Gentlemen and Players Page 5

  ‘I will not have her looking gawky and overgrown – which I admit she is – on her first public appearance.’

  ‘And she’s so proud of her first grown-up dress, Father,’ said Susan. ‘It’s a pleasure to see her so happy.’

  Nicholas smiled. He left the room, muttering about something which had to be attended to: Sarah’s wedding present. He was giving her an enormous silver soup-tureen, engraved with the Paget and Templecombe arms, with a female figure for a knob on the lid and a small diamond crescent to set in her hair. It was small, because Augusta said that hair-ornaments were vulgar. These presents had been delivered to Templecombe’s house in Curzon Street early that morning.

  Nicholas walked slowly up to his dressing room, where he intended to change his appearance. Augusta had only said that he was not well dressed, but now he was very anxious to change his plum-satin stock and diamond tie-pin for grey watered silk and onyx. On the way upstairs he thought about all the kindly callers he had met since he arrived in London a week before, his family’s friends, who would be at St George’s, Hanover Square, when he led Sarah up the aisle. He would never see them again.

  He met Sarah on the first landing. She was veiled, and her concealed, miniature face was as solemn as a baby’s.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said.

  ‘Why Sarah – you look very pretty, I must say, most becoming.’

  Slowly her face broke out into its accustomed half-smile, then she bit her lip, as though he had paid her an extraordinary compliment. She remained quite still, blocking his way to the dressing-room.

  ‘We’ll be on time at the church, my dear, and we can’t do that. People expect the bride to keep them on tenterhooks for a while, you know!’

  Fifteen minutes later they set off, Augusta travelling in a separate carriage. ‘Perhaps,’ said Sophie as they turned into Oxford Street, ‘it will be like Jane Eyre, and someone will come up and cry, “I know of just cause and impediment!”’ Her voice rolled with drama and she was ticked off with smiles.

  Everyone said afterwards that it had gone off very well: the music, the service, the flowers, the food, the champagne, the clothes. It was one of the fashionable weddings of that season, for Lord Henry was a modish person.

  CHAPTER 4

  SOPHIE IS A BEAUTY

  It was Sunday, and Nicholas and Susan were in church, listening to the morning service. They sat beneath the pulpit, in the foremost pew. There were few adults present: two farmers, one of whom had his wife with him, five or six labourers, and the Lynmore Hall servants. The schoolchildren sat on benches, across the aisle from the Pagetts, in clean pinafores and collars. When they passed the children, Susan and her father smiled at them.

  The parish church at Lynmore was very old-fashioned, and had not been touched since the beginning of the century. The box pews were worm-eaten, and the hassocks moth-eaten. There was only one frail stained-glass window, in the western transept; all the other windows were plain, and several were obscured with ivy. In winter an oil stove was set to burn in the middle of the nave, over a worn-down brass tablet which mentioned the Battle of Tewkesbury. Apart from this, the most modern object was the eighteenth-century three-decker pulpit. The nave was Early English, the chancel Perpendicular, and the whole church was rickety and quite unrestored.

  Mr Leighton, who had been Rector of Lynmore since 1812, had died in January at the age of ninety-four. He had had a repertoire of five sermons for ordinary Sundays, which he had recited from the pulpit in turn, and in addition sermons to fit Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Corpus Christi and the commemoration of the death of King Charles the Martyr. The two curates had been managing the parish since the winter, and the new incumbent, the Reverend Octavius Potter, had just arrived at Lynmore. He was to lunch with the Pagetts after the service. Susan had already met him one day in the village, and had spoken with him. She thought him an eager young man and considered it probable that he was very High Church. She had not said very much about him to her family.

  Mr Potter climbed the pulpit, wearing a surplice and stole. Mr Leighton had always worn the gown of a Master of Arts, and a white tie. Susan wondered whether she ought to have warned him, that day in the village, of her parents’ mild hostility towards him, which was the result of the living’s not being in their gift. Neither Nicholas nor Augusta nor Susan cared at all for Puseyites. She thought it likely that Mr Potter had influence, uncles who were bishops and deans; for the living of Lynmore was a good one, worth eight or nine hundred a year, and at twenty-five or twenty-six, he was young to be Rector, even of a poor parish.

