The Autumn Rose

by Fiona Hill

  Idle speculation!

  Lady Beatrice, by the way, is delighted with Seabury’s altered customs. She drew me aside after dinner last night—we dined in South Audley Street—to tell me she had heard all, and was all approval.

  “But surely it is without significance?” said I.

  “You try an old woman’s patience, gal,” said she testily. “Obviously it is significant; if not, why should Charles Stickney have mentioned it to Arthur Lanham, who in turn passed it on to Mr. Walfish, who of course repeated it to me?”

  “Why indeed?” was all I could reply.

  “Come come! Is this the lady so much renowned for her candour? He has a tendre for you; confess it.”

  I was rather surprised. “If such a thing be true—and I doubt it very much—it is not for me to confess, madam, but for him.”

  “Now that is so,” said the shrewd lady. “Well? Has he?”

  Truly baffled, I answered, “Has he what?”

  “Declared himself? Has he come out with it? Please, my dear, I am an old woman. I have not got all the time in the world any longer. Do not keep me in suspense; has my nephew talked of love to you?”

  “My lady!”

  “But has he?” she insisted impatiently.

  “Certainly he has not,” said I, “and if he did, I hardly think it would be cause for celebration.”

  “And why not?”

  “Quite simply, because we should not suit. I could not return his regard.”

  “Oh, the devil fly away with your regard,” said she, disgusted. “The point is, he may be turning away from Lady Susan, at last. If you disappoint him—well, you may cause him some pain; but it will be nothing compared to the disaster of his marrying Susan.”

  “Suppose—and we are supposing rather too much—he did offer for me, and I refused him. Would he not turn back to Lady Susan anyhow? Surely that would be most natural in him. And probably, he would renew his attentions there with greatly increased fervour—”

  But Lady Beatrice cut me off. “Perhaps he may,” she snapped, “but I know Lady Susan too well to imagine she would accept him after such an episode. Or rather, I know her father too well to suppose he would allow it, even if she chose to do so. Have no fears on that head: once Seabury is pried away from Susan, he will be obliged to stay away.”

  The discussion did not end here, dear Angela, though I will no longer repeat it verbatim. Lady Beatrice went on to say such things as make me very apprehensive she will now endeavour to throw me into company with his lordship whenever possible. I cannot but believe that, great as is her desire to help me succeed in the ton, it is a far greater object with her to detach her nephew from Lady Susan. To that end she will sacrifice even that achievement of splendid artifice which was to be my public character here; when I told her I was (following your inspired suggestion) attempting to learn to smoke cigars, she scarcely listened. I am forging onward in the attempt anyway, you will be glad to hear, though tobacco is of a foulness I would never have believed. The first time I tried it I was obliged to lie down for an hour, so much did it disagree with me, but I have smoked five cigars to date, and am improving all the time. I hope to enlist the aid of Sir Sidney Pettingill in this endeavour too, as he has been known to take a cigar after dinner. They are not much the fashion here yet, as you noted, but perhaps my taking them up will set a style.

  Sir Sidney has already been of considerable use to me in another venture: I mean, he has taught me how to play well at brag. I was obliged to ask him for aid when Lord Romby—contrary man!—refused to assist me in that wise. Everything else, however, he consents to: he is enlisting confederates, and promises to teach me a system of secret communication that he swears is impossible to detect. Further, he will help me to deceive Miss Windle and the others on those evenings when I must escape from the usual round of social activities in order to pursue my scheme.

  I have told you about the fleecing, have I not? Oh dear! What a terrible correspondent I am; I cannot recall! Lord Mockabee is my target, of course, and a very good broad one he makes thus far. Do you know, at Lady Harleigh’s rout party the other night he actually had the audacity to wink at me! I was most astonished, as you may imagine. He did it very slyly too, which is what I hate, slipping it in between an unctuous compliment on my gown and an even oilier one on my hair. I cannot think what he meant by it. Certainly I contemplate my revenge with ardent satisfaction, if there can be such a thing.

