by Fiona Hill
The Autumn Rose
Fiona Hill
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1978 by Ellen Pall
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition November 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-469-1
More from Fiona Hill
The Stanbroke Girls
The Trellised Lane
Sweet’s Folly
The Practical Heart
The Wedding Portrait
The Love Child
Love in a Major Key
The Country Gentleman
For my friend Eugene Bier
“More exquisite than any other is the autumn rose.”
—THÉODORE AGRIPPA D’AUBIGNÉ
Chapter I
Rucke House. Monday April 7th. 1817.
My Dearest Angela,
Here am I in London at last, and wonderfully pleased to say so. What a place of contraries, of wealth and poverty, grandeur and meanness! You will forgive my inelegance when I tell you straightway that it smells absolutely abominable, makes a noise like thirty cannon, and provides its inhabitants with water all but impotable for the taste. And yet it is London, inarguably London, the Great Metropolis and heart of England. My kinsman Seabury’s house, where I am now installed, is situated in Portman Square, which I am told is a very fine place indeed; but you would laugh to see what a paltry bit of land lies within its esteemed boundaries, and even more to survey the meagre strip on which the house is built. You would laugh, I say; but I cannot, for they are my windows which front so nearly upon the clamorous, noisome, narrow streets behind this splendid Rucke House. Not even a garden divides us from the saddest squalor I have ever witnessed; a mere cottager in Berkshire is a richer landlord than the mighty earl in town. So here am I in London, and cannot breathe for the air, drink for the water, nor think for the noise!
I exaggerate; but it is a place that encourages hyperbole. My London relations seem to have no fear of heights—nor breadths, nor depths, nor any dimension of whatever magnitude; even the shawl in which I find myself swathed is of amplitude sufficient to drape a palace, or clothe a regiment at the least. Twenty could sit to dinner at this desk—the very drawers produce an echo, forsooth—and my host Lord Seabury’s sleeves extend beyond his wrists nearly half a dozen inches. Man may have been the measure of all things in ancient Greece, but in Rucke House Gog and Magog must be our yardsticks.
You will wish to know how our journey hither was passed, having seen us climb into the coach after so rotund a reverend, and so antiquated a lady. It was a tolerable enough day, though scarcely what I should style entertaining. Windle and I (our Windle is in high fettle—more of her later) chiefly amused ourselves with whispering nasty things to one another regarding our fellow passengers. Windle naturally employed all the restraint appropriate to a chaperone, but I had a fine time wallowing in rudeness, and succeeded before our arrival in thoroughly discrediting (though only in imagination) our hapless companions. Frankly, had it not been for speaking ill of them, I should have had no diversion whatever, and for that reason I am almost glad my brother’s lady wife dissuaded him from sending us in his carriage. I say almost, however, because the last stage of our journey in the mail presented us with an incident quite disagreeable to me, and all but fatal to Miss Windle.
No doubt you have read in the London papers of those town bucks who bully the coachmen of the mail into handing over the reins? They ride upon the box and bribe or badger until they have their way—and then how will they not abuse the horses, if only they may boast of their exploits to their envious friends! Well then, at the last stop before London our coach was entrusted to one such admirable nonesuch, and thereafter it needed the courage of a hero to remain tranquil within the carriage. My dear, you know I am no Wellington, but I am not a coward either; so you must believe me when I say we were in peril of our lives. This maniac beat the horses till we thundered down the road, squealing and lurching at every bend, and stopping for no man. Such was our velocity that I cannot be certain, but I believe I saw a little hare left wounded on the highway, trampled under our blind advance. The cleric for all his practice could not surpass the elderly lady in feverish prayers, and Windle, as you may imagine, huffed and squeaked and snorted to rival the horses; but ridiculous as she was, and disposed as I am to tease her, I am not even now of a mind to take the situation lightly. Our villainous captor dropped the reins and fled the moment we reached our destination, and since he had boarded the coach only after ourselves, none of the passengers saw his face, nor would the coachman (if indeed he knew) tell who it was; but I will close my account of this episode with a vow that if I can but find the mysterious gentleman, I will give him reason to regret his detestable prank.
