Honora Clare, page 11
To her surprise, this shot went home. He flushed under the sunburn, losing his usual poise.
“My dear girl, are you still angry with me for the way I behaved when we first met? You must know I have entirely changed my opinion. Surely you realized that I no longer have any intention of removing Sally, and that should convince you if nothing else does.”
Honor was so pleased that she found herself accepting his invitation almost without thinking it over.
On her way back to the school she admitted defeat—privately, to herself if to no one else: she was in love. What it was about that infuriating man she did not know, only that he had maneuvered his way through her defences. And she did not care. He was staying on in Bath, he was leaving Sally at the school, he was taking her to Sydney Gardens. Exhilarated, she marched along Brock Street and across the Circus with an inelegant countrywoman’s stride, her little flock trotting behind her.
And then she was brought up with a new shock as soon as she reached Belmont.
She was seized on by Lucy.
“Honor, I must talk to you. I have had a letter from Edward.”
Edward was her brother, a curate in Yorkshire. She looked so agitated that Honor said, “I hope it is not bad news. Your brother is not ill?”
“Oh no! It has nothing to do with Edward himself. It is about Mr. Colvin.”
Honor had a sudden sensation of cold round the heart and felt it sink through her whole body. She had temporarily forgotten her old distrust of him. For weeks she had been wanting to hear something that could be held against him. Now she dreaded anything of the kind. What disturbing rumor could have reached a remote parish in Yorkshire? She waited.
Lucy unfolded her brother’s letter and began to read:
…I was most interested to learn that one of your charges is a daughter of Marcus Colvin. You do not seem to have realized when you wrote, though by now perhaps you are aware, that he is justly celebrated as the foremost living translator of Homer. His version of the Iliad…
“Good God!” exclaimed Honor, sitting down abruptly and gaping at Lucy in sheer disbelief. “Homer? Nonsense, it can’t be the same man.”
“I think it must be. Listen: ‘His version of the Iliad received great praise when it came out four years ago, even The Quarterly Review could find few bones to pick. I was lucky enough to. borrow a copy and found it first-rate. Since then Mr. Colvin has served as an attaché on a mission we sent to the Sublime Porte; it is generally believed that he went there in order to explore various sites of antiquity, and while there he offended the Turks by championing the cause of Greek independence, so that our people were obliged to disown him, officially at least. He is supposed to have had many adventures and we must hope that these will help to animate his forthcoming translation of the Odyssey…’ So I think it is undoubtedly our Mr. Colvin, don’t you?”
Honor began to see clearly for the first time through many misunderstandings and ambiguities, but was able to focus only on the last of them.
“I’ve just told Nancy that he didn’t care about the Greeks.”
“Well, she is not likely to pass it on.”
“He was there. He heard me and he was laughing—good heavens, now I see why! What an ignoramus he must think me! And it is so unjust: why did he lead us on to think that he despised education and learning? I suppose it is the usual prejudice—educated women are what he despises.”
“No,” said Lucy firmly. “I am afraid the prejudice was on your side. Ever since I read Edward’s letter, I have been piecing together what Mr. Colvin told us at the picnic: he considers there are as many stupid girls in the world as stupid boys, and such children don’t benefit from a formal education. It is a little arrogant, but he is probably right, and I dare say such a very clever man is frequently irked by having his enthusiasms dampened by uncomprehending ignorance. Perhaps this accounts for the offhand, ironic manner which misled us.”
Honor had the grace to recognize that this was very likely true. She had been prejudiced against him, chiefly on account of that dreadful coat. She began to feel awkward and stupid, wondering how she was to behave at their next meeting. The evening in Sydney Gardens now loomed ahead with a prospect of appalling awkwardness. She told herself that she would have cried off, but for the inducement of meeting the couple with all those little girls. She felt it was her duty not to let such an opportunity slip, as she explained to Lucy, but she began to feel self-conscious about the whole scheme; no one else in the school was to know where she was going. The expedition sounded so frivolous, she half hoped it would be canceled. Perhaps it would rain.