  Of course, you are not to suppose that I am utterly heartless. On the contrary, I have every intention, when the proper time arrives, of—

  A clamorous knocking at the library door interrupted this sentence and prevented Lady Caroline from saying, for the moment, just what she had every intention of doing. She bade her unknown visitor enter at once, and was burst in upon by Miss Cecelia Windle, in a state of extraordinary excitement.

  “Lady Caroline! Dear Lady Caroline! Look at what I have discovered!” she cried, with many more similar exclamations, all the while waving before Caro’s face a crumpled square of muslin.

  “My good Miss Windle, pray be calm! This untoward excitement is surely of no use. I see what you show me, truly I do, but I do not know how to interpret it. Please, a little less agitation and a trifle more sense!” So saying, she took the middle-aged lady by the arm and guided her towards a sofa. Miss Windle became a bit more tranquil, particularly after Caroline rang for a glass of wine, and tried once more to tell her tale.

  “This, my lady, is—or was—a handkerchief I was embroidering for Lady Lillian. It was to be a gift, for Christmas—I always make all my presents early, you know. I begin in March; I find it best. Of course if I had sufficient funds to buy my gifts I should not be under the necessity of reserving so long a period for their creation; but I have not, as you know, a very great deal of money. Not to say—not in the least to say!—that I am not perfectly satisfied with my—oh, thank you,” she finally interrupted herself to add, as Lady Caro handed her the promised glass of wine. Miss Windle took a sip and then another, then smiled up gratefully at her ladyship. Her upper lip fringed with glistening purple, she remarked, “I am so little acquainted with wines as hardly to know one from the other, but I think this is—claret? A very good claret too, I think.”

  Caroline had not troubled to ask the footman what sort of wine he had fetched, and therefore did not know. She said as much to the older lady.

  “Oh, indeed,” said she, nodding her head rather too many times, while a faint flush appeared on her nose. The tip of her genteel tongue appeared from between uneven teeth to lick, with the utmost niceness, the purple fringe away from her upper lip; it was immediately replaced, after another delicate swallow, with a fresh one. “Oh my,” said Miss Windle. “A very good claret.”

  Anxious to return to her letter, Lady Caroline did not think it too unkind to prompt, “My dear ma’am, the handkerchief—?”

  “Ah! Indeed! Well then, imagine my astonishment when, upon opening my work-box this morning, I found the handkerchief in this condition!” Again she displayed the object in question, dangling it before Caro. Her ladyship took it and examined it. The embroidery which had, clearly, once been a feature of the thing had been carefully snipped in the middle of every stitch, leaving tiny threads sticking up all over it, more like a Turkish carpet than a muslin handkerchief.

  “This is most unusual,” Caroline said quietly. “You are certain—forgive me, but are you certain you did not do this yourself, and forget? We all have small lapses in memory—”

  She could not blame Windle for appearing indignant. “Merciful powers, my dear, why should I do such a thing as that? Let alone forget it!”

  “Yes, of course you are right,” she agreed. “I only inquired because it is so very—puzzling. Who would do such a thing? When did you last see it whole, by the way?”

  “Last night,” said Windle, with a tearful choke in her voice. Now that the excitement of first discovery was over, she had leisure to reflect upon how much damage ha
d been done. It would take days to do the work again; and she would have the trouble and expense of replacing the materials too. Her courage damped by the wine, she was beginning to feel extremely sorry for herself, and was about to launch into a sobbing account of all her woes, when the library door once again opened and Amy Meredith flew in.

  “Save me!” was her first remark, as she slammed the door behind her and flung herself against it. Her breath was short, her breast heaving, her thick, silken hair crept out of its coiffure, and her cheeks were as red as Cecelia Windle’s nose.

  “What in Heaven is the matter?” Caro demanded. She was immediately out of patience with Miss Meredith: it was just like her to rush into a room without knocking and enact high drama. “What do you need to be saved from? You look as if there were a hurricane in the front hall.”