So for my situation, and how I came to be here. I have given you a notion of the size of Rucke House, but nothing of its magnificence; nor can I hope to do so without taxing keenly my poor powers of description. I am almost sorry for Lady Lillian when I think she grew up in this fine house only to be stuck away with Humphrey and me at Two Towers, comfortable though it is, after her marriage. Rucke House is largely of brick, with a long row of windows facing the square, two, indeed, the bow windows which have become so much the rage of late. A vast oaken stairway rises from the entrance hall to bear the visitor up to the drawing-rooms (there are three), the library, the so-called Gilt Saloon, in which nothing but the curious ceiling is gilded; above this one may ascend another flight to find a perfectly tremendous ball-room, a music room with a pianoforte to make any music-fancier swoon, and numerous other apartments including my chamber, which is separated from Windle’s by a very pretty parlour. At first when I arrived I found the bed monstrous soft, but I am ashamed to say that three nights passed upon it have left me a convert to its perfect cosiness. My windows, as I noted above, give upon a scene not overly pleasing, but beyond this complaint I have none. An abigail is being found for me; in the meantime Windle does the honours. Oh how I regret my deft little Jeannie! Lady Lillian absolutely promised she would not turn her off in my absence, but I still fret; do if you can go by Two Towers someday, and see that little Jeannie is still there.
You must make shift somehow with this bare sketch of Rucke House, for I am too eager to acquaint you with its inhabitants to delay any longer. First there is Lady Lillian’s brother Lord Seabury, about whose character I fear I was too sanguine. There is no love lost between them you know—which goes some way to explaining why I had never once met him in the six years since my brother’s marriage; of course he was fighting in Europe at the time of their wedding, a cause for absence that no one can fault…still, an affectionate brother must have found his way to Berkshire ere this. I mention the matter because it was my assumption that they could not be much alike, or there had been more feeling between them; however, I was wrong. There is little feeling between them simply because there is little feeling in them; they are not passionate souls. Not that Seabury is anything but pleasant—far from it! Just like his sister, he is courteous, intelligent, and reserved. It is the reserve, as you will guess, that disappoints me. Also like Lillian, Lord Seabury seems to be—alas!—just a trifle too thrifty…more on this in a moment. As
for the form in which these qualities are enclosed, however, here the family resemblance is less pronounced. If I told you he was a man of nearly six feet, broad-shouldered and slender of waist, with a head of dark curls in which Nature anticipated the Byronic style, fine eyes brilliantly blue, features emphatic but exactly straight and regular, and a mouth like wine and winter snow, would you suppose him comely? Never mind what you would suppose; he is startlingly handsome, a fact as well established in London as Edmund Kean’s reputation.
Doubtless you will protest that (as ever) I judge too soon, but if there had been any question in my mind as to whether this gentleman might harbour some hidden fire, it was erased yesterday by my introduction to the creature whom all London expects him to marry, one Lady Susan Manning. If Seabury is dry, Lady Susan is parched: an ocean could not humidify her. That she set her cap for his lordship seven years ago, and still waits patiently, says little enough for her spirit, in my estimation; but worse than that, her manner towards me yesterday was so impossibly correct as to be droll. “You are but lately come from the country, I think?” said she.
“Indeed,” I smiled, “and green as grass.”
“Surely not,” was her answer.
“Oh but I am. I have been a perfect ostrich, with Berkshire for my sand.”
Lady Susan would not hear of this. “Surely not,” she murmured again.
“On the contrary, I assure you. I am not the least bit shy about it: I am a bumpkin, a country clown.”
“I cannot credit it,” she said, glancing uneasily about the room for her mamma (and this in a woman nearly thirty years of age!).
