Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  But always when she opened her eyes, she saw only the lake and the lilies on its surface, and the slow swans passing to and fro; and on the opposite shore the tall twisted chimneys and turrets and irregular red roofs of Chidleigh House rising from the trees. And there was no clatter of harness from the drive and the bridge was bare in the sunlight.

  “It is always the same,” she would say to herself, “it will always be precisely the same.”

  But the disappointment never lost its sting, for she never ceased to hope that one day when she opened her eyes, she might find it not precisely the same.

  Chapter II

  Juliana closed her eyes, then opened them, slowly, ex-J pectantly. For a single flicker of an eyelash, she thought that one of her dreams had come true and that a gorgeous stranger stood on the opposite shore and looked across the lake to her. But when her eyes were fully open, she saw that it was the peacock that had come down to the water’s edge and spread his dazzling tail in the sun.

  Yet the scene was not quite the same, for a cloud had partly obscured the sun so that the trees higher up the slope in front of her looked cold and blue, and the house had turned dark. In another instant the shadow of the cloud had raced down the hill, covering the peacock, and then the lake, and then Juliana. She shivered, and the peacock lowered his tail with a dismal discordant shriek.

  The cloud passed and Juliana opened her journal, determined not to be so idle. She turned the pages to find what she had last written before this morning. There was no entry until almost a fortnight ago, when mamma had had to go to Reading for a night to inspect some property there, and Charlotte and Sophia again came to spend the night with their cousins. Next day Juliana had written.

  “We did not go to bed till this Morning, for after we had play’d as many Games as we could think of in the Drawing-room, we went into my Closet where Fanny play’d the Harp-sickord, and my cousins and I danced about the Room like Mad Things till 3 o’ the Clock.”

  It set too high a standard. Nothing she could write now could equal that. Juliana shut the journal and fastened the clasps. Another cloud had come over the sun, and then another. There was a whole bank of them behind her, piled up dark against the sky. George had said quite early this morning that he believed there would be a storm. He had said it when he suggested riding with Vesey to Windsor to accompany their sister Fanny thus far on her way back to the town.

  It was certainly much colder; a slight wind ruffled the surface of the lake into steely grey ripples. She would go and fetch Watt’s Historical Catechysm and get by heart those two-and-a-half pages where it treats of the garments of the High Priests, until she could say it to mamma without any mistake. She rose and went indoors up to her room, through the hall, up the wide stairs and along the corridor.

  It had grown very dark. Juliana stood at one of the corridor windows and looked up at the black and ragged clouds. The trees in the garden below and the park beyond, and the two straight lines of trees in the drive, bent suddenly all one way, and she could hear the moan in their branches through the closed window. Their brilliant green had a peculiar, almost an unnatural appearance against the black and livid sky. Two or three large drops were trickling down the pane.

  Juliana thought that she saw something stirring between the trees of the drive. Her thought soon became a certainty. A company of horsemen were riding towards the house. It might be that tomboy Charlotte with a hunting party, come to pay them a surprise visit, or perhaps the whole family, nine in number, of the Hilburys. But her heart was beating as if in terror, and she found that she was saying to herself again and again, “At last something is about to happen,” not in pleasure but in apprehension that seemed almost to stifle her.

  She did not wait to see the riders emerge from the drive, but turned away to her own room and looked everywhere for Watt’s Historical Catechysm, as though it were necessary, even urgent, that she should continue to do some ordinary, everyday thing. Far away, she heard a confused uproar in the courtyard, the champing and clatter of harness, voices shouting, dogs barking, steps running within the house, up and down stairs, and again the voices of servants calling and laughing. But she continued to look hurriedly, almost feverishly, for Watt’s Historical Catechysm, turning over papers, rummaging in drawers, passing her finger along the line of books in the book-case, and all the time repeating to herself, “The garments of the High Priests—two-and-a-half pages—I must learn them by heart to say to mamma without any mistake.”

  She heard steps come running towards her room, the door was knocked and flung open on the same instant, and Molly stood before her, flushed and wide-eyed, a new cherry-coloured ribbon having miraculously appeared in her cap.