The evening turned out warm and clear. Mr. Colvin came to fetch her. Mr. and Mrs. Barry were already in the carriage, so there was no private conversation on the drive to Bathwick. The Barrys were a pleasant, unaffected couple who seemed to admire her enterprise in starting a school, and were not in the least condescending.
The Sydney Hotel stood at the far end of Great Pulteney Street, porticoed and set apart like a little palace, with Sydney Gardens spreading out from it on three sides. Beyond the hotel there was a semicircle of refreshment boxes, with a bar in the center and a raised orchestra where a string band was already playing the music of Rossini and other popular composers. It was one of the four annual Galas and the place was crowded with well-to-do people, for the tickets were expensive. Mr. Colvin’s party strolled about, admiring the scene. The Gardens had been designed nearly forty years ago to emulate Vauxhall, but nowadays there was rather less emphasis on the artificial cascade made by turning a painted roller, and similar illusions. There was a real waterfall embowered in a romantic grove of trees, a bowling green and a maze, planted in 1805, which was now high enough for people to lose themselves, so that a man had to be kept on duty to guide them out.
At first Mr. Barry took charge of Honor and kept her amused. Then they went back to their reserved box and had a cold supper. It was still too light for the fireworks.
“How hot it is,” said Mrs. Barry, fanning herself. “I think I shall stay here and watch the world go by, but don’t let me prevent you from exploring.”
She smiled at Mr. Colvin, who said to Honor, “Shall we go and look at the canal?”
The Kennet and Avon Canal had been dug straight through Sydney Gardens, to the fury of the proprietor, until he realized that this narrow strip of water added a new element of beauty to his grassy slopes and deeply shadowed trees. Two cast iron bridges in the Chinese manner had been thrown across the canal, and presently Honor and Marcus Colvin were standing on one of these, gazing into the glassy stillness below.
“You are very silent,” he said. “Is anything the matter?”
She took a long breath. “Can you not guess, Mr. Colvin? I have found you out at last.”
“The devil you have!” He sounded so disconcerted that she might really have wondered whether he had some nefarious secret after all.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a famous classical scholar?”
“Well, I am a scholar of sorts, but it is not a thing one goes around boasting of to people who may not wish to hear.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged that. “It was a stupid question, and I have been very stupid all along.”
“We got off on the wrong foot, didn’t we? From the very first day.”
She thought of it now, from his point of view: arriving at the school, asking for his daughter and finding that she was playing truant somewhere in the city.
“I’m afraid that was my fault too,” she said.
“Not entirely. I was in a mood to make difficulties.”
He paused for a moment, staring along the canal to the arch of light, perfectly mirrored to form a full moon, under the next bridge. A noisy party passed them and went laughing up the slope.
He said, “I think you must be aware that my marriage was unhappy. Sarah’s ideas and mine differed on every subject—not that she had a single idea in her head, poor girl, beyond the secondhand beliefs and conventions that had been planted there by her dull family. I’m afraid I was very unkind to her; no need to go into that. The fact is, we didn’t suit. I began my translation of the Iliad to occupy my time with something better than quarreling. Soon after it was finished, Sarah left me, taking Sally with her…
“I hadn’t the heart to separate such a young child-from her mother, and it happened that I had just been offered the chance of accompanying our Ambassador to Turkey as a super numerary attaché, with the possibility of traveling all over Greece and Asia Minor. I was out there when Sarah died. My sister-in-law wrote assuring me that she would be responsible for Sally; I had a feeling I ought to go home, which I quieted by telling myself that a little girl of seven would be better and safer in a home she knew with her aunt; there was nothing useful I could do for her. By now I had got myself embroiled in the question of Greek independence.”
“Do the Turks treat them very badly?”