  “There is,” panted Amy, turning the key in the lock. “Romby.”

  “Lord Romby?” asked Windle brightly, and hiccoughed.

  “Yes, quite. He will kill me before the season is out, depend upon it. He said so himself!”

  “Dear child,” Caro said, with an emphasis on the second word, “Lord Romby will certainly not kill you, and if you would face up to him only once you would know that. You allow him to bully you; you play right into his hands. If you would not shriek and run, he would be obliged to leave you in peace. Your fear of him is the only weapon he has against you.”

  “Do not forget his stick!” Amy cried, finally daring to leave the massive door unguarded and collapsing into a chair.

  “His stick!” Caro pronounced with scorn. “His fiddle-stick, you mean. How did this nonsense arise again? With what has he charged you?”

  “He says I have hurt the mouth of one of his bays,” she answered, beginning to retrieve her composure. “He calls me a savage rider and swears he will have me sent to Bridewell. May I have a glass of that wine?” she added.

  “Certainly not,” Caroline told her.

  Amy stared. “You speak as if you were my governess, or my guardian. I shall ring for it myself, if you do not care to,” with which declaration she did indeed pull the rope.

  Lady Caro shrugged. “As you like. And did you, after all, hurt Lord Romby’s horse?” she pursued.

  “I never even rode it! I told him so.”

  “And—?”

  “And he insists I did, and that I harmed it.”

  “And you let him chase you about for an unfounded accusation?”

  “His lordship is a violent man,” Amy asserted, looking to Windle for confirmation. Unfortunately for her, Miss Windle did not agree.

  “I am persuaded that Lord Romby is an excellent, admirable gentleman,” she brought out. “A trifle rough, perhaps, but never violent. No, never violent,” she repeated, draining her glass and asking the footman, who had just entered in answer to Amy’s call, to replenish it.

  “This is ridiculous,” Caroline observed. “Amy, I think it will be best if you seek out Lord Romby at once, and confront him with his bullying.”

  “Lord Romby a bully! Oh no, I could never say that,” Miss Windle remarked, exactly as if she were an eminent Rombyist, called in particularly for her opinion. Lady Caroline ignored her.

  “I shall go with you, if you like,” she offered, still addressing Miss Meredith, “but you must make up your mind to stand firm.”

  Amy, however, was very far from agreeing to this course. “I thank you, but no,” she said sulkily.

  “But what can you fear if I am with you?”

  Amy merely eyed her and pulled her lips into a deeper frown.

  “Good Heavens,” her ladyship exclaimed, thoroughly exasperated. “I must excuse myself then, mesdemoiselles, and attend to the matter myself. I trust you will enjoy yourselves heartily with your bottle of very good claret.” With this she swept out of the door and, simultaneously berating herself for such rash behaviour, banged it shut behind her. A few inquiries informed her that Lord Romby was in the breakfast room; and there she found him, placidly eating a muffin.

  “Can you credit it, he absolutely denied the whole incident,” she complained to Lord Seabury an hour afterwards as, perched beside him in his grey phaeton, she surveyed absent-mindedly the foliage of the Green Park. His lordship had interrupted the tête-à-tête in the breakfast room to invite Lady Caro to drive with him, and as her interview with Romby had been most unsatisfactory, Caroline was disposed to harangue Seabury on the subject. “It was all I could do, indeed, to force him to admit he was even acquainted with Miss Meredith! I call that doing it a bit brown, do not you, my lord? I hope you will forgive me for speaking ill of your father, but if I ever met a more obstinate gentleman I am sure I cannot recall it.”

  She was surprised, when she finally glanced at her companion, to find that he was smiling. “Has my lord remembered something amusing? If so, I wish you will share it with me, for I am sadly in need of diversion.”

  “It is not amusement, dear ma’am, but pleasure,” said he slowly, “that makes me smile.”

  “You enjoy my frustration?” she demanded.