“But truly, I am! Rough, clumsy, lewd, untutored—how shall I say it else? I must throw myself upon your mercy, beg you to forgive my naïvetés, my faux pas, my cloddish foolishness.”
“Surely it cannot be so bad…” said she vaguely.
“But I tell you it is! I am a lout, a boor, a ruffian! Earth stains my fingers, onions my breath! I am a Caliban in petticoats, my dearest ma’am, a Visigoth, a Barbar!”
Nothing, no matter how outlandish, could bring a smile to this lady; nothing tickled her; no epithet however crude suggested to her that I might be joking. I said more than what I record here, my dear Angela: I abused myself in terms the most cruel, the most outrageous. But still she regarded me mildly, still she insisted civilly, refused with the utmost gentleness to believe me! A woman who can stand firm under such a barrage of nonsense is a woman to be feared!
Even if that had not decided my opinion of her, when her mother did at last arrive at her side, Lady Susan turned to her with a countenance full of relief, indicated me with a wave of her hand and observed with perfect gravity, “Lady Caroline has been telling me how rustic her life has been till now; does it not sound charming? I should love to dwell in a simple cot, at the edge of a dewy mead. Should not you, Maman?”
We do well, dear Angel, to take so poetical and serious a nature in small doses, I believe. I shall do my possible to see as little of Lady Susan Manning as may be during my sojourn here.
I must return to the topic of Lord Seabury; forgive me, I ramble frightfully. I was arguing that his choice of a wife indicates something of his own nature, as I trust you will agree. And indeed he does exhibit that same cautious vigilance towards life which I have often remarked in his sister Lillian. In fact, they are almost as much a brother-and-sister pair as are Humphrey and I, and you know that is saying a good deal since (with one notable exception) we have hardly disagreed on anything. Seabury cannot be much older than thirty, and yet he is both stern and stately; he regards my visit here in the light of taking one’s wares to market—which is to say, he supposes I am come to be displayed and, if all goes well, betrothed before the season is out.
Here it is a little difficult to fault him, I must confess, for I should be hard pressed to explain what I have indeed come for if not to marry. It is hardly an explanation, but I imagine my real reason for coming was so as not to listen to Lady Lillian’s urging me to go throughout yet another winter. Since I was eighteen and refused Fred Manchester’s offer she has been at me to pass a season here, as you must know; and every time I have discouraged your brother (my best love to him, by the way) she has behaved as if I buried a knife in her heart. From this I must conclude she desires me to marry, and from that, it is a mere skip to the idea that she would be happiest were I to leave Two Towers and take up residence elsewhere. Oh dear! I assign her ladyship such uncommendable motives; I know you will reproach me in your reply to this letter, but you must admit, she was peculiarly cheerful when Windle and I drove off. Anyway, there is something about London that encourages one to be blunt and spiteful. Perhaps it is simply the exhilaration of being in a new place; for homesick as I am, I feel a rush of spirit and independence. I do understand the naturalness of Lillian’s wanting a home for herself, her husband and her children—though it was my home first. Oh fiddlesticks, I have done it again. I see I must leave this topic altogether.
There are three others at Rucke House, besides Seabury, Windle and myself. The most interesting of these is Seabury’s father, the Earl of Romby, an estimable old man with one of the worst dispositions in Christiandom. He came to Two Towers for the wedding naturally—and his sister too—but I was so much absorbed with my own sentiments at that time that I scarcely observed them. Besides, they were probably on their best behaviour then, and therefore not at all themselves. Here, how Romby drinks, and thunders, and swears! Everyone stands in dread of him (there are hordes of servants here) except his son. Romby is addicted to cards. He is one of the oldest members of Brooks’s Club. He enjoys the very deepest play, and is well known to have lost £10,000 in a single hand during one particularly foolish period of his youth; but Seabury has put a stop to all that. Here is the thriftiness I referred to earlier. Can you believe it? Somehow he has got control of all the old man’s money, and with that he keeps Romby very tightly in hand. This is not handsome in him, for I may tell you that Romby’s fortune is immense, and my lord Seabury stands to inherit it all. Besides Rucke House and the county seats, there is a house in Hampstead (to which we may retire whenever London grows wearisome) and a shooting-box near Melton Mowbray. There is a good deal invested in four per cents as well, so it is not a question of being land-rich and cash-poor. No, it looks suspiciously like avarice, I must say, and does not endear Seabury to me in the least.
