In London, there was nobody to receive Lady Vernon except for Alicia Johnson, who could only invite her to drink tea at Edward Street when Mr. Johnson was at his club. Rumors of Lady Vernon’s scandalous conduct while at Langford had reached him, and though he was not prepared to forgive his ward for marrying against his wishes and was gratified that her husband’s immoderate conduct had proven his objections to be justified, he did not think that it would be quite respectable to meet the woman who had added to the Manwarings’ discord.
“He does not hate you,” Mrs. Johnson assured her friend. “Mr. Johnson cannot hate anybody, he has not the heart for it. But you see how it is. We are intimate friends and your brother-in-law is very high in the banking house now, and your cousin is Sir James Martin, so slighting you would have an awkward look—yet as Eliza was his ward, something is due her. He cannot bring himself to approve of one connection, nor to insult the other, and so he takes himself to his club to avoid the situation altogether. So, how did you leave them all at Langford? Eliza is very angry at Maria for not fixing Sir James while he was there. Poor Maria will never catch anybody with such a placid and reserved disposition—artlessness will never do in love matters!”
“The truth of that matter is,” replied Lady Vernon with candor, “Maria Manwaring does not care for Sir James at all and looks to marriage only in a very general way, as the means by which she may escape from the unhappiness at home. Poor girl, she might have made a suitable match by this time if Eliza had not been so determined that she must marry Sir James.”
“Ah, but one cannot blame her—he is so very handsome and rich. Eliza might be almost forgiven for aiming so high, and Miss Vernon, if I may say so, cannot be forgiven for resisting the idea of a match with her cousin. What will you do if she continues to refuse him?”
“I suppose I shall have to marry him myself!” Lady Vernon laughed.
“Well, Miss Summers’s young ladies will make her more reasonable. They know the importance of husbands, and their influence will do what a mother’s cannot. So you are really to go to Churchill? How long must we postpone the pleasure of seeing one another again?”
“Alas, if it were in my power to invite you, I would, but I have no standing there. We must wait and see how far I can win over Mrs. Vernon.”
“I will not depend upon her hospitality. The Parkers have just come back from a fortnight in Sussex. They mean to take Billings-hurst after the new year, and Mrs. Parker said that they dined with a half-dozen families in the neighborhood and yet did not once see anything of the Vernons. She says that Mr. Vernon and his wife go nowhere and keep no company—it is quite as bad as Mr. Johnson! But if I cannot visit you in the country, I can at least be a friend to Miss Vernon in town.”
“You will have to suffer Mrs. Johnson’s invitations—that cannot be avoided,” Lady Vernon told her daughter at the time of their parting. “The sacrifice of an hour or two a week will not be too trying.”
“And if it is,” Frederica replied, “I will introduce her to one of the girls at Miss Summers’s—a nice orphan girl from a good family ought to satisfy all of her maternal ambitions.”
chapter twenty
Mrs. Charles Vernon took a great deal of pleasure from living in as unvarying a style as a marriage and four children would permit. She never traveled from her home and took no delight in society beyond that of her family circle at Parklands. She had a natural complacency about everything around her, and had her circle been wider, and her routine more varied, she might have felt compelled to acquire something by way of accomplishment or education that would have justified her good opinion of herself. This good opinion, however, rested solely on her being the daughter of Sir Reginald deCourcy, and the niece of Lady Hamilton, which she could cultivate very well by going nowhere and doing as little as possible.
Her husband’s frequent engagements in London, his attachment to a very fast set, his penchant for gaming and cards, his coolness toward her parents, and his indifference to their children were less troublesome to her than the prospect of any alteration in her routine, and the acquisition of Churchill Manor, therefore, was not entirely welcome. She had known that it must come someday, but had always hoped that it would not be until after her husband was dead, when the property would pass to their eldest son and spare her the trouble of uprooting herself from Kent.
To be sure, the distance from Parklands Manor to Churchill was not great, but it was very far to one who had never lived a quarter-mile from two very indulgent parents. At Churchill, there would be no fond mother to bring her gossip and hear her complaints, and she would have to be hospitable to strangers rather than pampered by her parents.
Regarding Churchill itself, she could find little fault and wrote to her mother the very day of her arrivaclass="underline"
I confess, madam, that while the wooded areas are quite somber, and the grounds nothing at all when compared to Parklands, the house is a good one, the furniture fashionable, and everything is fitted out with elegance and taste. I cannot think that a woman of my sister-in-law’s reputation can have had the refinement to effect such an improvement in the property over what it must have been, for Mr. Vernon’s accounts of his youth had made Churchill Manor out to be a very uninviting place. We shall have to get a new housekeeper and cook at once, but I think that we may wait until after our visit to you at Christmas to engage the rest of the household—for many of the former staff left Churchill Manor after Sir Frederick’s death. I shall be anxious to hear your advice on how the business will best be managed.
Lady deCourcy responded to her daughter’s letter with a great deal of advice on how she was to direct her household, how thoroughly she must go over the cook’s accounts and how few dishes she might get by on when only the clergyman and his wife came to dine, expressing her confidence that anything she had forgot would be resolved when the Vernons came back to Parklands for Christmas.
This plan was at the heart of all of their succeeding letters, which invariably concluded with when we return to Kent at Christmastime or when you and my dear grandchildren come to us at Christmas. It was, therefore, particularly irksome to Mrs. Vernon when her husband showed her Lady Vernon’s letter. Mrs. Vernon was all astonishment and immediately protested. “After all that we have heard from my Aunt Hamilton of her conduct at Langford! Conduct that showed no regard for the feelings of her hostess or the memory of her late husband! Can you think of bringing such a woman into our home? To expose our children to her! I am certain that my mother would never approve such a plan.”
Charles Vernon was no more eager to receive Lady Vernon than his wife, but the prospect of going back to the dull festivities of Parklands and the oppressive meddling of Lady deCourcy was even less inviting than receiving his brother’s widow. The reports of Lady Vernon’s improper conduct at Langford persuaded him that she could not make any appeal to him that was based upon a claim of rectitude, nor would she find an ally to defend her in the wake of the scandalous rumors that had come out of Somerset. “Lady Vernon can exert no influence that your own excellent character will not offset, my dear,” her husband replied. “It need not prevent us from spending our Christmas with your family. You may invite them here.”
That suggestion was put forth in the full knowledge that Sir Reginald’s frail health would not permit him to travel, which gave Vernon the advantage of appearing liberal without actually having to put himself out. An unsettling discomfort—the beginnings of dissatisfaction with his new responsibilities—had begun to diminish the triumph of acquisition, and his chief enjoyment of it came from the distance he had put between himself and his mother-in-law.