  “Miss, Miss, why Miss, you here, and everybody else in the house down below in the hall, even my lady stepping down the stairs quicker than she’d care to show, and everybody running this way and that way and calling to everybody else——”

  Juliana stood up from where she had been kneeling by a low shelf, the long-sought Historical Catechysm found at last and clasped tightly in her hands as if for support.

  “Who is it, Molly? Who has come?”

  “Who? Why, who but your own eldest brother, Miss, his lordship himself at last.”

  Chapter III

  Juliana could not understand afterwards why she had felt J such absurd reluctance to go down and find out who were the newcomers, nor why, when she knew that it was her brother Lucian, she still hesitated and loitered and found so many reasons why Molly should be detained to adjust her sash, to arrange the loose curls on her shoulders, to tie up her shoe-strings anew. And Fanny had left only this morning—it was a thousand pities that Fanny had left. She told herself so again and again, in foolish, hurried agitation, without knowing why it was that she so particularly desired Fanny to be here.

  But, indeed, it was very odd and agitating that Lucian should have come home at last, suddenly and unannounced like this. It was nine years since he had been at Chidleigh, though he had come into the title two years ago at their father’s death, and had been expected home ever since. But he had not even attended the funeral. True, he had been abroad then, and it would not have been possible for him to have returned in time. But it had always been very odd about Lucian, no one could say exactly what it was, but the house was certainly far more peaceful after he had left it. Yet he himself had been the quietest person in it.

  Juliana’s childish recollections were of a dull, quiet schoolboy, sallow, lank-haired, and unlike a boy, and then a magnificent but equally quiet young man, setting off for the grand tour with an equipage of servants and horses, and a smirking, submissive tutor.

  Yet, though he was so dull and quiet, there was that quick way he sometimes had when he cocked his head and looked at one, like a robin she had thought; and, very occasionally, the smile that came unexpectedly as though he were smiling at something that only he knew of. It was that smile that once caused all the trouble. How papa, stout, red-faced and terrible, had roared at him for it, and even thrown a chair at him with all his force, merely because poor Lucian had smiled!

  Papa had never liked Lucian, though, of course, one must not say that. Yet it was not surprising as Lucian was so different, and George and Vesey did not like him either. They did not show it like papa who was always storming at him, but were only quieter and rather sullen and constrained when Lucian was there. And even that was rather odd, as in general George and Vesey were hot and quick in temper, and it was Lucian who seemed the sullen one.

  Then there was that dreadful scene just before poor papa died of an apoplexy, when he told them all that he had written and forbidden Lucian to come home or communicate with any of the family. It could hardly be described as a “scene,” as no one, not even Lady Chidleigh, had ventured any response, nor asked for any reason, but to Juliana, at least, it was the most frightening moment of her life.

  Even now, she could feel her knees tremble as she saw again Lord Chidleigh in his brocaded coat, stand
ing at the head of the table, the purple veins swollen on his forehead, the hard, blood-shot eyes roving the table for any that might dare meet them in question or remonstrance. There had been the marks of death on that enormous, tottering figure, though no one then had known it. And when, with a mighty effort, he steadied himself, putting out his hand to the back of his chair, and stood there silent after his angry roar had ceased, it seemed that the vengeance of the Lord had become personified in that huge and dreadful being.

  There had been a reason for that awful anger, she knew. Her cousin Charlotte, who swore like a stable boy and rode to hounds so constantly that her, skin was nearly as rough as her speech, had once rapped out to Juliana that it was no wonder “the old cock” (as she irreverently referred to her Uncle Chidleigh) “had crowed the young cockerel off the dunghill, seeing that Lucian was known to be chief and head of the Hellfire Club.” Even Juliana had heard of the Hellfire Club, that yet more famous, or infamous, successor of the Mohock Club, so delicately but gravely reproved of Addison. She knew that their headquarters were at Medmenham Abbey, that they were supposed to worship Satan in place of Christ and Venus in place of the Virgin Mary; and of their excesses she had once heard it whispered that at their banquets they were waited on by naked women.

