A Quiet Adjustment (20 page)

Afterwards, she had occasion to reflect that her confidence of assuming in their relations the decisive role had suffered something of a blow. Consolation lay, perhaps, in the fact of her youth: she was not yet twenty-three, and Augusta had, for all her naivety, the benefit of seven long years of motherhood behind her. There was also the simple fact of Annabella's loneliness. She had entered by marriage a family of strangers, and she could not condemn herself too severely for deferring to their sense of her position. After a silence, which Augusta had allowed her to fill, Lady Byron only observed that ‘it was a relief, after the wilful confusions of the picturesque, to stare out at the long level prospect of working land.' Gus, however, was not to be put off, and Annabella felt, by her insistence, duly chastened. ‘The fact is,' she said, with one of her bursts into clarity and candour, ‘he hopes by these games to set us against each other. I am quite determined not to be pushed. You mustn't be either, my dear.'

‘You mean,' Annabella offered at last, ‘by the brooches?'

But it was the wrong note. ‘Oh, the brooches . . .' Augusta made a gesture with her hand. ‘You've seen for yourself, I'm sure, how generous he is.'

The game of setting the sisters against each other began that night in earnest: Augusta's warning, it seemed, had ushered in the event. It was as if her brother had set out especially to make her meaning clear.

After supper at Six Mile Bottom, it was their habit to retire together to the drawing room, where Augusta would join them again after kissing her children goodnight. Lord Byron drank brandy and fell asleep over a book, and his young wife used to occupy herself more soberly at the desk in the third window, answering letters. She was a dutiful correspondent and marked the receipt and reciprocation of each letter in a diary she reserved for the purpose. She also recorded the subject of the exchange, along with any personal reflections it had inspired in her. Annabella had been used, in the course of their honeymoon, to read to her husband extracts from their protracted epistolary affair. She had hoped to remind him—trusting, with reasonable presumption, to the effect on the poet of something like literary proof—of his love for her. The diary allowed her, if she liked, quickly to find, amidst the mass of her correspondence, a certain line or sentiment. She had often referred to it before selecting a passage from their letters, whose tone and substance, she supposed, would be most soothing to his exacerbated feelings.

This diary was his abhorrence. He particularly resented the way she recorded in it and reflected upon those letters from his sister, which she had been receiving almost daily during their stay at Halnaby and afterwards at Seaham. Her remarks on Augusta's style and penmanship were not always flattering, especially at first. And as he had been observing, with a jealous eye, the increase of intimacy their relations had enjoyed from the habit of daily intercourse at Six Mile Bottom, it occurred to him to expose to his sister what he believed to be the real character of his wife's affections, by reading out to Augusta the quiet ironic commentary Annabella had made upon their correspondence. One evening, Augusta came down from the darkened quiet of her children's bedrooms to find Lord Byron, it seemed, being assaulted by his wife. He stood laughing in front of the fire with his arm raised above his head, while Annabella, at his back, clung to his shoulder and attempted to reach the book he was holding in his hand.

The sight of her sister-in-law persuaded Annabella to desist. She disliked, above all, any show of disharmony in their married life—or rather, any show of her own deeply felt resentment at his treatment. So long, she believed, as she could seem not to mind him, there might really appear to be nothing to mind. Byron, released, sat down in one of the easy chairs by the hearth and began to read quietly. Annabella, with a forced laugh, complained that her husband ‘was being terribly provoking. She had never known what it was to have a brother, and now she was almost glad of the fact. They contributed very little to one's peace.' Augusta could only smile at that, with a grave little smile; she wanted to see what Byron was reading. After a minute, he gave them a specimen of it, in an off-hand manner that suggested he had just come across something amusing. ‘Her penmanship is fluent rather than strict. It is the writing of a child too soon thrust into the duties of womanhood, with her character hardly yet fixed. One feels, almost plaintively, the appeal of her innocence. She is as supple as a child and wriggles from one feeling to the next without any concern for consistency, just as they suit her purpose. I should not exactly like to call it innocence myself—and yet I am almost grateful for it and feel, instinctively, the superior strength of regulation. There is something, indeed, in the tone she takes in relation to her brother, an overripe sweetness, an air of too much certainty, that suggests our intercourse will take the form of a contest of loves . . .'