  Susan looked up at him. He was not a handsome man, although he was tall and slender and had bright, thick, yellow hair. He stooped, and his bony shoulders were rounded, and he had rough, spatulate hands with bitten nails. His eyes were round, dark-grey in colour, and he had a blunt nose and a big, wide mouth. His chin receded; his complexion was pale, pasty, except when he was flushed for one reason or another.

  He turned out to be a very good preacher.

  *

  Luncheon was served in the breakfast room. It was a plain, heavy, beautifully cooked meal like all those at Lynmore, based on a smoking shoulder of mutton with onion sauce. Mr Potter had difficulty in eating the last two courses and they all noticed how thin he was. Conversation was easy because they did not know yet how he liked the Rectory and the change from his London cure, and whether or not he rode, and how many people he knew in Cheshire.

  Mr Potter thought Sophie very pretty. She was seventeen now, tall and slim, still rather angular, and clumsy when she was not concentrating on being graceful. A couple of curls fell from the knot at the back of her head, one over her shoulder, the other down her back, and they were long, thick and shiny, but not sleek. Her nose was not perfectly straight, as Susan’s was, but faintly aquiline, and instead of a round dimpled chin she had a small pointed one. She had picked up several freckles during the summer. Mr Potter considered that these could be compared to the patches which ladies had worn in the previous century, for they emphasised the softness of her white and gold-pink complexion. Her mouth was too pale and thin, and her cheekbones too sharp and too high. She was a beauty because of her skin and her hair and her large greenish eyes, rimmed with dark brown and framed with long lashes which were golden, as her hair was not. Mr Potter had not met many beauties, first as an undergraduate, then as a candidate for a Fellowship, then as a curate in St Giles at eighty pounds a year, but he knew that he preferred an unusual type of loveliness.

  The elder Miss Pagett he thought pretty as a miniature. Mrs Pagett, eating, reminded him of a large chocolate-brown tortoise, but he discovered at luncheon that she was an energetic hunts-woman and that the younger Miss Pagett also rode to hounds, while the elder did not.

  ‘I’ve only once been inside the Rectory,’ said Sophie, ‘but I thought it looked very gloomy and uncomfortable.’

  Mr Potter did not know quite how to reply to her, for he was as uncertain as she was about whether she were out of the schoolroom or not. She had not so far been snubbed by Augusta for speaking before she was spoken to, but her clothes differed very slightly from Susan’s.

  ‘Well, I dare say it’s not the kind of house to appeal to a young lady, Miss Pagett, but apart from the rats and the woodworm, and the ghostly noises – which are romantic, of course, although rats and woodworm are not – it’s really most comfortable … in summer,’ he stammered. He thought of her as ‘Sophie’, but he was the first person to address her as ‘Miss Pagett’. She laughed, and so did he.

  ‘Oh not woodworm, surely, Mr Potter, or rats,’ said Susan. ‘Not even Mr Leighton would have endured rats in his house although in church, naturally, it was another matter!’

  Mr Potter smiled wanly at Susan and he ran a finger round the inside of his collar. Augusta leant over and said: ‘Well, Mr Potter, what are you going to do about restoring the church? I suppose you are going to do something?’

  ‘Oh, certainly,
Mrs Pagett, as much as I possibly can, I assure you. And I will certainly rid the church of rats first of all!’

  ‘Does it have death-watch beetle?’ said Sophie.

  ‘I expect so, Miss Pagett, I have not yet – er – summoned up the courage to make sure.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Will you be – modernising the church as well as repairing it, Mr Potter?’ said Susan.

  ‘Oh indeed, Miss Pagett. I’m sure you will all agree that the box pews must be taken out – surely this is the last church in England to retain them? And then the windows …’

  ‘The box pew is a pillar of the Church of England,’ said Augusta. ‘I disapprove intensely of these modern churches, they look either like Dissenting chapels, or like poor imitations of Catholic churches.’ Mr Potter blushed fiercely. ‘Anglican clerics ought not to wear priest’s vestments, either,’ said Augusta.

