Childish Loves Page 6

  As I stood there, Kitty remarked to me, ‘Your father hated the cold very much. You are a Byron all through. I used to tell him, it is quite the worst thing for a boy to be too warm all the time.’

  With all my heart, I wish it were so, only I sometimes feel the mark of my mother’s family. Kitty has a great appetite for sweets of all kinds, which she considers becoming in a woman. ‘Your father liked to see me eat,’ she told me once. ‘To eat and laugh. It was said he married me only for money, but my fortune wasn’t large – he ran through it quickly enough. At Bath in those days there were a great many beauties, and fortunes. He might have had his pick. But I liked to laugh and eat, and as he liked both laughing and eating, he said, we got on very well.’

  It pleases her nearly as much to see me indulge myself.

  My mother keeps a locket in her dressing-table, with his picture engraved within. Several times I have asked her for the gift of it, that I might take it with me to school – and sometimes she says, ‘Perhaps I will give it you, after all, if you are very good,’ or, ‘I mean tonight to make up my mind about the locket.’ And then in the morning she forgets. If I press her, she resorts to tears, and as her caprices disgust me I have given up asking. It matters very little to me one way or another, only I don’t like to be made a fool of.

  A few days ago I stole into her room and took it from her dressing-table, to show Elizabeth; Kitty never missed it. I intended to give it to Lord Grey, in return for his kindness to me, but Elizabeth dissuaded me, and after all, it is a mean act, for if I meant to be honourable I would claim it openly. It should be mine by rights, as his son – for a man may abandon the duties of a husband but can never forsake the title of father. Elizabeth said Lord Grey don’t want it but admired very much my father’s good looks and cheerful air.

  I believe Mr Becher is in love with Elizabeth (I can’t always call him Reverend), for he speaks to me often of her. She is a kind of cousin to him, which gives him, he supposes, ‘a right to advise her’. But he does not dare to, and so he advises me. He considers me capable of taking a part in great events and clearing the Byron name of its association with misanthropy and vice; he upbraids me for my idleness. Sometimes, even, he urges me to fall in love. He considers this necessary in a nature such as mine to the establishment of certain habits of feeling: gentleness, but not only gentleness, he means a kind of chivalry.

  ‘My lord,’ he says to me, ‘I believe you might accomplish out of love what you should never, for your own sake, attempt from ambition.’

  I am inclined to laugh at him, for love in my humble opinion is utter nonsense – a mere jargon of compliments, romance and deceit. ‘I suppose you mean that I should fall in love with Miss Pigot?’

  He looked at me a moment, a little unhappily. ‘In her case, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘there is the question of rank.’

  The Vicarage at Rumpton, where he presides, is being ‘done up’; he is staying for the summer in a small cottage on Burgage Lane, and Lady Hathwell has provided him with her barouche. This is the reason he can spare his horse. Mr Becher has literary ambitions. He means to write a history of penal reform, and his parlour, where he keeps a fire lit, is covered over in loose pages and opened volumes, on which he spends most of his unsociable hours. When he rises to take your hand, you may observe him, for a minute or so after, just perceptibly continuing to unbend until his top and bottom halves are aligned.

  I asked him his opinion of Lord Grey.

  ‘I knew him at Oxford a little,’ he said. ‘And others of his kind. He was mostly drunk and always in debt. But at seventeen or eighteen, tolerable enough. There is a kind of freshness even in debauchery. But age does not improve men of his type; their methods harden into habits. I should dislike it extremely if you came under his influence.’

  *

  I spent this morning riding over to Newstead and have only just returned – a two hours journey each way. The impression it made was very strong. As soon as I came upon the lake, and the sky opened up within it, I felt the beat of my heart as if a hand lay against it. And beyond it, the Abbey itself rising greyly out of the lawn. That some part of my destiny lies within those walls strikes me as certain – if only that I wish to be buried in its vaults. And yet the mansion itself, or its habitable portions, looks common enough.

  Owen Mealy, the caretaker, answered my shout and opened the door to an undistinguished hall with dirty boots in it. A wired box (for keeping chickens) lay on its side by the door, propping it open. The weather, at least, has improved and the house had the dusky, watchful air of a hot day indoors.