  Lord Seabury hesitated. It would not be gallant, and yet— “Yes,” he replied.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I say, it is indeed your frustration that pleases me. It is so very like my own. No one but myself, you know, is obliged to deal with my father in a general way—at least, not on the sort of issue that arises naturally within a household. It is that sort, by the way, which I have often thought to be the most inflammatory. One’s political party members one may leave behind at Parliament; one’s club members, similarly, at Whites’ or Boodles’. Servants may be dismissed, and tradespeople sent away: but one’s family goes on forever.”

  “You never said a truer word,” Caroline interjected warmly.

  The viscount laughed. “I am obliged to own, too, that this display of temper in you particularly appeals to me in light of our discussion a week ago—as we returned from the Opera, you remember? You took me to task so severely for my treatment of my father that I fairly blushed for shame. Now, perhaps, you will understand me better.”

  He had spoken with more liberty than he had ever exercised with her heretofore; but that circumstance, instead of gratifying her (who had been, after all, so critical of his reserve) seemed somehow to pique her anger. “I do not consider that the cases run parallel. I am not proposing, you will note, to restrict Lord Romby’s powers. I am only—venting my feelings with regard to him at present. By evening I daresay I shall have forgot all about it.”

  Lord Seabury, whose sensibility was vastly more delicate than his companion imagined, heard the call to retreat blast loud and clear in his head, and was obliged to obey it. “I am desolate,” he stated evenly and quietly, “if I have had the unhappiness to offend you in any way. I beg you will believe it was the farthest thing from my intention, and forgive me. If you do not object overmuch, I shall turn the carriage towards Rucke House again. There is some business I must attend to there, which I have just this moment recalled.”

  Of course she could not object and still preserve her pride, so Lady Caroline merely nodded and murmured her acquiescence. The little speech, modest and quiet though it had been, had done much to humiliate her however. She was ashamed of her previous tone, which now seemed boisterous and graceless. Lord Seabury, stung, outraged, distressed, or misunderstood as he had perhaps been, had not for an instant deviated from the course of a gentleman. Why, she demanded of herself, why had she been rude? So thoughtless, so careless! She had abundant leisure to pursue such inquiries, for during the whole of the ensuing week Lord Seabury never spoke to her but in the most succinct and purposeful terms. Most of all, worst of all, he did not repeat his invitation to drive with him in the Park. Lady Caroline had herself to thank for the change, as she grimly reflected: her rashness, her impulsiveness, her ingratitude. To be denied anything—even what one does not desire—is unpleasant, and Caroline suffered not a little during her fall from his lordship’s (albeit uncovered) fav
our. Mostly what dismayed her, she told herself, were her own too hasty, too proud words. Even if they had not effected the loss of the viscount’s newly-sprung regard, she would have regretted them in retrospect.

  And yet, it may be noted, if that were all, a simple apology to Seabury would have undone the wrong. She had no more to do than to take back her words, if she rued them—but she did not take them back. Indeed, the possibility did not even present itself to her worried mind: it could not penetrate her immediate, instinctual sense that irretrievable damage had been done.

  She had other things to occupy her anyhow. An important evening in the life of Baron Mockabee (though he did not know it) was soon upon her: Saturday night, the first in May, an evening on which Lord Seabury’s party was supposed to attend the Opera. Miss Windle, apprised that Lord Romby did not mean to accompany them, sat, late that afternoon, before her looking-glass and accomplished a sad, sketchy toilette. She was in the sitting-room that joined her chambers to Caroline’s in plenty of time, therefore, to wait for that lady, who was engaged within with her abigail. The minutes passed by, then half an hour, however, and still her charge did not appear. Dusk had fallen some time before, and they were expected at Lady Beatrice’s for dinner before the performance; where was Caroline? Just as Miss Windle was about to knock on the communicating door to ask this question, Lady Caro issued thence. Though beautifully coiffed, and robed in a splendid gown of rose-coloured satin, her ladyship did not look at all well. In fact, she looked quite ill: her cheeks were pale, her fine green eyes heavy-lidded and rather pink, and her shoulders were positively stooped.