  ‘Mr Potter, are you a Puseyite?’ said Sophie with wide-open eyes and a little twitch at the edge of her pale pink mouth. ‘How very shocking, to be sure.’

  ‘Now, Sophie,’ said Nicholas, ‘eat up your luncheon and don’t trouble Mr Potter. We’re not accustomed to surplices and genuflections here,’ he said, looking at the clergyman.

  ‘I would not call myself a Puseyite,’ said Mr Potter, ‘but – but I was influenced, at Oxford, by Keble, and Newman, and Pusey. I read them all and I believe that our church is the Catholic church. I would not call myself a Protestant.’

  He ate three mouthfuls of apple charlotte.

  ‘Well…’ said Susan.

  Augusta looked at her with distaste.

  ‘Do you hunt, Mr Potter?’ Susan smiled, and looked down.

  He did not hunt, because he did not believe that a priest should; and besides, he had lived all his life in towns and had had no opportunity. He gave neither reason but only said that he did not, as he had when Augusta had asked him the question fifteen minutes before.

  Sophie did not know any handsome young men, and she thought Mr Potter’s ugliness amusing. There was nothing coarse about it. It was possible that she would be asked, or he would ask her, to show him round the gardens after luncheon, while her father and Augusta napped. Susan had some work to do. She might come with them but it would make no difference. Sophie would say lazily: ‘You must see, Mr Potter, that my stepmamma thinks abuses are proper to the Church of England. We believe – because I’m a Catholic too, you know – in box pews, and hunting parsons, and plurality and lay patronage and three-decker pulpits, and bishops being translated for wordly reasons, and impropriated tithes and oh, everything which you think is wrong.’ Susan, if present, would tick her off. Mr Potter would be puzzled, because she would be talking in this way before she was even properly out; but she was not sure whether he would be earnest, thinking her a schoolgirl, and lend her a copy of The Christian Year, or something of that kind which she was supposed to have read – or amused.

  At that moment she saw his face in repose, the strong light catching his large shapeless nose and a couple of pock-marks on his jaw. She sighed. She was to wait until next spring for her presentation, and until then she would meet no young man other than this clergyman, nor, very likely, any old man other than her father. She would quite like an older man.

  After luncheon Augusta told Susan to show the gardens to Mr Potter. As they set off, Susan said: ‘You mustn’t let my stepmother offend you, you know. She does have some rather eccentric ideas but she is very brusque with everyone.’ It would be both too obvious and too intimate to add, ‘and Sophie, of course, is a minx.’

  Augusta, out for a walk herself after luncheon, saw Susan with Mr Potter from the other side of the pond. He was walking a couple of paces behind her and to the right of her, and they were climbing the steps of the third terrace, going back to the house. Augusta wanted Susan to marry the Rector. If she did not, she, Augusta, would feel obliged to take Susan to London in the spring, and she did not want to do that.

  Augusta decided that when she went back to the house, she would tell Sophie about her plan for Susan and instruct her not to waste the autumn trying to flirt with Mr Potter. Augusta thought Sophie, her physical opposite, well equipped to flirt and very lovely, she spent a good deal of money on clothes and trinkets for her, even now when nobody saw her. Sophie, clumsy and periodically energetic as she was, tore and stained them, even though she was as vain about her appearance as she had every right to be.

  ‘Don’t think, Sophie,’ said Augusta aloud to herself, ‘that what ever your father says about this I shall allow you to marry the first worthless younger son who happens to take your fancy. You must love a suitable person. I am not saying that you should marry without love – indeed, you need someone who will love you. You have a very sentimental streak.’ Probably Sophie would reply: ‘Well, yes, but not as bad a one as Susan’s, do you think?’

  *

  ‘Lynmore Hall, 17th September, 1879. My dear Sarah,’ wrote Susan, ‘I have not heard from you in weeks, and I trust you are well. How is little Henry? What a joy and comfort he must be to you – I always think that children are at their most charming as big babies. I am sure, you know, that he will outgrow his sickliness – I’ve heard of many people who had a delicate constitution as children, but outgrew it, and the outgrowing is, I believe, rather easier if the child is not over-doctored.