  It may be regrettable, it is not perhaps surprising, that Juliana thought much more frequently of her eldest brother since the imprudent Charlotte had dropped that surprising information.

  It seemed incredible that anyone so impious, so strange, so wicked, should have been born into their family. She herself was sadly idle and had a secret aversion from church and sermons, when Dr. Eden preached, though he never preached his own. But, apart from this, none of them seemed to have any faults. Hard drinking and violent temper in the men of the family did not appear to her as faults but merely the necessary masculine attributes. Her father and two brothers had always spoken with reverence of God and the King, and slept very comfortably through the two long services on Sunday, whenever, that is, papa’s gout permitted him to attend Divine Service.

  And mamma, of course, was faultless.

  Anyone who has seen the youthful portrait, as Diana, of Harriett Clavering, afterwards Lady Chidleigh (a remarkably fine specimen of Hudson’s work), will agree with Juliana that she must have been faultless. No shadow of reproach from without, no twinge of conscience from within, can ever have come to trouble that clear and open brow, that indifferent stare, that general air of rectitude, too secure to require the approval of others. She looks surprised, it is true—perhaps it is only because the eyebrows are so highly arched, but I incline to think that it is a genuine surprise that all would not walk in the paths of virtue and prosperity as firmly and confidently, as proudly, gracefully and faultlessly as she.

  But Juliana could linger and dawdle no longer, thinking of all these things while Molly besought her to hurry. Lady Chidleigh had actually had to send up a message for her to come down to the drawing-room.

  All the family were there assembled, even Grandmamma Chidleigh, who usually never appeared till dinner, yet was now at this early hour rigidly stayed and dressed, with two bright spots of rouge on her gaunt cheeks. Juliana had a momentary wonder lest the grim, upright figure on the high-backed chair sat like that always in the seclusion of her rooms, fully arrayed night and day for the hour when she should descend.

  Her unyielding old eyes looked at the newcomer as though she did not see him, and turned from him to her younger grandsons who were leaning their broad shoulders against the mantelpiece. They looked awkward and out of place, but they were fine young men, they were true Clares—either of them would have made the better inheritor to her husband’s and her son’s name and estate.

  Always a silent woman, she had grown to be almost speechless. The wives of the Clares were apt to develop a strong family likeness. A tradition of firmness, of upright security in themselves and their surroundings, was imparted by each dowager or reigning Lady Chidleigh to her daughter-in-law. Lady Chidleigh’s opinions, even her manner of declaring them, were a repetition of that rigour, yet more uncompromising though so seldom expressed, of the Dowager Lady Chidleigh.

  The Dowager’s daughter, eager, fluttering, always propitiatory Aunt Emily, hovered behind her chair. Her big, thin nose, half-open mouth and restless movements gave her the appearance of some anxious bird. She had been the youngest of her generation and had never married. Her whole life appeared to be led in perpetual apology for this omission.

  Near them, hunched on a low seat, sat Cousin Francis, a poor relation. He was widowed, childless, and impoverished through lawsuits, and had drifted long ago to the centre of the family. This sudden home-coming of its head was of no interest to him. He had had sons of his own who had died when they were stout, hearty lads, better grown, better mannered, better educated than any young men to-day. Whoever sat at the head of the table, he would always have his place half-way down it; also, there would always be his seat in the walk by the south wall where the nectarines ripened earliest, and an old copy of Horace in his dressing-gown pocket which he was too blind to read now. But it opened of itself at the passages that he knew by heart, and he could still imagine that they were legible to his eyes.

  Lady Chidleigh sat in remarkable resemblance to her portrait as Diana, and conversed between many pauses with her eldest son. He had risen as Juliana entered and made her curtsey to the head of the house. He kissed her and handed her to a chair, where she sat looking at Grandmamma Chidleigh, at Aunt Emily, at Cousin Francis, at George who was scowling at Vesey, at Vesey, the taller, handsomer and lazier, who kicked George when Lucian used a French phrase.

