough to include me when they invite Augusta and Sophie, and it would look rather rude if I always declined, just as it would look forward and desperate (!) if I were to accept every invitation extended to me from merest courtesy, and then to behave as though I were Sophie. How complicated life is! I am glad I am not quite old enough yet formally to chaperone Sophie in public (except when Augusta is tired of society, of course!) because she can be very mischievous, quite exhausting in fact, and fond as I am of Sophie I have no wish to be her duenna, I confess!’ And I confess to pride and wilfulness, said Susan to herself – I confess that I don’t wish to shame myself either by competing with her or by being her shadow. And I confess that I do not like my twilight position as it is.

  She ended the letter and got up to dress for dinner in one of her Aesthetic frocks. She remembered with fond pride how, three years or so before, she had been given shyly to wearing clothes which did not become her, merely because they were the height of fashion. Now, like Sophie, she could sometimes pass for a gracious and grave young woman of letters. The thought lent skill to her plump feet and she glided down the stairs and drifted into the drawing room.

  *

  Octavius saw Sophie very much as she saw herself: as a long, slender, warmly-coloured creature, delicately arrogant, carelessly loving, and certainly intelligent, who would never lead a quiet and ordinary life.

  He wrote to her at least once a week, often at great length, but sometimes he was busy or preoccupied, and could write only a few lines. ‘I love your letters,’ he wrote, ‘they are so bright and short, full of your sharp little remarks. You speak almost always of things which are quite foreign to me …’ He paused, then scrawled, ‘… and you have the knack of making me wish that these things (deceits of the world, the flesh and the Devil, naturally) were not altogether foreign to me. Dear Sophia.’ He smiled at this sentence.

  ‘I expect you are very gay in London,’ he went on, ‘indeed that’s a stupid thing to say, because I know you are. You are very discreet, you never tell me that you are much courted, but I know well that you are. Admiration is the breath of life to you, isn’t it? And I don’t doubt you will have it all your life.

  ‘Please note that I have called you Sophia throughout this letter! It is quite admirable: I only hope that I remember when, at last, I see you in the flesh. I doubt I will, however.’

  These very short paragraphs were rather in Sophie’s own brisk style. He considered that he ought to write more easily, conversationally.

  ‘I don’t suppose you will be greatly interested in all the “local gossip” and you will, in any case, hear it soon enough. And as you know, I am always a little vague when it comes to scandalous gossip!) He underlined and exclaimed here, though he rarely did so, in order that he should not sound prim. ‘However, all is well here. My garden is at its best, which gives me great pleasure, although it is still not as I would wish: it takes many years to build a garden. I have progressed a little with my Life of Cardinal Pole, but all the same, I think it will never be finished. I daresay it is just as well: I do not think I have literary ability, although I have been told that I have a turn for history.

  ‘The new stained-glass windows will be fitted later this week. They are successful, I believe, although the crimson is not quite the right shade, not bloody enough. However they will serve their purpose, and at least pictorial windows do not come, even according to the bishop, under the heading of things “Popish”, so I had no
tedious wrangling over them. I must thank you for your contribution towards the Church restoration fund: I am amazed that any lady should sacrifice what Susan once told me is the price of a gown in the cause of religion! Now that is not fair. You sacrificed a great deal in the cause of your religion.’ Sophie sometimes claimed this, and it was true, he knew, that Nicholas Pagett had opposed her following her inclinations, or conscience. Octavius wondered whether Pagett had been tolerant but unaffectionate towards Sophie before her conversion to Rome, or only afterwards. Susan was probably his favourite: she was a very good daughter, who helped to nurse him when he had the gout, or lumbago, and was never pert.

  ‘How your religion does amuse me, Sophia! I mean, of course, your own attitude, not the Church of Rome. I never know whether you are at all serious or not when you chatter about the prettiness of your faith and the delights of being able to confess and then go to heaven after a sinful life, without painful, real repentance, because of the priest’s absolution. You really are a naughty little cynic: I don’t believe you have any more respect for priesthood than a Quaker.’ He paused again, then hurried on.