At this point, Annabella, who had not yet sat down, made a fierce little rush at him and, with a cry, rescued the diary from his hands. Augusta said nothing, and Lord Byron, who, after all, had offered scant resistance, seemed pleased enough with the progress of his experiment to permit its momentary interruption. In fact, he spent the rest of the evening in the best of spirits and kissed Annabella into something like quietude again, leaving her only to resent that her husband's good humour was instantly persuasive while, with the best intentions, her own high spirits struggled to awake in him any sympathetic response. Augusta and she never once referred to the matter. Their growing intimacy, in fact, was marked, like the leaf of a blighted tree, with little spots or blemishes of silence. These seemed to be everywhere multiplying, so that the sisters found, in spite of their increased familiarity, less and less to communicate to each other as the fortnight wore on—a consequence, no doubt, in keeping with Lord Byron's intention.

The evenings are what Annabella learned particularly to dread. Lord Byron, who rose late, spent the afternoons in a state of slothfulness more or less pleasant. The first effect of drink on him (and he drank steadily: a flask of brandy stood by his bed to relieve not only his bouts of insomnia but the shock of daybreak) was cheerful enough; only the nights brought out his savagery. After supper the next day, he took it into his head to amuse his wife and sister by reading to them extracts from his own correspondence with Augusta. Byron had discovered the box in which she kept their letters, somewhat jumbled together. He had spent a very pleasant afternoon, he said, reading them through, tidying them into sequence, and selecting, from the crowd of trivial affections, a few ‘choice bits'. Annabella had given him the idea. He flattered himself, he added, that she would be interested to hear the details of a relationship that had been the refuge of his youth (confined, as he had been, to the company of an ill-bred, ugly, violently doting mother) and the consolation of his manhood, after the effects of sudden fame had thrust upon him, as it were, an uncomplimentary view of the decency and good sense of her sex. He wanted her to see, above all, what it was he had given up for her—that she was not the only one in their marriage who had relinquished for the sake of it what he called ‘the comforts of home'.

It was Augusta's turn to be horrified. She came down after supper to discover Lord Byron in his easy chair, with the box on the floor supporting a glass of sherry, and a heap of letters on his lap. ‘I am sure,' she said, wringing her hands together, ‘there is nothing of interest in them to anyone but ourselves. I am such a bad hand; you always complain of it to me. You'll strain your eyes.'

‘Nonsense, Gussie,' he said. But she would not sit down, and as he began to read, she stood by his shoulder with her back to the fire, looking unhappily on. The flatness in the jointure of her nose and forehead had a stubborn, childish persistence. If
this
was her protest, Annabella considered, she could be made to endure a great deal quietly. Lord Byron took no notice and managed to put into his voice something of his sister's most gossipy manner. ‘I wonder, my dear, if you know Miss Elphinstone. She is reckoned very beautiful, though shy. At least, she hasn't any of those practised airs you often complain of in women. She eats with great appetite; she rides five times a week; and she scarcely puts seven words together from one afternoon to the next. She has become a great favourite of mine. When we walk out together in St James's, or go promenading through the park, all the men stare at her and listen to me; which, I believe, is much the best way round. Her father, they say, is rich as Croesus. I know for a fact that he buys a new horse once a month. In short, I recommend her to you in the character of wife, which article, I am told, you have been shopping for. You might be pushed to get more than one word out of her—though that, I believe, is as much as you need.'

‘Come,' Augusta said quietly, ‘put them away. For my sake, if not hers.'