  He has changed very little – he has been away a great deal – and yet I felt Lord Grey’s presence in each of the rooms. Mr Mealy left me to speak to Joe Krull, the gardener, so that I had the upper rooms to myself: the bedroom, a study, and a long hallway that Lord Grey has converted into a dining room, since it has a fireplace at one end and windows that overlook the lake. In the bedroom I found a half-dozen pairs of his shoes ranged against the foot of the wardrobe, and a few clothes within. Two silk cravats, hung up by the middles, which looked rather dirty; a waistcoat; a shirt – such are the remains of an English gentleman. As we are about the same height, I tried on a pair of his shoes, which fit snugly enough. But then, a fear of Mr Mealy prevailing upon me, I took them off again and looked in his study, to examine the books – of which he had only a few, and most of them novels.

  I half expected at any moment to see Lord Grey stalk in, in his riding boots. The study was windowless and the air inside it very close. In fact, it was little more than a dressing room. I suppose I fell asleep for when I woke again, I had the odd, childish feeling that Kitty was looking for me; and for a moment or two took a kind of pleasure in the idea that she wouldn’t find me. Then I remembered myself and went downstairs. Eventually I discovered Mr Mealy in the garden, attempting to untangle the nets of a currant bush; the crows had been tearing at it. The gardener was nowhere to be seen, he complained, so it was left to him to attend to every man’s job but his own. I asked him if Lord Grey intended to return soon.

  ‘If I need something or want to know something,’ was all his answer, ‘I apply to Mr Hanson, who pays me.’

  ‘Oh, we are all the servants of Mr Hanson. He is a great dispenser of moneys.’ And then: ‘I suppose Lord Grey must find it very dull here, if he is away so often.’

  ‘I don’t know what he finds it.’

  Once the nets were restored, I told him, ‘In a few years, I mean to take the estates in hand myself.’

  What clouds there were hung low over the ground. The heat seemed too heavy to move in the long grasses, which wanted cutting. A great swathe ran from the hall to the lake, where they blended themselves among the water-reeds. The ground around the bushes looked purple and trampled. There were also raspberry bushes, gooseberry bushes, a potato bed and a low plum tree. I had tethered Mr Becher’s horse against this tree; the fruit was too green to tempt even a horse. But Mr Mealy stood watching her with an air of disapproval.

  ‘Did you know the old Lord Byron?’ I said. ‘They say he drank very violently.’

  ‘I did not, it was Mr Hanson that hired me.’ But then, relenting a little: ‘I worked for Mr Chaworth at Annesley Hall. You may imagine what opinion they held of him, or any of the Byrons, for that matter, at Annesley Hall.’

  ‘You mean, because of the duel? It was all a great many years ago. I suppose you know Miss Chaworth. She is said to be very pretty. I met her when I was ten or so – she, a few years older – but I believe I have changed a good deal. It was a kind of joke that we would marry in time, like the Montagues and Capulets. Does Lord Grey often ride over? It isn’t far to Annesley.’

  ‘Lord Grey often walks; he prefers it to any other exercise.’

  I coloured at this, but perhaps he intended no allusion. I told him I meant to bathe before returning to Southwell (the sun had become intolerably direct). But he should see to it that a bed was made up for me the next day, as I proposed t
o take up Lord Grey’s offer and use the house in his absence.

  ‘It means more work for me,’ he complained. ‘I shall write to Mr Hanson.’

  There was nothing more to be said. I walked through the long grass to the edge of the lake, stripped off my clothes, and then slowly pushed my way through the reeds to the open water. After striking out briskly, I lay on my back and let the sunshine warm the water on my head. The light of noon was very strong; I closed my eyes and felt my heart beat against them steadily as waves. When I opened them again, Mr Mealy was still standing by the currant bush where I had left him, but after a minute or so he turned away.

  *

  Kitty has only reluctantly agreed to let me go. We had a scene tonight. I am so often at the Pigots in the evening that she has requested me, on coming home, always to look in on her, regardless of the hour. And so, very dutifully, at a little after eleven o’clock, I knocked on her door.

