“Good God! Was he mad?”
“Oh no! Merely eccentric!” she replied. “I never knew him to care for anyone’s comfort but his own, but I fancy eccentrics don’t. However, when I grew up he permitted Lady Denny and Mrs. Yardley to take me now and then to the Assemblies in York; and once he actually consented to my spending a week in Harrogate, with my Aunt Hendred! I did hope that he would consent also to let me visit her in London, so that she might bring me out in the regular way. She offered to do so, but he wouldn’t have it, and I daresay she didn’t very much wish to do it, for she didn’t press it.”
“Poor Venetia!”
If she noticed his use of her name she gave no sign of having done so, only smiling, and saying: “I own I was sadly dashed down at the time, but after all, you know, I don’t think I could have gone, even had Papa been willing, for Aubrey was still tied to a sofa, and I couldn’t have left him.”
“So you have never been farther afield than Harrogate! No wonder you dream of travel! How have you endured such intolerable tyranny?”
“Oh, it was only on that one subject Papa was adamant! For the rest I might do as I chose. I wasn’t unhappy—did you think I had been? Not a bit! I might now and then be bored, but in general I have had enough to keep me occupied, with the house to manage, and Aubrey to take care of.”
“When did your father die? Surely some years ago? Why do you stay here? Is habit so strong?”
“No, but circumstance is! My elder brother is a member of Lord Hill’s staff, you see, and until he chooses to sell out someone must look after Undershaw. There’s Aubrey, too. I don’t think he would consent to go away, because that would mean he could not read with Mr. Appersett any more; and it wouldn’t do to leave him alone.”
“I can well believe that he would miss you, but—”
She laughed. “Aubrey? Oh, no! Aubrey likes books more than people. The thing is that I am afraid Nurse would drive him crazy, trying to wrap him in cotton-wool, which is a thing he can’t bear.” Her brow creased. “I only wish she may not vex him to death while he is here! I was obliged to bring her, because if I had not she would have trudged all the way. Then, too, she does know what to do when he is ailing, and I couldn’t leave him quite on your hands. Perhaps Dr. Bentworth will say he may come home.”
But when the doctor arrived, although he was able to allay any fears that Aubrey had seriously injured his hip he returned a flat negative to Nurse’s suggestion that he would be better in his own home. The quieter he was kept, said Dr. Bentworth, the more quickly would the torn ligaments heal. This verdict was accepted reluctantly by Nurse, and by Aubrey, whose endurance had been tried pretty high by the doctor’s examination, with profound relief.
With a tact born of experience Venetia had not accompanied the doctor to the sickroom. She had asked Damerel to go with him in her stead, and he had nodded, and had said in his curt way: “Yes, I’ll go. Don’t worry!” It was several minutes before it occurred to her that she had turned to him as to a friend of many years’ standing. Then, a little wonderingly, she thought over that protracted dinner, and of how they had sat talking long after Imber had removed the covers, Damerel leaning back in his carved chair, a glass of port held between his long fingers, she with her elbows on the table and a half-eaten apple in one hand; and the dusk creeping into the room unheeded, until Imber brought in candles, in tall, tarnished chandeliers, and set them on the table, furnishing a pool of light in which they sat while the shadows darkened beyond it. Trying to recall what they had talked of during that comfortable hour, it seemed to Venetia that they had talked of everything, or perhaps of nothing: she did not know which, but only that she had found a friend.
When the doctor told her that he could not advise her to remove Aubrey from the Priory he seemed to be both surprised and relieved by her tranquil acceptance of his verdict. The note of apology in his voice at first puzzled her, but after she had thought it over she saw what he must have meant when he spoke of embarrassment and awkward situations; and when Damerel came back into the room, after escorting the doctor to his carriage, she looked rather anxiously up at him, and said with a little difficulty: “I am afraid—I hadn’t thought—Will it be troublesome to you to keep Aubrey until he is better?”
“Not a bit!” he replied, with reassuring alacrity. “What put such a daffish notion as that into your head?”
“Well, it was Dr. Bentworth’s saying how sorry he was to be obliged to put me in an awkward situation,” she disclosed. “He meant, of course, that it is quite shocking to foist poor Aubrey on to you, and he was perfectly right! I can’t think why it should not have occurred to me before, but I daresay—”
“He meant nothing of the sort,” Damerel interrupted ruthlessly. “His solicitude is not on my behalf, but on yours. He perceived the impropriety of thrusting you into acquaintanceship with a man of libertine propensities. Morals and medicine warred within his breast, and medicine won the day— but I daresay morals may give him a sleepless night!”
“Is that all?” she exclaimed, her brow clearing.
“That’s all,” he answered gravely. “Unless, of course, he fears I may corrupt Aubrey. Evil communications, you know!”
“I shouldn’t think you could,” she said, dispassionately considering the matter. She saw his lips quiver, and her own gravity vanished. “Oh, I don’t mean that you would make the attempt! You know very well I don’t! The thing is that even if you were to hold an orgy here the chances are he would only think it pretty tame, compared with the Romans, not to mention the Bacchae, who, from anything I can discover, were precisely the sort of females one would wish a boy not to know about!”
This view of the matter was almost too much for his self-control; it was a moment before he could command his voice enough to say: “I promise you I won’t hold any orgies while Aubrey is under my roof!”
“Oh, no, I know you would not! Though I must say,” she added, a gleam of fun in her eyes, “it would be worth it, only to see Nurse’s face!”
He laughed out at that, flinging back his head in wholehearted enjoyment, gasping: “Why, oh why did I never know you until now?”
“It does seem a pity,” she agreed. “I have been thinking so myself, for I always wished for a friend to laugh with.”
“To laugh with!” he repeated slowly.
“Perhaps you have friends already who laugh when you do,” she said diffidently. “I haven’t, and it’s important, I think—more important than sympathy in affliction, which you might easily find in someone you positively disliked.”
“But to share a sense of the ridiculous prohibits dislike—yes, that’s true. And rare! My God, how rare! Do they stare at you, our worthy neighbours, when you laugh?”
“Yes! or ask me what I mean when I’m joking!” She glanced at the clock above the empty fireplace. “I must go.”
“Yes, you must go. I have sent a message down to the stables. There is still light enough for your coachman to make out the way, but it will be dark in another hour, or even less.” He took her hands, and putting them palm to palm held them so between his own. “You’ll come again tomorrow—to visit Aubrey! Don’t let them dissuade you, our worthy neighbours! Beyond my gates I make you no promises: don’t trust me! Within them—” He paused, his smile twisting into something not quite a sneer yet derisive. “Oh, within them,” he said in brittle self-mockery, “I’ll remember that I was bred a gentleman!”
V
Venetia opened her eyes to sunlight, dimmed by the chintz blinds across her windows. She lay for a few minutes between sleep and waking, aware, at first vaguely and then with sharpening intensity, of a sense of well-being and of expectation, as when, in childhood, she had waked to the knowledge that the day of a promised treat had dawned. Somewhere in the garden a thrush was singing, the joyous sweetness of its note so much in harmony with her mood that it seemed a part of her happiness. She was content for some moments to listen, not questioning the source of their happiness; but presently she came to full consciousness, and remembered that she had found a friend.