Byron, ignoring her, picked up another letter. ‘Well (he writes in reply), you have lined them up very prettily, only they won't stand still long enough for me to take a sight of them. As Krausnitz said, outside the walls of Vestograd, “I'm dammed if I'll shoot at them, when they won't keep their heads up.” I wonder at your diligence, which makes me glad, I am sorry to say, of your own priceless piece of foolishness. Colonel Leigh has spared me, at least, the trouble of finding an imbecile for you. Much as I love you, I should not like to perform a similar service, my dear. But, as you say, I can “judge for myself” and a pretty piece of judgement it is. You shall hear. Last night at Earl Grey's, or rather this morning (about two by the account of the said Aurora), in one of the cooler rooms, sitting in the corner of a great chair, I observed Mr Rogers not far off colloquizing with your friend, Miss Elphinstone. What seized me I know not, but I desired him to introduce me, at which he expressed much good humour. To my astonishment, after a minute or so, up comes Rogers with your Miss E at the
pas
de
charge
of introduction. The bow was made, the curtsey returned, and so far “excellent well”, all except the disappearance of the said Rogers, who immediately marched off, leaving us in the middle of a huge apartment with about twenty scattered pairs all employed in their own concerns. While I was thinking of
nothing
to say, the Lady began—“A friend of mine—a great friend of yours”—and stopped. I wondered, heavy-hearted, if she meant my Carolinian, for there was something in her tone that suggested an indiscretion, as if she were putting between us the name of a lover. But then I remembered your letter and ventured, “Perhaps you mean a relation.” “Oh yes, a relation,” she said and stopped again. Finding this would never do, and being myself beginning to break down into shyness, I uttered your respectable name and prattled I know not what syllables. We went on for about three minutes, until we parted in a cloud of courtesies, for never did two people seem to know less what they said or did. Afterwards, I was surprised to find a real melancholy descending, for though I never much liked talking nonsense, I wasn't used to feeling it so painfully. On reflection, the cause of it struck me as simple enough. What strange parts I play, my dear sister, to please you—or rather, to satisfy your respectable sense of what will do me good, though I have always much preferred your disrespectable senses . . .'

He stopped there and read silently for a minute. Augusta tried to take the letter from his hands. The petulance with which he resisted her proved, if nothing else, that his good humour had soured. Pushing her away, he upset the glass of sherry on the rug and threw it, empty, into the fire. The sound of its breaking startled Annabella, for the first time, from the stillness of horror. Augusta, with tears in her eyes, sat down with her back to her brother. He picked up another letter and began to read. ‘My dear brother, I never supposed it possible, but I heard this morning that you are going to be married. A great
parti
, Hobhouse informed me (was it you who sent him?) with a gentleness which suggested that he guessed the probable effect of his news. Her uncle is said to be very rich. I am glad of it, for your sake—and for mine, too, and managed in the face of your friend's curiosity to appear happy, with such success that the appearance of it survived, by several hours, any necessity for keeping it up. Though when the mask slipped off at last, I seemed to have no face at all beneath it and was almost surprised, indeed, when little George and Augusta Charlotte, waking from their sleep, recognized their mother and ran into her lap.' Byron put down the letter and picked up another. ‘Do you know, Gus, I have some doubts whether this marriage will come off. The father's estates, it seems, have been dipped by electioneering. Part of the remainder is settled on Annabella, though whether that will be dowered now, I do not know. There is an uncle in the case, who is, happily, both rich and childless, and dotes on his niece; but his health is uncertain. He is a widower and may live to an hundred, and, in short, it isn't only a question of money. The bride, I believe, has her doubts (she is reckoned very virtuous and makes herself loving only by a great violence of will); and these may be played upon in such a way that the public burden of disappointment, such as it is, would fall to the groom. And—send me only a word, Gus. A word from you is all I need. Have you ever known such happiness as our quiet little escapes from other people? at Newstead? and Bennet Street, and once, on the road between Cambridge and Newmarket, on the floor of a post-chaise?'

Byron stopped and looked at his wife and, keeping his eyes upon her, said, ‘Well, Gus, I am a reformed man, ain't I?'

Annabella never forgot the silence that followed. She felt herself to be suspended in it, and trusted to her natural diffidence or air of reserve only to discover that it had taken on a kind of public quality: to say nothing seemed really the most explicit language of acknowledgement. It was up to Augusta, in the end, to break the spell. ‘I believe I have noticed some improvement,' she offered at last.