“Don’t be vexed with me! Pray don’t!” she managed to say.
He had limped to the door, but he paused, and looked back. “I’m not vexed. Not with you—at least, I don’t think so: I suppose you must know what you’re about. Only I hoped you would have settled it between you. I like Jasper. Oh, well!” He pulled open the door, and went away, banishing her, she thought, from his mind.
XVI
Three days later Venetia awoke, after a disturbed night, to the sound of a strident voice monotonously adjuring the residents in Cavendish Square to buy good silver-sand for their kitchens. Mrs. Hendred, installing her niece in the best spare bedchamber, overlooking the Square, had told her that she would find it wonderfully quiet, quite unlike rooms that looked on to a street. It was certainly quieter than the room Venetia had occupied in Newark, on the previous night, but to one accustomed to the stillness of the country it more nearly resembled Pandemonium than the quiet situation of the house-agents’ advertisements. It seemed as though no one ever went to bed in London; and whenever, during a lull in the apparently endless flow of traffic, she dropped off to sleep, she was very soon jerked awake by the voice of the watchman, proclaiming the hour, and the state of the weather. She could only suppose that the ears of Londoners had been bludgeoned into insensitivity and trust that her own would soon grow accustomed to the ceaseless racket; and, being a well-mannered girl, presently assured her aunt that she had passed an excellent night, and was feeling perfectly restored from the effects of her journey.
Her heavy eyes belied her. She had, in fact, enjoyed little sleep during any of the past three nights; and, since she was wholly unused to travel, a journey of nearly two hundred miles had left her battered, exhausted, and unable to believe, when she lay in bed, that she was not still being rocked and jolted down an endless post-road.
The expedition, once so longed-for, would live in her memory, she thought, only as a nightmare. At the start all had been bustle and distraction, with Powick to be interviewed, hurried arrangements to be made, keys, accounts, and memoranda to be handed over, warning reminders to be delivered; and a letter to be written to Lady Denny. Worst of all had been the leave-takings, for Nurse and Mrs. Gurnard and Ribble had wept, and had had to be comforted; and when, with her uncle standing by with his watch in his hand, she came to the final moment of parting with Aubrey she was so much overpowered that she dared not trust her voice, and could only hug him convulsively, unable to see his face for the tears that filled her eyes.
There had been no time for private reflection until she had left York, where an hour had had to be spent with Mr. Mytchett; but when she had signed the last of the documents spread before her, and answered the last of the careful questions put to her, there was too much. Mr. Hendred, resigning himself to an inevitable recurrence of his nervous tic, wrapped a shawl about his head, and leaned back in his corner of the chaise, resolutely closing his eyes; and his niece was consequently at leisure to indulge reflection. Her thoughts were not happy; unfortunately they were absorbing, so that instead of gazing eagerly upon an unknown countryside, and watching for landmarks of note, she looked at little but the bobbing forms of the postilions, and took only a faint interest in the various historic towns through which she passed. The first stage of the journey had been necessarily short, leaving a hundred and twenty miles still to be covered. She had acquiesced in her uncle’s decision to halt but one night on the road; but when at last the chaise drew up in Cavendish Square she was so tired that she could reply to her aunt’s solicitudes only with mechanical civility, and force herself to swallow no more than a few mouthfuls of the elegant supper provided for her refreshment. Nothing could have exceeded Mrs. Hendred’s kindness, or the expressions of warm affection with which she greeted the niece she had not seen for seven years. She fondled her, and pressed every attention upon her, herself escorted her to her bedchamber, stayed while her dresser waited upon Venetia, and did not leave the room until she had tucked Venetia into bed with her own hands, kissing her, and murmuring into her ear promises of much cosseting, and innumerable treats.
Mrs. Hendred was a very pretty woman of great good-nature and much less than commonsense. Her chief objects in life were to remain in the forefront of fashion, and to achieve advantageous marriages for her five daughters within the shortest possible time of having expensively launched each of these damsels, one after the other, into society. She had achieved an excellent match for Louisa that very year; and hoped to do no less well for Theresa in the following spring, provided that the treatment she was at present undergoing at the hands of the dentist proved successful, and she was not obliged to have three front teeth extracted, and false ones screwed to their stumps; and provided also that before the date of her presentation a husband could be found for her beautiful cousin. Theresa was a pretty girl, and would have a handsome portion, but Mrs. Hendred was under no illusion: Venetia might be handicapped by her five-and-twenty years, but she was not only so beautiful that people turned their heads in the street to stare at her, but she had more charm than all the Hendred girls put together. There were certain difficulties attached to the task of marrying her suitably, of which Mrs. Hendred was only too well aware, but that good lady’s optimism encouraged her to hope that with the assets of beauty, charm, and a considerable independence she might be able to contrive a very respectable alliance for her. But she did think it a sad pity that Venetia had not accepted Edward Yardley’s offer, for it would have been just the thing for her, since Mr. Yardley was a warm man, and had enjoyed her father’s favour. Sir Francis, in writing, years ago, to decline his sister’s offer to present Venetia, had informed her that Venetia’s marriage was as good as settled. It was not long before she had told Venetia of this circumstance, and great was her shocked dismay when she learned that so far from entertaining any notion of marriage Venetia had come to town with the fixed resolve of establishing herself and Aubrey in a house in a quiet part of the town, or even, perhaps, in the suburbs. She could not have been more aghast had Venetia announced her intention of entering a nunnery, and most earnestly did she beg her to banish all such schemes from her head. “Your uncle would never hear of it!” she said.
Venetia, who found her almost invariably comical, could not help laughing, but said affectionately: “Dear ma’am, I would not, for the world, distress you, but I’m of full age, you know, and I’m afraid it is not in my uncle’s power to prevent me!”
The most that could be got from her was a half-promise not to think any more about houses and chaperons until she had had time to grow accustomed to town life and customs. Itwould be churlish to make plans to leave her aunt’s house almost as soon as she entered it, she thought: as churlish as it would be to betray how little she cared for the delightful schemes made for her entertainment. Mrs. Hendred, to whom country life was abhorrrent, was so determined to make up to Venetia for the years she had spent in Yorkshire, and so sincerely anxious to do everything that might be supposed to give her pleasure, that gratitude as well as good manners made it impossible for Venetia even to hint to her that she longed only to be quiet, and alone. The least she could do, she felt, was to smile, and to appear at least to be happy.
She soon discovered that ease and enjoyment ranked only second in Mrs. Hendred’s creed to fashion. Knowing her to be the mother of a numerous progeny, Venetia had supposed that she would have been continually busy with maternal cares, and was at first astonished to find that anyone so overflowing with soft affection should be content to surrender her children to governesses and nursemaids. When she became better acquainted with her she was amused to perceive that although Mrs. Hendred had a kinder heart she was, in her own way, quite as selfish as had been her eccentric brother. While holding the members of her family and a large circle of friends in easy affection, her deepest feeling was reserved to herself. She was naturally indolent, so that half-an-hour spent amongst her children was as much as she could support without becoming exhausted by their chatter. Even Theresa, on the verge of coming-out, only appeared in the drawing-room, with her next sister, after dinner, when no company was being entertained, for Mrs. Hendred believed that there were few things more tiresome than households where girls not yet out were permitted to mingle with the guests. As for her three sons, the eldest was at Oxford, the second at Eton, and the youngest in the nursery.