  When she called out, I took the lamp in with me, and she sat up in bed rather crossly and complained that she had been fast asleep and that the light hurt her eyes – did I mind at all turning it out of her face?

  Not at all, I said. I should be only too happy to retire to bed myself and take it with me. It was at her request that I looked in. I should be much happier in future – but then, it hardly mattered, as I intended in the morning to avail myself of Lord Grey’s generosity and remove to Newstead for the rest of the summer, or until he should return.

  By this point, she had got her wits about her and found her spectacles, and she sat with her hair spread wildly against the cushions behind her, looking frightful. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘You have only just come home.’

  ‘Southwell is not my home. If you were a Byron you would understand. I mean to spend the summer at Newstead.’

  ‘There is a jug on my dressing-table and a glass beside it. Give me a glass of water; thank you. It is too hot to be always arguing – we can discuss it again in the morning.’

  ‘In the morning, I shall be gone.’

  There was more of this, on each side, which I don’t exactly recall – I never can remember what sets off her tears. She complained of her loneliness, with a kind of simper, but then, growing in voice, began to abuse my father and me and everything else. I had no notion of what she suffered as a widow. There were houses in Nottinghamshire, she said, from whom she could expect an invitation only as the mother of a lord. But in these cases, it was understood, she must ‘bring the article with her’. She had supposed that my obligations to the Pigots, if nothing else, would keep me here. But this involved her in contradictions, for she could not help scoring a point off Elizabeth. ‘She sets her cap at you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it is just as well you should spend the summer at Newstead.’

  I have learned it is best in these cases to let her talk and stood with the lamp growing warm in my hands till she was quite talked out. At last she said to me, ‘You harden your heart against me. You harden your heart.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘no one can feel for you what I feel.’

  *

  I don’t suppose I have passed so solitary a week, as this past week, since I was four years old and my mother, having the ague or some other Scottish affliction, in the summer, too, demanded the full attentions of our maid, who consequently let me run rather wild. The Abbey itself is full of wonders. The great hall and refectory are given over to the storage of animal foods, for the use of the farmers, and cats, bats, foxes, crickets and mice have made their homes inside them. But besides hay bales, grain sacks, cobwebs, droppings, and bones – fox skulls, mouse skulls and the like; a hundred feathery skeletons of dead crickets – I have discovered a halberd, blunt with use, an iron pot, a leather boot, and a Bible. Mr Mealy has been telling me stories about my great-uncle. Before his death, he lived and dined and slept in the great hall and used to let the crickets run races over his body. He had been very wicked in his youth and killed a man, for drink; only he repented too greatly and despised everyone for his own sins, preferring creature-company to the company of men. ‘For he could kill them as he liked.’

  Mr Mealy has employed Alice, the gardener’s daughter, to provide my meals. Her father is square-built, dark-set, a little humped with work; and there is also the beginning of a crook in the line of Alice’s neck, where her apron is tied. I believe her father beats her. Her face and arms and shoulders (for I have seen her shoulders) are covered over in red marks. Of me she has no fear, but when her father sees her speaking with me, he shouts at her until like a dog she runs away. Mr Mealy warned me this morning against her, or rather, against Mr Krull. She is his natural child, he said, or he, her unnatural father – he remained ominous and vague and accused me at last of ‘curiosity’. But they are not to be trusted; Alice is a thief. I asked him why in this case he did not dismiss them at once.

  ‘I suppose you mean I should attend to everything myself?’ he answered.

  Besides, he said, the house was sufficiently plundered at my great-uncle’s death; there is nothing of value. He hinted also that Lord Grey has a ‘weakness’ for the girl, though I have seen him casting his own eye at her. Alice herself appears to be one of those creatures formed, in all stupidity, for suffering; she can hardly feel anything else. Today I gave her an earring, plain and dirty and a little green, which I had discovered in the great hall. She took it without saying a word and concealed it in her dress.

  I mean tomorrow to ride over to Annesley, if only to acquaint myself again with good society.