Oh but those blue eyes! I am a little in love with his eyes, as you see; I may say it to you, but pray burn this letter.
Romby, to return to my text, is the growliest beast on earth. He rants and raves and mutters day in and day out; he viewed my coming with profound disapproval and has scarcely said three words to me as yet, but I hope to make a friend of him, as I will need one in this household and cannot reasonably look elsewhere. You will know why when I tell you that the other residents here are a Miss Amy Meredith, nineteen years old and incredibly silly, and a Mrs. Henry, her chaperone. Henry, as she is called, is (like our Windle) a “lady of uncertain years.” I suspect they are pretty much of an age, uncertain though that age may be; but Windle hints delicately that the other is older. A marked friction immediately sprang up between the two worthy women, which has already led to some amusing scenes, as when Henry attempted to learn Windle’s ancestry:
Henry: Windle, Windle…Not the Ipswich Windles, perchance?
Windle: No, not the Ipswich Windles.
Henry: Tunbridge Wells? Coventry?
Windle: (Coldly) Not those either.
Henry: Not the Devonshire Windles, surely? (To Amy) Remember the Devonshire Windles, my dear? (Amy shakes her head to indicate the negative.)
Windle: No, not those either.
Henry: I am so relieved. My life they were dreadful!
Windle: (Chilly silence.)
Henry: Well, it is a common name, after all.
Windle: (Frigid silence.)
Henry: Terribly common. There must be hundreds of Windles.
Windle: (With icy maj
esty.) Indeed. And your name is, I think, Henry? Not of the Tudor Henrys, perchance?
Henry: Certainly not!
Windle: I see. Well, Henry is a common name too, I suppose.
Poor Mrs. Henry bit her lip with vexation upon this, and it must have been a very painful bite, for I saw her touching it tenderly afterwards.
I am sorry to say, however, that nothing so interesting as a friction has sprung up between Amy Meredith and me. She is the daughter of Romby’s deceased sister, Lady Anne (about his very lively sister Beatrice I will tell you in a moment), and if death is contagious that fact will go some way to explaining Miss Meredith’s character. Ridiculing orphans is very low behaviour, do you not think, but being one myself must give me some privileges, however dismal. In any case, Miss Meredith’s father was alive until a few years ago, at which time she went to reside with a sister of his, a spinster. Apparently the sister grew weary of her company, for she has been sent to London very much as I have been, to see if perhaps she will return a married woman—which is to say, not return at all. I find, by the bye, that it is to this Amy that I owe my present internment at Rucke House; had it not been for her, I should have stayed with Romby’s other sister, Lady Beatrice. She is a wonderful, wilful old lady, quite a doyenne of the ton, and it would naturally have been a good deal less awkward for me to have stopped on at her house in South Audley Street than at this bastion of bachelorhood—but I have learned that her ladyship declined to take me in because she would also have been obliged, in that case, to take in Miss Meredith—and that she would not do. You see, dear Angela, Lady Beatrice already knew little Amy, and to know Amy is to know how simpering, how contrary, how idiotish a young woman can be. She is the very soul of nonsense, and was therefore prime prey for Romby. Though she and Henry arrived only a week before I did, the earl has so thoroughly overwhelmed her that she lives in continual terror of him. He has but to enter the drawing-room for her to quit it; at dinner a single scowl from him produces headache in her, and sends her upstairs; I have even seen her blanch at the sound of his carriage arriving. Such is the state of affairs to which I have been introduced! A reign of terror prevails in Rucke House, and Romby is the tyrant.