  ‘Will you be cross if I repeat myself and say that you yourself would be better if you were not over-doctored? You are, it is true, very small and slight, but you were never delicate, although I know you suffered considerably at your confinement. I hope this frankness from your unmarried sister does not strike you as very indelicate! but it is thirteen months now since Henry came into the world. You ought really to try to rouse yourself, dear sister, I am sure you would feel better for it. I understand you spend a good deal of time in bed each day, and do you know, when one is unhappy, there is nothing more lowering than inactivity? I think that the real reason why one ought not to complain about one’s troubles, apart from boring people, is that whenever one does so they seem worse to oneself – although I admit that one ought very occasionally to give vent to one’s feelings. But you, though you complain of being troubled, do not explain what is your real trouble. I wish I could give you some real help instead of reading you a lecture. It is a great pity that I was not in London last spring – I have not seen you since you and your husband came to stay at Christmas, the year you were married – that is nearly two whole years! How odd that marriage can thus separate sisters.

  ‘But do, pray, Sarah, give up dosing yourself with laudanum and things of that kind. I am sure that you would do far better with a simple tonic, even an old wives’ remedy! And rouse yourself – think of your little boy, and the joy he must bring. Now, that is the last word!

  ‘We are all very well here, but we do live very quietly. Naturally we (that is, Augusta and I – Father will hardly ever come) attend most of the parties round about, and we do return hospitality of that kind, but house parties in other parts of the country are forbidden to us, for Father will not have guests in the house for long periods – entertaining gentlemen with whom he has little in common, who make him feel very ill at ease, is a great strain on him. Poor Father, he has been a landed gentleman for seven years now, but still he has not adapted! I expect he is too old. Naturally everyone is very civil to him, and to us all.

  ‘I expect that when Sophie is out (indeed, I don’t doubt it) Augusta will insist on our entertaining on a much larger scale, even though she dislikes a house party as much as Father. The curious thing is, that she has almost as little experience of social intercourse as Father. Did you know that as a girl she had only one season in London, and that by a lucky accident, at the age of twenty-one? Sir Clement Fitzwilliam must have been a very queer fish!

  ‘The new Rector is a nervous young man, and very High. However, he seems amiable enough, and is very taken with Sophie – but as he is very plain, I don’t think we have much to fear on that s
core! He is interested in botany, as I discovered when I was ordered to show him round the gardens (at three-and-twenty I am too old for a chaperone, it seems), and he is writing a life of Cardinal Pole. I daresay he will calm down as he grows older, but in the meantime there may be trouble, if he takes his ritualism so far that he contravenes the Public Worship Act.

  ‘An autumn chill is just beginning to creep into the air, and bonfires are being lit. I love to smell wood-smoke in the autumn, on a fine day. Do you not miss the country in many ways? It is a great pity that your husband keeps no place in the country. I must go now, it is nearly time for tea, and then I must take advantage of the light, and dead-head the late roses in my little bower. I hope to see you soon – I shall at least surely be in London in the spring.

  ‘I remain, dear Sarah, your loving sister, Susan Pagett.’

  CHAPTER 5

  FIRST MARRIAGE

  In the spring, before Augusta and Sophie left Lynmore, Susan went alone to stay with the Templecombes at their house in Curzon Street. It was the first journey she had ever taken without a member of her family, although her maid went with her. Susan did not have the maid act as chaperone in the train, but sent her to sit in the third class, as though she, Susan, were married, or accompanied, or well over thirty. An old gentleman was with her for part of the way, and she avoided looking at him. He said that a chit of her age ought not to be allowed to travel alone on a public railway. Then a much younger man joined her later on the journey, and tried to flirt with her until a middle-aged lady came into the compartment and engaged Susan in a careful, warning conversation. Susan was very tired when she reached Kings Cross, where a carriage picked her up.

  Sarah’s house was not very large, a grey and stucco terraced building with sash windows and a heavy knocker on the black door. Inside, the walls of the hall were muffled with a plush-like paper and stair-rods glinted in the dim light. When Susan saw it last, in the summer after the wedding, the house had been unchanged by Sarah, and instead of moss-green carpet there had been a black-and-white chequerboard floor. Susan reminded herself to tell her sister that she thought it had been made very cosy.