  *

  Annesley Hall is a pleasant-looking house, extensive rather than grand. I approached gradually enough, riding up Diadem Hill and descending again between the trees. Another hot day, cloudless and almost windless; the greens of Annesley are becoming yellow and the browns grey. In fact, they have left much of the estate to pasture, and where the grasses have begun to seed, the stalks stand glinting and withering in the sunshine. Through the carriage gate, between the avenue of chestnuts and the mounds of wild flower, the house appears as grey as any ruin. But it is solid and modern, and inside it is dark and cool.

  Miss Chaworth was out, so Mrs Thomason led me round. Her mistress had made up a sketching-party, with her mother (Mrs Clarke) and several ladies, and Mr Musters of Colwick Hall, and they had driven to the top of Leivers Hill and made a picnic. They were not expected to tea. I am sure there are many fine things at Annesley, but Mrs Thomason, relenting at last, offered me the key to the churchyard and a piece of currant cake. I said to her, she must be sure to tell Miss Chaworth I had called and would come again the next day. Then I spent an hour among the graves in the long grass and fell asleep. It is a habit with me to take a book whenever I ride out, but I could hardly read a page amid so many interruptions – of crickets and church bells; swallows, sparrows, crows; windows opening and doors closing; trees shifting.

  I awoke to the sound of horses and sat up to see, between a church wall and the side of the dairy, the return of Miss Chaworth’s sketching-party in two carriages. I recognized Miss Chaworth, in spite of her bonnet and parasol, by the slope of her neck, which is long and hand-some. Five years have passed since I saw her last; I was not observed, and then they themselves disappeared behind a wall. Since my horse was tethered at their stable door, I might have encountered them in retrieving it, but delayed ten or fifteen minutes, reading or attempting to read, until they were sure to be gone. There was nothing in my book that suggested what I felt: a slight depression of spirits.

  When I left, I took with me the key to the churchyard gate – stealing like a thief into the courtyard and mounting Mr Becher’s horse. But the sun warmed my neck as I rode and all around me the wide barren hills glowed, the air thickened with evening. There is a kind of freedom in loneliness, which accounts partly for my reluctance to be introduced. Besides, nothing is more tedious on such occasions than making up lost ground.

  *

  This morning I rode over to Annesley again on the pretence of returning Mrs Thomason
’s key. Another fine day, cloudless, etc. though cooler than yesterday, and consequently still more deeply blue. Miss Chaworth had requested a small fire to be lit in the drawing room, where I was introduced to her again, amidst the remainder of her house-guests: the two Miss Wollastons, and their father, a widower, whose wife was a great friend of Mrs Clarke’s. Mrs Clarke’s husband died last year, in a hunting accident; she is still in black. Miss Chaworth is her daughter by a first marriage, but presides quite naturally (as the house belongs to her) and presented me very charmingly as her ‘cousin George’.

  ‘I am glad you have come,’ she said, ‘I have been feeling out of temper all morning, and nobody knows what to do with me or say to me. Be warned: whatever you do will offend.’

  She lives up perfectly to my boyish recollection. Her nose is a little too full at the tip, and suggests still the stubborn child; but her mouth is good, lively and expressive, with a strong under-lip; and her eyes, though set a trifle wide, are brown and soft and deep. Her chin is excellent.

  ‘I am only happy to be called your cousin,’ I said, ‘when there are unkinder names you might have given the family connection.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t talk history to me. I have no patience for history, unless it be in novels. Haven’t I told you that I wish to be amused?’

  In the end it was decided that we should walk out into the morning, as far as the fish-pond, and return to lunch. And then, in the afternoon, she’d be much obliged if someone would read to her, as she had a headache.

  ‘Maybe what you suffer from is too much pleasure,’ I said to her outside the garden gate, as she took my arm. I dislike walking in general, but we went along slowly enough and I surprised myself by this sort of agreeable talk. There is nothing that makes me more awkward than the duty to be pleasant, but Miss Chaworth’s manner was so sharp and intimate, that I forgot the slightness of our acquaintance. ‘And so now it pleases you to suffer.’