“Besides what, my dear boy?”
“Oh, nothing.”
He knew this was an infuriating reply. His grandmother, much as he loved her and admired her indomitable courage, invariably had the effect of reducing him to the language and attitudes of the schoolroom, though he hoped she didn't mean to. But devil take it â Louisa! She was coming down a bit hard on someone he'd known all his life, someone he'd always thought she liked. Not good enough in her eyes for a Chetwynd, of course (Lady Emily was herself the daughter of an earl), especially not the heir. As children, the Chetwynd and Fox families had played together without any of the stuffy social distinctions so many people thought fit to perpetuate. To his mother indeed, with her transatlantic tolerance, such nuances â or so she declared â were absurd, they could have played with the under-gardeners' children for all she cared. Besides, the Fox's were so charming, all of them, with their easy manners and good looks. Even Sir Henry hadn't objected to friendship with them, and was civil enough with their father when he invited him to dine at Belmonde, as he ritually did, once or twice a year, in the interests of good neighbourly relations. Eccentric as Augustus Fox was, his was a decent family, after all. Not the same class as the Chetwynds, but respectable. Louisa's maternal grandfather had been an archdeacon, and Augustus himself had been a much esteemed Oxford scholar in his day.
The only problem, as far as Sebastian was concerned, was: who would be good enough for Louisa? A question which had recently begun to occur to him with surprising and troubling
regularity.
Lady Emily picked up her tapestry, destined for a fire screen, in which game birds and other fauna gambolled wantonly together amongst autumn foliage, and dexterously threaded her needle with scarlet wool. Despite her painful fingers, she did a little work on her project each day, as a discipline. “Well, it's good to see you,” she said, changing the subject. “How long is it since you've been down, you disgraceful boy?”
“Too long, perhaps, Grandmama,” Sebastian admitted. “But I'm forever bumping into Mama in London, you know â and Father, too, sometimes, though he's always so dashed busy, seeing to his affairs. When he's there, that is.”
Lady Emily did not immediately reply. Sebastian, too, thought he had better not elaborate this point. It was becoming all too increasingly obvious that his father was inclined to spend less and less time away from Belmonde, that Adele was often left to attend social functions alone in Town and elsewhere; though this left her free, of course, to entertain and be entertained, to attend concerts, theatre and the opera, all of which were anathema to her husband; to shop or to slip across to Paris to visit her dressmaker. To do as she wished, in fact.
The silence lengthened between them as Lady Emily stitched on, and thought about Sebastian. It was all very well to say let the boy sow his wild oats, as his mother did â he was a young man, and young men needed their diversions; a gay life was only to be expected â but that sort of thing could not go on forever. He had been through the requisite wild, reckless period but she was optimistic that it was now over, though she did not care for some of the young bloods he called his friends, such as George (Inky) Winthrop, his old schoolfellow, who spent too much time at the races, or so she heard through the grapevine. And he still showed more inclination to gallivant around Greece and Italy with a sketchbook than to find himself a useful occupation which might be the making of him: the Army, perhaps, or even politics, like her second son Monty, though not, she thought, the Church. He was in no hurry either, it seemed, to look for a suitable wife who would provide him with a son and heir, and she was afraid of that independent streak in him that might at any
time make him marry someone unsuitable: Louisa Fox, for example.
He said abruptly, in the way he often had of picking up her thoughts, “It's all a nonsense, isn't it? I've never wanted â all this, you know, Grandmama.” He had no need to elaborate his meaning, but he added, “Harry would have done it so much better than I.”
“Do you really think so?”
For a moment darkness lay between them: things which could not be said. Not for the first time, Sebastian wondered how much his grandmother knew â or guessed â about Harry's private concerns. Then she rallied. “It cannot be helped, the way life turns around. Don't sulk over it, Sebastian dear. It's not in your nature. And the sooner you accept the inevitable, that you are now the heir and there is nothing you can do about it â and a great deal more you should be doing â the happier we shall all be.”
It was briskly said, though Lady Emily had not meant the advice unkindly. It was what her grandson needed to hear, little as he wished to. At the moment, his mind was as stubbornly set as his father's.
“There's no hurry. You know Father wouldn't thank me for pushing my nose in. He must do everything himself, doesn't trust anyone else.”
