Friday 16 April
My sister Eleanor who, at the age of thirteen, is promising to become a beauty, was amused when I told her about the morning’s events, particularly by the possibility of my becoming the heir.
‘On, no, Henry! You cannot inherit the estate!’ she said, laughing, as she gambolled through the gardens in front of me, taking joy in the early-spring sunshine. ‘You will never make a good heir. You are not nearly reckless or rakish enough.’
‘I had the same thought myself. It is essential, I suppose, for heirs to be reckless and rakish?’ I asked her.
‘You know it is! You have read as many novels as I have – well, almost! It is unthinkable to have a son and heir who is a sober and reliable person. He has to spend his life seducing virtuous young women, or drinking himself into a stupor, or placing bets on whether he can drive from London to Brighton in seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds—’
‘Which of course he manages to do, though the distance is at least fifty miles and the feat is impossible.’
‘And he has to turn good, honest families out of their homes when he has nothing better to do, and then give their houses to his mistresses ...’
‘... even though the good, honest families are so virtuous that they have attended church every Sunday for their whole lives ...’ I said.
‘... and so poor that they have nowhere else to go, and will therefore die in the snow,’ finished Eleanor. ‘Now Frederick is a very good first-born son. He is wild and handsome and he comes home drunk every night, and he is always losing money over some ridiculous bet. But you would make a very bad squire, for you have never done any of these things.’
We turned along the chestnut walk.
‘Not yet, I grant you,’ I said. ‘But in the unlikely event of my ever inheriting, I shall try to give satisfaction. I don’t suppose that I can become a rake all at once, but I will take it in stages. I will begin by making a mildly scandalous remark to the Lowrys’ governess, perhaps commenting on her shapely ankles. I will make a similar small beginning on gambling, betting five shillings on whether or not it will rain on Saturday, and proceed from there.’
Eleanor laughed and ran through into the walled garden, where we were sheltered from the wind.
‘You will never make a good villain,’ she said. ‘You will have to resign yourself to being a hero.’
‘I have been thinking just the same thing, for I have the necessary dark eyes and rather dark hair. Alas, honesty compels me to mention that I do not have a hero’s height, nor his noble mien nor his wounded heart.’
‘You are still growing, I suppose, so you will be taller by and by. Your mien is noble enough, in a dim light. As for your lack of a wounded heart, that is because you have not yet met your heroine,’ she told me.
‘Heroines are hard to find. I have looked everywhere but I have never yet met one.’
‘Miss Grey was looking at you in church the other day.’
‘But Miss Grey is a bold young woman with brown hair. And heroines, as you know, have golden hair and blue eyes and they are demure in their manners. Their personalities, too, are of a very particular type. They spend their infant years nursing a dormouse—’
‘Or feeding a poor, starving canary—’
‘Or watering a rose bush, which repays their kindness by transforming itself from a straggling stick into a bush covered in rampant flowers. Yet I have never met such a one. Young ladies nowadays seem to spend their time playing cricket with their brothers or climbing trees, instead of lisping nursery songs to their prettily wounded animals.’
‘What a sorry place the world is! If you have not met such a paragon of virtue by the advanced age of sixteen, then I am forced to admit that you possibly never will,’ she said with a sigh.
‘I have resigned myself to a lifetime of celibacy for that very reason. Without a heroine who has been a part of my life since our cradles, until she is mysteriously sent away to unknown relatives following the death of her parents, there is no hope of happiness for me.’
‘There is, perhaps, one possibility which you have overlooked,’ she said, pulling a book out of her pocket. ‘I believe that, occasionally, heroines are to be met with on holidays abroad.’
She danced into the arbour, where she sat down on a bench and turned her book over in her hands.
‘How foolish of me,’ I said, sitting down beside her. ‘Now why did I not think of that? I will take a walking holiday in Italy as soon as I am old enough to arrange my own adventure.’
She opened her book.
‘What is it this time?’ I asked her. ‘Milton, Pope, Prior? A paper from the Spectator, perhaps, or a chapter from Sterne? Or is it a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons?’
‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘It is something much better. It is A Sicilian Romance.’
‘What? A novel?’ I asked, affecting horror.
‘A novel,’ she assented.
‘And is it very horrid?’ I asked.
‘I certainly hope so.’ She thrust it into my hands. ‘You may read to me as I sew. I have to finish hemming this handkerchief. Mama says she will deprive me of novels altogether if I do not pay more attention to my needlework.’
And out of her pocket she drew needle, thread, and the handkerchief.
‘It is a good thing you are still in your schoolgirl’s dresses, for such large pockets will be a thing of the past when you start wearing more fashionable clothes – which will not be too long now, I think. You are very nearly a young lady.’
‘Pooh!’ she said. ‘Now read to me, if you please!’
‘Very well. But I see you have already begun.’
‘Not really. I have only read the first few pages, where the narrator says that he came across the ruins of the castle Mazzini whilst travelling in Sicily, and that a passing monk happened to lend him an ancient manuscript which related the castle’s history.’
‘A noble beginning. And who lives in this castle? The heroine, I presume?’
‘Yes. Her name is Julia.’
‘And does she have any brothers and sisters?’
‘A brother, Ferdinand, and a sister, Emilia.’
‘I am glad to hear it. Brothers are always useful. Their mother is dead, I suppose, driven to an early grave by their cruel and imperious father? And he has married again, a woman who is jealous of her beautiful stepdaughters, but likes her stepson because he brings his handsome friends home?’
‘Have you been peeking?’ she asked me suspiciously.
‘My dear sister, I do not need to peek to know that. A novel would not be worth reading without those essential facts.’
‘Well, you are right. And now the stepmother has persuaded the father to go on holiday with her, taking only Ferdinand and leaving Julia and Emilia at the castle in the care of their poor, dear departed Mama’s friend – Madame de Menon.’
‘Very well. So now I will begin:
‘A melancholy stillness reigned through the halls, and the silence of the courts, which were shaded by high turrets, was for many hours together undisturbed by the sound of any foot-step. Julia, who discovered an early taste for books, loved to retire in an evening to a small closet in which she had collected her favourite authors. This room formed the western angle of the castle: one of its windows looked upon the sea, beyond which was faintly seen, skirting the horizon, the dark rocky coast of Calabria; the other opened towards a part of the castle, and afforded a prospect of the neighbouring woods.’
‘I am glad she likes to read,’ said Eleanor, ‘but I wish something horrible would happen.’
‘Your wish is about to be granted,’ I said.