  ‘I ought not to love you, Sophie, or even admire you, yet I hope that I never cease to do so. Certainly I have never met a girl at all like you, and I do not suppose that I ever will, for the people one meets in my position tend towards sobriety, to say the least of it! I feel quite young and foolish and disrespectful when I am with people much older than myself but with you I feel almost old and stuffy and dull. Where is the golden mean? At least you never treat me with respect: if you began to do so I should undoubtedly put a period to my hopeless existence! But, dear Sophia, allow me to remind you that I am older than you by eight years and my pearls of golden wisdom (see above) deserve your consideration …

  ‘I kiss you hands and feet, and I remain your loving Octavius.’

  He had said all that was in the last paragraph before. It had taken him a long time to put this confidence down on paper in the first place, but now it was quite easy. She rarely commented on his letters, and he wondered whether she understood them. When they were together, he merely joked with her about her being wilful and selfish and vain, and she could understand and agree with that, for she recognised her faults, and she could sigh, and receive comfort.

  Octavius walked out into the hot garden and blinked against the light. He was in his long cassock today, which he wore only in private or in church, for he felt a little odd wearing a dress in public, and stuck to gaiters and a coat, like a man who was not of the High Church. Sophie, who had rarely seen him in it, had told him that she did not admire the cassock, and he knew that when she looked at the skirt she knew that beneath it he had good, thin strong legs, like hers, which he had never seen. Susan and other people ignored its presence when they saw him in the cassock.

  He itched under the heavy black cloth, and sweat broke out on his hands and round his nose. The sun hurt his eyes and when he walked his shoes seemed to pinch, though they were not tight. After a quarter of an hour in his enclosed garden, he went back into the cool of the house.

  Lynmore Rectory was a long, low house of dark brick, built in the time of the Commonwealth; and although some of the ground-floor windows had been replaced in the eighteenth century, it had been very little changed over the years and was in bad condition. Octavius had moved in his few pieces of furniture, his books and two or three pictures, but most of the contents of the house he had bought from the previous rector’s heirs, and he had not redecorated any of the rooms. He thought the old, faded curtains and carpets scholarly, but also ‘unhomelike’, as he said to himself.

  Octavius was a Londoner by birth; he had never been outside the city until he went up to Oriel College, Oxford, for he had been sent as a scholar to Westminster School. His father, a comfortably off, elderly man, was a wine-merchant who lived in a tall house in Bloomsbury Way with Octavius’s young stepmother, his unmarried sister and his younger brother. Occasionally Octavius paid them visits, and some of them came to the Rectory every August. They thought his house sadly shabby, but both learned-looking and clerical, and they were quite proud of him, for he had been intended for the Church instead of the family business ever since he won his scholarship to Westminster. The Potters had thought him unwise to spend the whole of his mother’s legacy on buying the next presentation to the living of Lynmore, because they had believed that an Oxford friend, some landed gentleman, should have presented him to a truly excellent living, worth over a thousand a year, in a better part of the country. But they were pleased with the habits of economy he had shown since, and they thought that he should now marry, and then find an archdeaconry (or perhaps a deanery) for himself.

  Inside the Rectory, Octavius settled down to write a letter to his father.

  *

  Susan met Octavius in the village a few days after she and the others arrived back in Cheshire. When she saw him she was carrying a basket, wearing a shady hat and her gingery brown dress with a drooping fichu instead of a collar, and she knew she looked pretty and countrified. He took the basket from her, though it was empty, and they walked along the lane, talking of one of the cottagers’ illness and poverty. They did not look at each other, because they had been corresponding for several months and, through their letters, they suddenly seemed to have become more intimate than they had been before the London Season: even though, during the winter, they had talked frequently of these village and county matters, and they knew they had never written or spoken of personal concerns.

  ‘Mrs Pagett and Sophie are well?’ asked Octavius when they approached the Rectory.

