A Quiet Adjustment (3 page)

The drawing room was empty when they descended to it. A table had been permanently arranged against the tall corner window; it overlooked a chestnut tree, spreading its shade on the street. The chair creaked as Sir Ralph rested his weight on it; he always, as he remarked, over-indulged himself in London. There was something about the city in season that dispirited him: such energy and youthful gaiety. He had never himself in his own youth participated in the pleasures of it, much. That is, before he had set his sights upon her mother; and
then
he had condescended to ‘enjoy himself,' as he put it, ‘only as much as was required to gain his prize, and no more.' They began to play; Annabella as usual deferred to her father the opening sally. It was among the carefully nurtured family illusions that Sir Ralph was shy and slow in conversation. In fact, he had a tremendous patience for repetition and those layered confessions it was capable of easing away. The difference that age had wrought in him, he continued, was, that while he had always detested the buzz of social life, he had lately begun to be ashamed of his comfortable, solitary inclinations. And he drank too much and ate too much to occupy those appetites that flourished in him by way of compensation. Judy and he intended shortly to return to Seaham, once they had seen Annabella happily established. ‘It did his heart good,' he added, and his daughter guessed at once that this was the conclusion towards which he had with some difficulty been working himself up, ‘to see how . . . graciously Annabella had taken to
the scene
.'

His real intention, his daughter suspected, was only clothed in praise. He wanted to find out (perhaps her mother had sent him) just what it was that had put Annabella in a pet. It could only be, they reasonably supposed, a question of love. He may have hoped by admitting his own penchant for withdrawal to set the stage for her more romantic confession. And among the calculations that occupied Annabella, as her bishop began to take control of the board, was whether she was confident enough in her feelings to submit them to the test of her father's curiosity. Was there anything—and her attraction as yet could hardly be defined by its object, so slight had their acquaintance been—about her attitude towards that family which could lead to a more general exposure? She said, as she exchanged, with a knock of pieces, her castle for his knight, ‘I have been reading, in the company of half of London, the adventures of
Childe
Harold
; in fact, just this afternoon I finished. Have you seen it? If not, I shall lend you my copy. I should like to hear what you think.'

He had not; it would give him the greatest pleasure, etc.

‘In general, as you know,' she continued, ‘I disdain to follow fashions; but there are occasions when they reach such a fever as to require of the spectator, at the very least, his opinion of the fashion itself. It was in this spirit that I began to read, but I soon found that there was more to sustain my interest than a mere social curiosity. It contains many stanzas'—Annabella's philosophical vein had always been indulged with scarcely discernible irony, and Sir Ralph listened patiently now—‘in the best style of poetry; if anything, he is too much of a mannerist. That is, he wants variety in the turns of his expression. He excels most in the delineation of deep feeling, in reflections relative to human nature. I thought of him just now, Papa, because his case makes an interesting contrast to your own: he despairs of an excess of that capacity for whose deficiency in yourself you have expressed such regret. I mean, the capacity for taking pleasure. That despair frames the moral of his
Pilgrimage
—one which, I think, no one need shame himself for admiring. It has given me at least one sleepless night; and, as you have seen, a sleepy head-achy sort of a day.'

‘There is, of course,' Ralph was quick to agree, ‘nothing shameful in that.'

Annabella had grown accustomed to beating her father, regularly and with something like carelessness, at chess. She had his king now in a terrible thicket of pawns, and he was silent a minute as he considered his situation. ‘No, there is no help,' he concluded. His face grew very red in thoughtfulness. The blonde grey hairs of his brows stood out palely and his eyes took on a blinking dimness: he seemed old, at odds and ends. Annabella was but thirteen when she first defeated her father at chess. Victory had surprised and delighted her; it had set up their relation to each other for years to come. She had just begun to bristle at her mother's constant example and used to greet Sir Ralph's returns from parliament with something like a lover's restless welcome. ‘Shall we have a game, father, before dinner? Shall we just sit down—you see, I have laid out the table . . .' But she had lately had to suppress a strange sort of disinclination to watching him lose. Partly, to be sure, out of pity; but her sense of triumph did not lack the faint frictive energy of impatience, which she had recently learned to recognize in her mother's own treatment of Sir Ralph. He was no fool; his temper was good; his taste in matters of wit and poetry was both joyously inclined and well considered; but there was something about his good nature that inspired, even in the kindest and best-disposed of his acquaintance, the desire to abuse it. And Annabella could not help resenting in him a weakness that, she suspected, such resentment would help her to expunge from her own disposition.

