Elizabeth Mansfield (7 page)

“How terrible,” Letty said with real sympathy. “Do you not have a brother or sister to keep you company?”

“No, I have none. Have you?”

“Yes, indeed. I have three sisters and a brother. Although only one sister is here with me.”

“You have a sister here in Bath?” he asked interestedly.

“Yes, my sister Prudence. She has a slight indisposition and had to stay indoors today, but I’m sure she’ll be out as soon as the weather turns.”

“Well, well,” Brandon smiled, “there will be three of us. That
will
be a merry change, if I may say so.” Then, realizing that he was perhaps taking too much for granted, he looked at Letty shamefacedly and added a stumbling, “By your leave, of course …”

Letty suppressed a laugh and asked him what he’d been reading. The young man explained that he’d been studying the classics at Oxford, but that he’d contracted a severe inflammation of the lungs and had been sent home to recover.

“I’m surprised, in that case,” Letty said, “that your mother permits you to come out on a day like this.”

“Oh, I’m quite recovered now,” Brandon assured her. “Healthy as the proverbial horse, actually. I’m only marking time until I can get back to school next month.”

“I see. So your reading is by way of preparation?”

“Yes. I’ve fallen a bit behind, you see, and I’m trying to catch up. Today, I’ve been going over Thucydides again.”

“Really? Reading history in Greek doesn’t sound like much fun for someone just recovering from a long illness,” Letty said with both admiration and commiseration.

“Oh, by your leave, I beg to disagree,” the young man said earnestly. “I love history, and the story of the Peloponnesian War is particularly fascinating.”

“My!” Letty said with a smile, “I suppose it must be.”

The admiring look was all the encouragement the pale young man needed. He launched into a detailed explanation of those parts of Thucydides that he found particularly exciting and only stopped when Letty saw that her aunt and Mrs. Peake were saying their adieus. Brandon took her hand, thanked her for listening, hoped he had not been a crashing bore, told her that she was “very easy to talk to, for a female,” and hoped, by her leave, to see her again on the morrow.

Letty, walking home with her aunt through the continuing rain, felt quite content. Brandon Peake was small of stature, shy, gauche, and somewhat pedantic—certainly not the sort of man about whom she could weave romantic dreams—but he was well educated, sweet natured, and interesting to listen to. He had helped her while away the morning so pleasantly that she had thought of Roger Denham scarcely more than half-a-dozen times. Perhaps her aunt was right—perhaps here she would recover from the depression that had enveloped her for so long.

The following morning, Letty and Lady Upsham returned to the Pump Room. Brandon Peake immediately appeared to take Letty for a stroll around the room, while his mother and Lady Upsham sipped the waters and enjoyed a cozy chat on one of the rout benches that were placed in every convenient nook. No sooner had Brandon launched into his topic for the morning, which was to illustrate the greater objectivity and re-creative powers of Thucydides over Herodotus—a point which Letty had no intention of disputing—when he was interrupted by the appearance of the Master of Ceremonies who begged leave to introduce Sir Ralph Gilliam to Miss Glendenning. Sir Ralph was a lad of twenty, with two large front teeth and an occasional stammer. He expressed his delight at having discovered “some k-kindred souls” at what had previously seemed an unconscionably dull resort, and he followed them around the room, staring at Letty in adoration and interrupting Brandon’s lecture at the most crucial points to say how delighted he was to have made Miss Glendenning’s acquaintance.

“I thought you said there were no other young people here,” Letty remarked to Brandon when Sir Ralph had at last taken his departure.

“By your leave, that was certainly my impression,” Brandon said, puzzled. “I wonder if there are any others lurking about.”

There were indeed others, as the next morning was to prove. The threesome was further increased by the addition of two more gentlemen—one was Osbert Caswell, a London youth who affected the dégagé in his hairstyle and casual dress, and the other a Mr. William Woodward, the stocky, sturdy, and serious son and heir of a Lincolnshire country squire—and a young lady named Gladys Summer-Smythe, whose large and somewhat vacuous blue eyes shone with joy as she declared her surprise at discovering so many young gentlemen sojourning in Bath. Letty, Brandon, and Sir Ralph gathered with the three newcomers near the alcove that housed the clock and spent the morning exchanging foolish pleasantries. Only Brandon remained silent, glowering at the others helplessly. Letty, noticing his displeasure, took his arm and drew him aside to whisper, “I thought you would be delighted to have so many young persons with whom to consort.”