Lady Emily sighed. Indeed. She must speak to Henry. It was high time her eldest son came to his senses and realised that he and Sebastian had both taken up a stance from which it was difficult to back down, though one of them had better do so. It might seem to her grandson that there was no hurry, but Lady Emily was no stranger to the sudden vicissitudes of fortune and knew it was dangerous to discount them â look at what had happened to Harry. And Henry did have an alarmingly high colour at times, just like his father, who'd died of an apoplexy when he was fifty, leaving Henry with a mass of debts, enormous death duties, a run-down estate and not much idea how to go about setting things right. Given his nature, however, Henry had immediately buckled down and learned how to do so. Since then, he'd become more and more wrapped up in Belmonde, giving
little thought to anything other than the conviction that his heir should never be left to pick up the pieces as he had been â in itself an undoubtedly laudable ambition. The irony of it was that Henry and his son were at loggerheads not, Lady Emily was sure, because Sebastian was unwilling to learn how to shoulder his future responsibilities but rather that he was convinced â with some justification â that his father couldn't accept that everything would not run away out of control should he let go of the reins for one single moment. While Henry chose to believe his son was congenitally bone idle. She often felt she would like to knock their heads together.
It was Sebastian's turn to change the subject. “What's all this about my mother being ill?”
“Not ill, my dear, just a trifle under the weather. I don't think it's anything much, though I do believe she's worried about Sylvia â which, of course, is the last thing she would admit. Your sister has apparently taken up with this frightful woman from India who has persuaded her to join some peculiar sect.”
“Annie Besant,” returned Sebastian gloomily. “I have heard rumours.”
“That's the name, Annie Besant.” Lady Emily's lips pressed together. The woman was dangerous, a radical. A person who took up with one cause after another. To be sure, her championship of those poor little girls who worked with phosphorous in the match factories had caused some improvement in their terrible working conditions. But she was also outspoken on taboo subjects such as birth control, and had indeed â quite rightly â been prosecuted for publishing material on the same subject as likely to deprave or corrupt those whose minds were open to immoral influences. Well, at least Lady Emily couldn't see Sylvia being caught up in anything like that â¦though one had hardly thought her inclined to religion, either. Perhaps it was her childless state, after seven years of marriage, which was, contrary to appearances, worrying her and causing her to turn to whatever might bring her hope.
“I am right in assuming, am I not,” she enquired with a dangerous inflection, “that this Besant woman now calls herself a Theologist?” She drove her needle through the red eye of a
particularly haughty-looking pheasant.
“Theosophist.”
“Theosophist, then. Let us not split hairs.”
Sebastian, knowing her views on the subject, thought that he had better not add that Annie Besant was also a sympathiser with the women's suffrage movement. One dangerous thing at a time.
“No wonder your poor mother is worried. It's worse than I thought. I believe those people believe in Buddha and reincarnation and no red meat â and free love to boot, I have no doubt,” Lady Emily stated with ill-informed exaggeration.
Sebastian shrugged. “Algy should put his foot down.”
“Algy? Oh, my dear!”
Well, no, perhaps not.
Sylvia had married well, but Algy Eustace-Bragge was â in Sebastian's words â an awful muff, despite being able to give Sylvia every material thing a woman could want. Her grandmother, however, suspected Sylvia did not have it all her own way, something which she understood and rather approved of: a man should be master in his own house, while at the same time, a woman should be capable of getting what she wanted, without resorting to outright dominance. She herself had never had any difficulty in bringing Chetwynd around to doing exactly as she wished. It was something upon which she and her daughter-in-law were at one. Henry was putty in Adèle's hands, though she was clever enough not to let him know this. Which was just as well, because Henry, ever since he was a child, could only be pushed so far. Since his marriage, his mother had learned that applied to his wife, too.
Despite herself, she had become quite fond of Adele, able to overlook the fact that her father had made his fortune in meatpacking in Chicago, and not only because she had most certainly saved the fortunes of the Chetwynd family â if only temporarily. From the fastness of her own unmodernised wing at Belmonde, where nothing, not a stick of furniture or a piece of wallpaper, had been changed for half a century, Lady Emily observed with a keen eye the changes Adele had brought to Belmonde, and while she certainly did not approve of everything, she had found it expedient, on the whole, not to interfere. Adèle was not, as she
had expected a daughter-in-law to be, biddable. She knew how to charm, but she had an iron will and was unscrupulous in getting what she wanted, despite being deceptively softly-spoken, and entirely agreeable. Indeed, she quite often got the better of her mother-in-law, which few people did.
There was no denying Adele was hopelessly extravagant, renowned for her hospitality and the lavish parties she loved to give, never mind that Henry thought them â and most of that circle of those so-called clever people she liked to call her friends, come to that, largely a waste of time and money; he was terrified of being cajoled into joining them in their after-dinner pencil and paper games; he could not have composed an epigram if his life had depended upon it.