In a guilty burst of more filial spirit, she said, ‘I saw him, Lord Byron, that is, today for the second time. We danced together, I mean, we danced separately, at a waltzing party given by Lady Caroline last week. He waltzed with his sister, a very pretty woman though shy as a wren. And then I read his poem and then I met him again at Mr Campbell's lecture. It was particularly gratifying for me, so soon after finishing, to test my sensibilities, my reading of his verse, against what I saw of his actual character, revealed in person.'

‘And what,' Ralph asked, ‘of his actual character, did you see revealed?'

After a hesitation: ‘Mostly the back of his head.'

It was one of those little triumphs of her good humour that were only ever brought out by Sir Ralph. Even so, she suspected, in that half-second of consideration, an inclination to deceive. She wanted to keep from her father any sense of the seriousness of her . . . preoccupation—an intention that constituted nothing less than the first acknowledgement of it to herself.

At dinner,
Childe
Harold
came up again in conversation—specifically, the moral character of its author. Lady Gosford had not read the poem, a fact which she happily admitted and which in no way restricted her interest in or contribution to the discussion. She was a round comfortable woman, in whom the pleasures of the table had preserved, by the outward pressure on her fattening face, something youthful and good-natured in her countenance. Lady Milbanke was, by force of opposition if nothing else, her great and particular friend. And though their relations, especially in the course of the Milbankes' extended stays in London, were not without their little frictions, the two old companions were on the whole each grateful for the correcting influence of the other. Their friendship took shape from their competing philosophies; and where Judy was, at least in principle, strict, abstemious and actively charitable, Lady Gosford indulged her own and others' appetites with equal complacence.

She now took the side of Lord Byron's admirers. ‘No harm could come,' she insisted, ‘of a miserable libertine, whose various immoralities serve only the cause of his unhappiness. Besides,' she added, ‘my own experience suggests to me that his sins are more talked about than read.' She drained her claret and gestured for more. As the butler made his rounds, Judy (Annabella was pleased to note) placed her hand above the glass. An act of abstinence that her daughter delighted in, not so much as an example of her pretensions or as a step towards her reform, but out of admiration for Judy's self-control: no private weakness could corrupt Lady Milbanke's public sense of her position. ‘You take him altogether too willingly at his own estimation,' she countered. ‘I have glanced over the volume. That famous misery is only the fancy dress of his desires. He pinches himself into it as some women powder their faces, to look interesting. It is really the worst of his bad example that he has made a fashion of unhappiness. I should almost prefer it that the young surrendered to the greatest of vices; instead, they take on the aspect of them and study to appear melancholy. No, the real wickedness of
Childe
Harold
is a peculiar form of hypocrisy in which everybody strives to seem much worse than they really are.'

‘Do you not think him sincere?' Sir Ralph inquired of his wife.

‘I do not.'

‘But surely that is a question that cannot be answered merely from a perusal of the text. It requires a most particular knowledge,' Lord Gosford, who had kept silent, now intruded, ‘of correspondence between word and deed.' A thin, straight-backed man, he presented to the company's view rather the surface shine of spectacles than his colourless eyes. Sir Ralph was somewhat in awe of him. Ralph was a conscientious but quiet parliamentarian; and though Lord Gosford spoke little enough in the House, that little was seen as being very much to the point. His influence was of the kind that consisted as much in the rumour of it as in its original force. His opinions were more sought after than known. In the friendship of their marriages, Ralph had made an amiable alliance with Lady Gosford—to be comfortable together; but their relations, they both suspected, lacked the electric charge of Judy and Lord Gosford's quarrelling.