“Not any more,” he said bluntly. “By your leave, Miss Glendenning, they are all too foolish to converse with on any worthwhile subject. I can only say, as did Dionysius the Elder, that ‘unless speech be better than silence, one should be silent.’ And where,” he added somewhat jealously, “were they before
you
arrived? You seem to be the flame, if I have your leave to say so, which has attracted this group of moths.”

Letty laughed and turned to Sir Ralph, who was so overjoyed by this bit of attention that he confided to her that his friends all called him “Rabbit,” and he hoped she would do the same. Brandon, completely disgusted, announced at this point that he had promised to restore Miss Glendenning to her aunt and, ignoring the vociferous objections of the other gentlemen, bore her away.

But Letty’s reign as the Queen of Bath was to be short-lived. At the end of the week, as soon as the sun made its appearance, Prue emerged from her “sickroom” and announced her intention of joining her aunt and her sister on their daily expedition to the Pump Room. After lengthy argument, she succeeded in convincing Aunt Millicent that she was indeed free of any significant symptoms (for anyone could see that the slight sniffle that still troubled her was the merest trifle and might well disappear after she’d drunk a few glasses of Bath’s salubrious water), and she ran gleefully to her room to begin the arduous task of picking the perfect dress in which to make her first appearance in Bath society.

Katie, who had been taking care of her during her illness, was consulted at every step of the dressing process, and it was Katie who decided that the pink dimity was too schoolgirlish, the blue linen more suited for early spring, and the red Norwich crepe too unflattering to her coloring. At last, bedecked in a new morning dress of green jaconet, tied tightly under the bosom with silver ribbons,
peasant style, and wearing a fetching bonnet of beige straw with the tiniest poke and a mass of green feathers, she won Katie’s approving smile and set off with her sister and her aunt to set Bath afire.

Her entrance into the Pump Room caused all heads to turn, a situation that made Letty blush with embarrassment but that did not at all disturb Prue, who reveled in the attention. “It’s better to be looked at than to be ignored,” she whispered to her sister flippantly.

Mrs. Peake expressed the view of the majority of the onlookers when she remarked to Lady Upsham that her younger niece was a striking-looking young woman, “although perhaps not quite as lovely as the elder, who, being taller, slimmer, and more subdued in coloring, has a beauty that is more haunting because it is more subtle.”

The subtlety was lost on most of the young men, however, and the ease with which they dropped their hearts into Prue’s hand boded ill for the development of her character. From the moment that Letty introduced her sister into their circle, Prue became the focus of their attentions. Unlike Letty, who had treated them all with equal and polite indifference, Prue smiled flirtatiously at each one of them, laughed at their quips, teased them out of their shyness, and played one against the other with a skill that belied the fact that she was just out of the schoolroom and had never met a young man in her life before, if one didn’t count the dolts her brother had brought home from time to time.

Brandon Peake, however, remained aloof. Prue had smiled and flirted with him at this first meeting as she had with the others, but Brandon had not responded. He remained at Letty’s side, watching the little scene Prue was enacting. After a while, he drew Letty away from the others, led her to a bench, and endeavored to entertain her by expounding on Plato’s view of the immortality of the soul as set forth in the
Phaedo.
But while he spoke, his eyes flitted to Prue every few moments. Something about her behavior disturbed him, yet he couldn’t help watching her. “By your leave, Miss Glendenning,” he said to Letty after a while, “I hope you won’t mind my remarking that I find your sister’s behavior a little forward.”

“Forward, Mr. Peake? I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean … by your leave of course … that perhaps it will not be considered seemly—Bath being a rather respectable place, you know—for a young lady to flirt so obviously with three gentlemen at once.”

Letty jumped up and frowned down at Brandon angrily. He had never seen her in such a mood before. “Oh … I … beg your pardon. Perhaps I should not have spoken …” he began.

“No, you should not have,” Letty said coldly.

Brandon got to his feet awkwardly, realizing that his words had been ill-chosen. Letty, ignoring his embarrassment, drew herself up to her full height, which was a full three inches greater than his, and said curtly, “If Bath society finds anything objectionable in a young lady who is doing nothing more reprehensible than laughing with her acquaintances, then it is made up of more dowdy a group of gudgeons than I had supposed!”