“Speaking of your mother,” said Lady Emily, glancing at the gold fob watch pinned to the armour-plated elegance of her splendid bosom, and putting an end to disagreeable thoughts for the time being, “I told her I would join her for tea. Shall we go along?”
“Don't light the lamps, Margaret. It's so pleasant here in the firelight, with the rain outside.”
Louisa, now warm and dry, leaned back and settled her head against the comfortably cushioned inglenook seat and stretched her legs to the great fireplace, heaped with blazing oak logs. Her father and her sister Margaret, a fair-haired woman of mild disposition, sat on a similar seat, opposite. Between them was a laden tea-table, and behind them the large, shadowy room that stretched across the width of the house. The firelight winked on shining brass and copper and polished floors, throwing long, leaping shadows on to the low ceiling and into hidden corners, and Louisa thought how lovely it was to be home. Yet for all that, she would not permanently exchange it for her freedom, her frugal little room in London.
This need for independence (she was studying at the London School of Medicine for Women in Bloomsbury) was something Margaret would never completely understand. Louisa caught the anxious glance cast in her direction before her sister turned to spear a crumpet on the two-foot long toasting fork and hold it to the fire. She ought not worry so much, it made her look every one of her thirty-five years, though she probably couldn't help that by now; it had become a habit.
Margaret's next words reproached Louisa with their sweet concern. “You look tired, Louisa, are you sure you're not at your books too much?”
Louisa smiled and shrugged, though if the truth be told, she did feel a trifle listless, an unusual state for her. She might be small, but she made up for it in energy.
“Fiddle-faddle!” their father intervened robustly, taking another scone. “Since when did studying ever hurt anyone?”
“Not you, at any rate.” Louisa smiled affectionately. “What are you working on now, Father?”
“I must show it to you.” He became loquacious, explaining his latest enthusiasm, a contraption he'd made, involving two revolving glass plates and a thin metal wiper, a machine designed
by a fellow called Wimshurst to demonstrate the workings of electricity. Now that he'd finished it, in time to show his small grandsons when they came to visit, he could get back to The Book. For as long as Louisa could remember, Gus had been engaged in compiling a tome (which no one, not even himself, realistically ever expected to be finished), comprehensively and ambitiously entitled “The Complete Lepidoptera of the British Isles.” Now retired from his practice as a doctor, he spent most of his time scratching at his manuscript â when some new experiment or idea wasn't catching his fancy â poring over his butterflies and insects or venturing out to catch them with his net. His disinclination to kill other wild animals did not endear him to the local hunting fraternity, but this worried him not one whit.
“There's too much flame on the logs, you'll burn that crumpet, Meg,” said Louisa. “I'm only tired because I was up late last night after attending a meeting.”
“Your suffragettes?” Margaret nearly lost her crumpet in the fire as she turned to gaze at her sister. “Oh, my dear, I do hope you're not going to become too involved!”
“Of course not, you know I can't afford to let anything get in the way until I've qualified. I've no time for anything else,” answered Louisa impatiently.
“At least that's something to be thankful for. How can these women submit themselves to the prospect of such degradation? How can they be so unladylike? Disgracing themselves. Screaming, being carried off kicking by the police! And as for hunger striking â¦I've read that there's talk of actually feeding them by force.” Margaret's indignant face was vividly flushed, perhaps from being too near the fire. She herself would never dream of being associated with anything of the sort, but one could never be sure with Louisa. The twelve years' difference in their ages might have been thirty, so differently did they view life.
“More than talk â there's at least one of my friends, at this very moment, who is refusing to eat and is being force fed.”
“What?” Two shocked faces were towards her.
“I daresay she feels the cause is worth it,” Louisa said. “But as a doctor â an embryo one, at least â it horrifies me. As a woman,
it enrages me. It's an utter abomination, whichever way you look at it. Now they've started, they will carry on. One day, some woman will die, and then perhaps they'll take some notice.”
“Then they shouldn't refuse to eat. But oh, Louie, it would surely never come to that?”
“It could, Margaret,” came from their father. A doctor himself, he could not but be in full agreement with Louisa's views on this unspeakable practice. At the same time, though he had a certain sympathy for the cause she espoused, he agreed with Margaret; it was self-inflicted, and in any case, such extreme methods were unlikely to have the desired effect, he was sure. These women were right in their aims and ideas, but the way in which they were trying to forward them could only be counter-productive. Putting people's backs up, throwing bricks and stones like street urchins, damaging property. The last time he'd seen Louisa, she'd been on fire with an idea which was being mooted, that of organising a regiment of women to descend on the West End of London, mingle with the homegoing workers and then shatter as many shop windows as they could. Deliberately get themselves arrested and sent to prison, in order to make an open stand for their rights, no doubt to achieve the same end result as this mistaken young woman Louisa had spoken about â a flamboyant gesture which had unpleasant undertones of martyrdom. But his fears for Louisa's safety forbade him to voice such thoughts, aware that his younger daughter needed little encouragement. Despite her denial of any participation, the words ânot yet' had hung in the air, and he was only too afraid that when she had gained her qualifications, she would instantly become more active in support of this franchise business. Louisa had been a tomboy and could throw a cricket ball with the best of them. Hurling a stone through Swan & Edgar's window wasn't that much different, after all. He sighed. Out of all his seven children, he had a special bond with Louisa, which was why she worried him most â even he, easy-going, eternal optimist that he was.