  At Lucian she did not look, for she was prevented by her uneasy consciousness that so many pairs of staring eyes were fixed on him. She listened to his low, quick tones as he talked to his mother, apparently never at a loss for things to say, but she heard nothing that was said. It was Lucian who filled up the pauses. He was talking a great deal more than he used to do.

  But at dinner, Juliana now stole glances from time to time at her brother, who sat at the head of the table where her father used to sit. And the last time her father had sat there had been that time when he had insisted on coming in to dinner, ill as he was, to tell them all that he had disowned Lucian. It seemed incredible, almost impious, that that vast red form, bull-necked, with eyes glazed and staring, should not come forward and eject the slight dark figure sitting in his place.

  Lucian was not big like his brothers, and beside their fresh-coloured faces, particularly Vesey’s round and ruddy countenance, he looked as sallow as a foreigner. His eyebrows were peaked just at the corners, which gave his face a slightly crooked look, rather like the stone satyr on the terrace, Juliana had long since decided. His mouth, too, curled up at the corners even when he was not smiling. His head was generally bent a little, slightly on one side, which gave him the appearance of one who was watching, or was it listening?

  In answer to his mother’s questions he talked fluently of foreign courts and English people abroad, of the notorious Lady Di who still had the impudence to show her face at the French Court, albeit it was much the worse for wear—of the elderly, witty Mr. Walpole who was making himself ridiculous in Paris by his fear of ridicule, on account of a friendship with an old blind French lady old enough to be his mother.

  “Every time she mentions ‘amour’ he corrects it to ‘amitié.’ He is in bashful terror lest he should be suspected of any warmth of feeling, and his friends find it useless to assure him that there is no danger of such an accusation.”

  There was occasionally a good deal of laughter, but not from George, who scowled worse than ever.

  “Can you drink port?” he asked roughly of Lucian, and his lips curled back from his long white teeth as he said it, so that he looked like a handsome, grinning collie.” We have none of your light French wines here.”

  “I will do my best, brother,” said Lucian, eyeing him gravely, “but my head has grown unaccustomed to
anything heavier than claret.”

  George was visibly delighted. He nudged Vesey, who was more stupid or less ill-humoured. He had not his brother’s grudge against Lucian, since, as the youngest, Lucian was not his only bar to the estate. Therefore, he only murmured, half shutting his large sleepy brown eyes under their long lashes, “What does it matter? Let every man drink what he likes, I say.”

  Such dangerous tolerance could not commend itself to George, who plied his elder brother continuously with port. This kept the wine in more constant circulation than usual, and had its effect on the younger brothers. But that on Lucian was strangely disappointing, since he continued to talk exactly as before, without any sign of intoxication.

  “Gad, it’s unnatural,” muttered George to Vesey, as he watched his elder brother’s unflushed face and cool demeanour, qualities that in another would have commanded his deep respect. “He must be one of those inhuman, unsociable devils whom wine cannot affect. ‘I hate him as an unfilled can.’”

  Vesey, recognizing their father’s favourite quotation and a vague need for protest, roused himself sufficiently to laugh, stared at Lucian, and said in a muddled way—

  “Brother, you’re welcome. But if you can’t drink like a good fellow, damn you, why then what’s the use o’ drinking at all?”

  “Vesey,” said his mother severely, “we have not yet left the table.”

  Lucian, unruffled, continued to talk.

  Juliana heard that the daughters of the French King were dowdies, and that there was a very poor show of gold plate at Fontainebleau— “Oh, shocking, Madam, so short of covers that some dishes had to be used to cover others,” and Lady Chidleigh looked highly complacent at the superiority of her own dinner service to that of the King of France.

  Juliana thought him very merry, very different from the quiet, sullen boy she remembered. Once, while he was speaking to George (for he had been most polite and grateful for George’s attentions, and had frequently reminded his brother when his own glass was empty), his small, bright eyes shot down the table and caught one of her timid glances. He seemed to be laughing; she wondered if it were at her.