“Abominably. And of all nations in the world, the inspirers of all our learning, practically the first Christians, should not be under the tyranny of such brutes! But I mustn’t let my hobbyhorse run away with me. I caused so much trouble that the Ambassador had to hustle me out of the way before the Turks locked me up. Incidentally, my respectable sister-in-law has got it into her head that I must have committed some fearful crime, if not high treason. I expect she painted a pretty black picture of me?”
“To begin with, she just let us think Sally was an orphan.”
He laughed, “So she did. I’d forgotten. She must have hoped I’d die of fever or get my throat cut. However, I escaped to Sicily and came home in the end, on a British man-of-war, and even then I had another adventure, for we nearly went down in a storm less than fifty miles off the coast of Cornwall. When I finally landed at Plymouth, I went to see a cousin of my wife’s, a good-natured woman married to a naval officer, quite unlike most of the Butley tribe. She gave me the news that Maria Butley had found herself a husband at last and my little Sally had been packed off to a Bath boarding school. I was furious. After all that talk of regarding her beloved Sarah’s child as a sacred trust, she couldn’t be rid of her quick enough. And I felt guilty too; Sally was my daughter and I’d been just as selfish. So I came straight to Bath and vented my guilt and resentment on you.”
“Yes, I understand now,” said Honor. “No wonder you were bitter. Especially when you discovered what sort of a school it was that Sally had been sent to. Of course you wanted to snatch her away immediately. Indeed, I am astonished that you have been able to overcome your first bad impression. Do you really want to leave her with us now?”
“You must know I do,” he replied. “Anything precious of mine I would entrust to you, surely you must realize by now?”
There was a curious, rough note of emotion in his voice she had not heard before. He laid his hand over hers on the rail of the bridge, pressing so hard that the metallic edge seemed to bite into her palm, and from his touch she felt a current of excitement and expectancy tingle through her.
“Dear Portia, I have no right to—there is something I ought to tell you. To explain.”
“Yes?”
He changed his mind apparently, for he removed his hand, and she heard him mutter something about leaving well alone.
And after that, in a tone of cool detachment, “There is something insidiously dangerous about a garden at dusk. One is led into the most harebrained follies.”
Honor did not ask what he meant. Being no longer a romantic innocent of seventeen, she was pretty sure she knew. Marcus would not make love to a woman of her kind unless he could offer her marriage, and he could not afford to marry a woman who had hardly any money of her own to contribute. Well, what else had she imagined? It was childish to feel ill-used or disappointed.
She moved slightly, avoiding his eye, looking beyond him, up the final stretch of the Gardens, and saw a girl step out onto the lawn just below the little round temple at the top. A girl in a green dress with a cloud of dark red hair.
“Henrietta!” exclaimed Honor.
“What?” Colvin was at a loss.
“Henrietta—I saw her. Over there in front of the rotunda.”
He swung round but the girl in green had vanished between the trees.
“I must go after her,” said Honor. “The little wretch—she’s no business to be here. Who can have persuaded her to come?”
“Are you sure it was Henrietta? The light is beginning to fail…”
“I saw her quite plainly and she saw me. I know it was her.”
While they were talking, another argument was taking place in whispers close to the wall that ran behind the rotunda.
“Miss Clare is standing on the bridge with Mr. Colvin, and she saw me. Oh Dick, whatever are we to do?”
Dick Lyman swore. “Are you certain she recognized you?”
“Of course she did. She’ll write and tell the Porchestons that I was meeting you and they’ll be so angry. I shall never be allowed to see you again.”
Dick caught her by the wrist.
“Keep your head down and run.”
He led her away from the rotunda where they were in danger of-being cornered. When he felt comfortably hidden among the bushes he stopped, and they stood still, panting. They could dodge about here indefinitely in the increasing dusk, rejoin the crowds in the lower part of the Gardens perhaps, and slip out unseen. He could take Henrietta home. But they both knew this would not save them from disaster, for how was Henrietta to get back into the school? She had left a window open in the basement before coming out. to meet him. Now, most likely, Miss Clare would get back before she did, and would be waiting for her when she crept in.