“I … I did not mean to offend you, Miss Glendenning,” Brandon said miserably. “I only meant … After all, even the great Sophocles said—in the
Ajax,
you may remember—that women should be seen and not heard.”

“Well, I
don’t
remember, not having read it. And it is an extremely silly statement, even if it
was
Sophocles who said it, and the Greek women were very wise to ignore it, which they certainly did, if I know anything about Greek history.”

Brandon lowered his head. “I most humbly beg your pardon, Miss Glendenning. I should not have presumed … That is, it was not my place …”

Letty, observing his discomfiture, softened. “Very well, Mr. Peake. Let us speak of it no further.
Now, please sit down again and continue with your description of Tartarus. I find it most interesting.”

Brandon, sighing with relief, resumed his lecture. Her ready forgiveness and her sincere attention to a subject so close to his heart did much to restore the pleasant comfort of their relationship. By the time they parted, they had agreed to call each other by their given names. It was only when he had to take his leave of her sister, Prue, that his awkwardness reasserted itself. He colored, stumbled over his words, and he took Prue’s proffered hand so gingerly that one would have thought she carried the plague. When Prue glanced at Letty with questioning eyes, Letty could scarcely refrain from giggling.

“What on earth was wrong with Mr. Peake?” Prue demanded as soon as Brandon had left, and they stood waiting for Aunt Millicent to accompany them home.

“I’m afraid, Prue,” Letty said with a laugh, “that Brandon finds you a bit overwhelming. I think he finds you
fast.
”

“Fast!” Prue repeated, coloring angrily. “Of all the nasty—! What a stuffed goose! If you ask me, I find
him
a slow-top! He and his incessant ‘by your leaves’ are the outside of enough!”

“Well, you needn’t fire up at
me.
I’m not responsible for what he says and does.”

“You spent the entire morning in his pocket! What you see in him I can’t imagine. He may be somewhat handsome, if one ignores his horrid spectacles, but he is inches shorter than you, and such a bore besides—”

“That’s not fair.
You
may find him a bore, but I do not. I admit that he may be somewhat stuffy, but his conversation is so scholarly that I can’t help but learn a great deal from him.”

“Honestly, Letty, what can you possibly learn from him that’s interesting?” Prue demanded skeptically.

“Many things. For instance, did you know that the saying ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ originally referred to
women
? Sophocles wrote it, in the
Ajax.
”

Prue glared at her sister. “
Women
should be seen and not heard? Hmmmph! I can well imagine in what context
that
was quoted! It was directed at me, I have no doubt. Thank you so much, Letitia, for your scholarly lesson of the day. But if tomorrow’s discourse is like today’s, I hope you will spare me the recital of it!” And she flounced off to find her aunt.

***

With the Bath season already well under way, the Assembly Rooms were the scene of nightly activities of great variety and interest; yet circumstances had conspired to prevent Lady Upsham and her charges from attending a single play, concert, or ball since their arrival. Therefore, Lady Upsham’s announcement that they were to attend the evening’s concert in the Upper Rooms so delighted her two nieces that their little tiff of the morning was forgotten. The afternoon was happily spent in a shopping expedition to Milsom Street where Aunt Millicent, in an unaccustomed burst of good spirits, insisted on buying a new pair of gloves for Letty and a Florentine shawl for Prue. “It will be a special evening,” she said, as if in apology for her unwonted generosity, “for it is your first formal appearance in Bath society. And nothing makes an evening feel more special than wearing something new.”

Her generosity was more than rewarded, not only by the sincere gratitude of her nieces, but by the looks of admiration the girls received on their entrance into the Upper Rooms that evening. Both girls had chosen to wear blue. Prue wore a graceful lustring with small puffed sleeves and a three-inch flounce at the bottom, and she had thrown the new shawl lightly over her shoulders. Letty wore a Tiffany silk overdress, which was buttoned beneath the bust with a pearl clasp and revealed a glimpse of its white satin underdress when she walked. A large number of people had gathered to hear the concert,
and the din of their voices was perceptibly lowered when Letty and Prue entered the room and stood hesitantly in the doorway. Heads turned and people stared. Had they been alone, Prue would have been strikingly attractive with her red-gold hair, diminutive figure, and laughing eyes, and Letty, lovely with her auburn curls, willowy grace, and serene expression. But together in the doorway, the girls made a breathtaking picture. Aunt Millicent, aware of the admiring attention her nieces had attracted, was content.