“I would have thought, Louisa,” Margaret ventured, “that you'd seen enough of fighting for causes to know what damage can ensue.
Gus threw her an affectionately exasperated glance. Margaret had no tact, though she was good as gold. When his dear Ellen had died in late childbirth this eldest daughter of his had selflessly assumed her mother's role, thereby missing her chances of marriage. She appeared quite content to remain here, seemingly forever, satisfied to be nothing more than a homemaker in the same tradition as her dead mother. Her self-effacement had not rubbed off on to Alice; the baby she'd brought up had become a blithe and confident child, though she, too, lacked Louisa's vehemence. Louisa, of course, had enough of that for all three.
“Oh, I don't forget that, Margaret,” she was saying now, “how could I? My one and only adventure.”
“No doubt there will be others.”
Louisa threw her a quick glance, but her sister's profile remained as serene as ever, her eyes innocent of guile. Sometimes, Louisa wanted to shake her composure with true stories of what had really happened to her during that legendary escapade but mostly, she wanted nothing more than to forget it. She was sick and tired of having to remember, and to recount for people's entertainment tales of what had happened to her when she was still a child. It was not, and never had been, in her opinion, a subject for entertainment â in fact, the whole episode, despite its heroism, had been so much talked about that it was in danger of becoming a tremendous bore. Over and done with, it should be relegated to the past, where it belonged. As far as she was concerned, the best thing to come out of that experience was that it had decided her future. From that time on, she had known that the only thing she wanted to do was to study medicine and become a lady doctor â regardless of the fact that the title was still regarded as being a contradiction in terms by many people.
Margaret's voice broke into her thoughts. “What a pity Sebastian couldn't spare the time to have tea with us,” she murmured, accepting her father's cup for another refill.
“I asked him, but he wanted to get home.”
“Only natural, I suppose â I scarcely remember the last time he was at Belmonde.”
“Since he only gets a lecture from his father every time he does come down, one can scarcely blame him for that.”
There was a short silence, and Gus added pacifically, “Sir Henry's naturally hoping for a great deal from Sebastian now. He suffered a hard blow in losing Harry.”
“So have they all suffered, Papa,” Louisa said sharply, trying to banish from her mind the worry she'd had quite often lately, that one of these days Sir Henry's patent disapproval might cause Sebastian to do something quite stupid and irrational, which he would certainly later regret.
“Quite so,” Gus agreed, as neutrally as he was able. To lose a son so young â and one so attractive, so full of life and charm and promise as Harry had been â and still to be alive oneself â¦the old left behind, the young taken â¦Gus had seen this many times in the course of his working life, and had never come to terms with the sadness of it. He did not like Sir Henry â or not very much â but he could sympathise with the views of a man in his position. Harry had had his faults, of course, but they had been forgotten; he was remembered â and perhaps should be â for his quickness of spirit, the smiles that could charm the birds off the trees, and his jokes. But Gus suspected that his brother's elevation to sainthood since his death must be an added burden for Sebastian to bear.
Well, no doubt everything would take care of itself, given time. Every family coped with grief in its own way. What worried him more was the growing intimacy between this, his dearest girl, and Sebastian. Louisa was well able to take care of herself, of that he had no doubts, but the two young people had been thrown together in London, and from what he could gather, they were now very thick and spent more time together than he would have thought mere friendship dictated, when of course anything closer than that was doomed. Gus was extremely fond of the young man, but â¦Louisa and Sebastian, no, it simply wouldn't do. Their upbringing, their destinies, were too far apart. Marriage between them wasn't to be thought of. It wasn't only their different stations in life, or that Gus was afraid his dearest daughter wouldn't acquit herself properly among these people (he was proud that Louisa could hold her own anywhere) but that the aimless, pleasure-loving existence of Sebastian and his acquaintances would very soon get on her nerves. Work, to her, and a
purpose in life, was the very backbone of existence, it made you what you were, a principle she had inherited from him.