‘I believe,' Sir Ralph said, ‘that we have to hand a source of that particular knowledge.' Annabella had already begun to blush, as her father proudly turned towards her. ‘Did you not dance with him, my dear?'

‘I did not,' she said. ‘He danced exclusively with his sister.'

‘But you have met him, have you not?'

‘I have not had the honour of an introduction.'

‘Come, come,' Lord Gosford interrupted. ‘You have seen him; you have formed an opinion.'

Annabella bowed her head. Lady Milbanke looked at her, raising her thin lips into a smile. She enjoyed with a not unloving detachment any occasion for putting her daughter to the test. ‘And will you favour us with that opinion, my dear?' Nor was Annabella, for all her shyness, reluctant to claim her share of the conversation. She had been the almost unhoped-for consolation of her parents' later days. After fifteen years of marriage, they had as good as resigned themselves to childlessness. And the sense of blessing, which her birth had bestowed upon the Milbankes, had only increased as Annabella grew to womanhood. Each stage of her youth had brought home to her parents a consciousness of that variety of life with which her late arrival had favoured them, and nothing had engaged their curiosity more than her coming out. Annabella, as she began to speak, felt the warmth not of nerves but of their combined looks; and she was sufficiently the daughter of her parents' love that she believed their admiration to be no more than her natural due.

‘I have seen him now,' she said, addressing her eyes to Lord Gosford, ‘twice. Once, at a waltzing-party got up by Lady Caroline, and today at a lecture. He appears to be a very independent observer of mankind—his views of life participate that bitterness of temper which, I believe, is partly constitutional and the cause of much of his wretchedness. His mouth continually betrays the acrimony of his spirit. I should add that I have seen him humorous, I have seen him playing the fool; but to my taste, unhappiness suits him better than its inverse. It certainly comes more naturally. His eye is restlessly thoughtful. He talks much and I have heard some of his conversation, which sounds like the true sentiments of the speaker. I should judge him sincere; at least, as far as he can be in society . . . He often hides his mouth with his hand when speaking, a diffidence as pleasing as it is surprising in one little noted for the delicacy of his views.'

There was a silence in which Annabella ventured to add, with a degree of mischievous intent she could scarcely measure herself, ‘He argued, as I hear, with all his family; this was the cause of his foreign travels. My great friend Mary Montgomery, you know, is acquainted with him and was very much shocked at hearing him say, “Thank heaven! I have quarrelled with my mother for ever.”'

‘There,' cried Lady Gosford, ‘surely there can be no greater proof of his sincerity!'

Lady Milbanke bowed and smiled at her old friend, to acknowledge the joke at her expense. Motherhood was the subject of many of their disagreements; Lady Gosford was childless and occasionally bridled at Judy's maternal certitudes. She was glad of any chance to score a point off them. ‘I suspect from what I've seen of her that Mary was rather amused than shocked,' Judy answered. ‘My daughter seems happy to take Lord Byron at his word. I'm sure he could not have painted a better picture of one of his heroes. Perhaps he even trusts the likeness himself—I should not venture to say.'

‘In that case,' Lord Gosford declared, with the briskness of a final judgement, ‘we may take it that you have every faith in his sincerity, if nothing else; which was as far as our question went.'

‘That depends,' Judy replied, ‘on whether sincerity is to be considered a talent or a virtue. If a virtue, by all means, credit him with as much sincerity as you like; I am sure his intentions are honest. But if we mean by sincerity a talent for examining our own feelings, for judging them in the full justice of indifference, and for expressing them as clearly, as precisely, as it lies within our power to do—then no, the question is only just begun.'

‘Surely,' Lady Gosford said, ‘no one can doubt Lord Byron's eloquence. Of that, the booksellers themselves have the happy proof.'

‘No, in his eloquence I have every faith and have seen by my daughter's account some evidence of his power to persuade. But we are, I believe, generally accustomed in talking of persuasion to distinguish between the truth of its object and the facility with which it is gained.'