“I tell you what,” said Dick. “She may have seen you but she didn’t see me. We’ll have to pretend you came here to meet someone else. That actor fellow—Harris, he jumped into the river for you, didn’t he? He’ll do.”
Henrietta gasped. “I couldn’t tell such a story you must be mad. I don’t even know Mr. Harris and I certainly wouldn’t have made an assignation with him.”
“Listen, Hen,” said Dick fiercely. “If you say you were with Harris, you’ll get off with a scolding but I shall still be able to come and visit you. If you tell them the truth, I shall never see you again, and that will be the end of our engagement.”
Henrietta stopped protesting. She was always ready to do what Dick told her, and the fear of losing him outweighed every other consideration.
Dick stepped out into the open and hurried across the grass with an expression of relief.
“Miss Clare! Thank God I have found you—I suppose you have come to look for my cousin? Did you know she was here with Sam Harris?”
“With Harris?” repeated Honor in dismay. “Good God, it is worse than I thought.”
She and Marcus Colvin had spent the last few minutes stalking a couple in the bushes who turned out to be complete strangers. It was a situation worthy of a Drury Lane farce and would have amused her if she hadn’t been so anxious. She listened impatiently, as Dick described how he had been at the Gala with a party of friends, and catching sight of Henrietta and her escort, had hardly been able to believe his eyes.
“But where are they now? I must go to her at once.”
“Harris beat a retreat directly I spoke to them. Didn’t want any trouble with the young lady’s family. Henrietta is waiting over there. Please don’t be too severe with her, Miss Clare. I think she only did it for a lark, without considering what a scrape she might get into.”
“She will have plenty of time to think about it now. Could you find us a carriage, Mr. Colvin? And make my excuses to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.”
“Of course.”
The pleasure of the evening was over for Honor; in any case it had ended abruptly on the bridge, with Marcus’s return to common sense. As Dick led forward the pale and reluctant Henrietta, the fireworks began to fizzle and pop, and the first set piece blazed into view: two hearts entwined against a darkening sky.
( 2 )
Henrietta sat in a barely furnished room on the second floor, hemming a pillowcase and sniffing as she sewed. She was banished to this bleak prison for every hour that she was not actually doing lessons, with none of her possessions around her, no books, nothing but a basket of plain sewing. This was to be her fate for the rest of the week.
She had accepted the punishment without really caring, she felt too frightened and guilty. Not about her love for Dick, their secret engagement, or the adventure in Sydney Gardens. Her infatuation had blunted her moral sensibilities, she was afraid they would be found out and separated—which was why she had gone along with the pretence that she had been meeting Mr. Harris. Miss Clare had talked to her very seriously about the false glamor of the stage and the stupidity of becoming besotted with a middle-aged actor. She had threatened to report the whole matter to Mrs. Porcheston.
This had really alarmed Henrietta, for Dick was bound to feature in the story and the Porchestons knew all about her attachment to Dick, which Miss Clare obviously did not. Mrs. Porcheston would guess the truth, and would be even angrier than she had been when the Rector had caught them kissing in the drawing room at Brauncing.
Henrietta had taken refuge in tears, and a wicked idea had come into her head.
“Please, please don’t tell them,” she had begged, and her sobs were perfectly genuine. “I promise. you on my solemn word of honor that I will never see or communicate with Mr. Harris again. Indeed I don’t want to see him, it would be too humiliating.”
And Miss Clare had believed her, she was not going to give Henrietta away to the Porchestons. Of course the solemn promise would be kept, Henrietta had not the smallest desire to meet the inoffensive and maligned Mr. Samuel Harris. This was what made her feel so guilty, she was deceiving Miss Clare, the promise had never been anything but an empty sham. She was a religious girl, and though she had not actually committed perjury or taken the Lord’s name in vain, she felt as though she had done something just as bad. If only she could escape from this tangle of secrecy and deceit.