  ‘Oh, yes. Very glad to be back, you know.’

  ‘Would they – would they like it if I called on them?’

  ‘Of course they would.’ First she looked surprised, then sympathetic. He turned away, after trying to smile.

  ‘How is Sophie?’

  ‘Truly, she’s very well. She had a very exhausting time in London,’ added Susan. ‘So much society. She’s in need of a repairing lease.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yes. She only likes frivolity in small doses, you know. In fact, we think that she’s considering accepting a proposal of marriage from Sir Francis Warren.’

  ‘Ah, a love-match!’ said Octavius loudly. He looked both distressed and eager.

  ‘She says not,’ said Susan, clutching her skirt, which still trailed in the dust. ‘She says she’s getting on – would you believe it? – and doesn’t want to end up on the shelf. And of course, she’d be doing rather well for herself if she became Lady Warren of Sedley Warren. So she says.’ They both smiled, and rested there a moment, both pink from the heat.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE RECTOR

  Sophie was seriously considering Sir Francis Warren’s proposal, because she ought, as she approached her fourth season, to be considering that she was growing old. Augusta said so, but also that Sophie ought not to marry where she did not love, because she, Sophie, was not the kind who could make a success of a tepid marriage. Sophie liked Sir Francis, but was not in love with him: she had never been in love with anyone since, in her first season, she had made a hero of a large blond naval officer with whom she had twice danced. She was fonder of Octavius than of any of the other men.

  In the spring of 1883, Nicholas was afflicted with lumbago, and everyone agreed that Susan should remain at Lynmore with him while Sophie and Augusta went to London. Before she left, Octavius came to say goodbye to Sophie. He called on her especially to say goodbye, and she was very pleased. She had not seen him for a fortnight. It was the end of March, the first day of the year on which it was warm enough to be outside without layers of clothing, and they took a turn on the terrace, and remarked on the pallid sunshine. Octavius kissed her hand and then hurried away to choir practice after she tapped his cheek with her finger. She rather wanted to kiss his cheek but, on the terrace, they were in public as usual.

  In the hall she met her brother Thomas, who said quite casual
ly that he had seen them.

  ‘Poor little Tommy,’ said Sophie. ‘Watched us for ten whole minutes, didn’t you, and never saw anything of the slightest interest? No kisses, or cuddles, or giggles.’

  He turned red, and Sophie looked down on the handsome, clumsy little boy.

  ‘Why don’t you marry him?’ said Thomas, raising his head. ‘Well?’

  ‘Goodness, you are a little … I don’t think you should be taking an interest in other people’s love affairs at your age, Thomas. Especially when you’re supposed to be preparing for your First Communion. But never mind.’ She touched his cheek as she had touched Octavius’s, and smiled as she would have done at a man. She was sorry for him because he was a lonely child, and sorry that she had just upset him, when he had been happy enough. ‘Of course one reason why I don’t, is because he hasn’t asked me, and I don’t think he will. He’s a natural bachelor. And the other reason is that it wouldn’t really be suitable – you’ll understand when you’re older and interested in these things yourself.’

  ‘It’s all girls’ stuff. It’s a dead bore. Any man would think so.’

  Sophie laughed. Thomas stamped back up to the schoolroom, whistling.

  By this time, Sophie had decided against Sir Francis Warren, and was determined to marry for love, or remain a spinster at Lynmore. Often she remarked that she was so fastidious that the last fate was more likely. Octavius reassured her.

  *

  It was the twenty-ninth of May, a cool morning for the time of year, as Susan and Octavius had said. They were walking through the garden, and Susan was cutting flowers with long stems and laying them in a great flat basket which separated her from Octavius.

  They were silent at the moment. They had been talking about Nicholas, who could sometimes be difficult and demanding and invalidish. It was the first time Susan had confided to Octavius any doubts about her family, other than Sophie: for when Octavius worried about her younger sister, she usually agreed with him.