Chapter Seven

AN ANSWER, THEN, WAS JUST what Annabella was soon required to make. Within two weeks she had received a letter from Lady Melbourne. She took it after breakfast into the garden to read. The weather was the very best of October. The light, in yellows and reds, played across the fall of plane-tree leaves on the Gosfords’ square of lawn, and a pleasant friction between the two colours produced, it seemed, a glow of heat at the edges. The stone bench placed at the bottom of the garden was perfectly dry, and she had only to brush a handful of fat leaves from the surface of it to secure for herself a seat that she could adopt, and keep to, for as long as her purpose lasted, without fear of damp. She broke the seal of the envelope and emptied its contents on her lap. What seemed to be two distinct notes lay before her, composed on different paper and in different hands. She recognized in the first her aunt’s writing, and though her breath quickened at the sight of the second (Annabella always enjoyed the constraint and deferral of pleasures), she decided to begin with the former.

Lady Melbourne (in what Sir Ralph called his sister’s best ‘harum-scarum’ style) entered at once upon an explanation of their ‘recent conference’. She had had at the time already in her possession the note which she now saw fit to dispatch to her niece, after a deal of soul-searching in which she had attempted to weigh and rank, if not to reconcile, the distinct duties of which she was severally possessed: to her brother, to her own son, to Lord Byron, and ‘of course, to yourself, my dear Annabella’. She had hoped ‘by a closer inquisition’ into her niece’s feelings to spare herself the need for ‘playing any further part in the affair’. Had she been perfectly persuaded that Annabella could never, on any account, reciprocate the sentiments of which Lord Byron had entrusted to herself the communication, she would gladly ‘have given the matter up, and let it rest, at once’. But she found she could not so persuade herself. Annabella’s responses had been sufficiently obscure and uncertain as to admit the possibility that she might, given time and a better acquaintance with her own feelings and their object, learn to resolve the paradox of her desires in such a fashion as to allow to one, who consistently satisfied at least half of her contradictory demands, the favour of her choice. The proper period of that acquaintance she had at length decided to anticipate ‘in consideration towards him, whose anxiety to know his fate seemed to preclude the patience which might be necessary to attain it.’

And so, such as it was, she laid the question in her niece’s hands and trusted to her own judgement the resolution of her own doubts. She begged for his sake, however, that Annabella would consider well the extent to which she might feel free ‘to canvas a general opinion’ to help her to a decision. Lady Melbourne believed it to be her duty to remark that she had not, as far as that went, mentioned the matter to Sir Ralph. She hesitated—this was added in a postscript, which seemed to indicate a second sitting and a development of mood and tone—to presume to direct her niece’s deliberations, but she felt it might not be improper to advise that Annabella had better ‘take off the stilts on which she had been mounted’ in their previous interview before she came to a decision. She knew from her own experience that such questions might easily be said to possess ‘an imaginary quality’ which obtruded on their proper consideration; it was best to address them with one’s feet on firm ground. One wasn’t, after all, playing games.

A game, however, was just what Annabella, briefly, felt the elation of having won. She could even, fondly, condescend to smile at her aunt’s little gibe about stilts. Annabella’s feet had never before felt so lightly the pull of ‘firm ground’. Every circumstance, large and small, seemed to contribute to her happiness. The unusual, almost personable, warmth of autumnal air, the light mixing on her lap, and the expectation of what awaited her indoors (that little flurry of self-interested activity; what a blessing it was, being already engaged to Mary Montgomery for tea!) combined with her sense of holding in her own hands, not only her own fate, but that of the most celebrated poet of the age. She was young; the world was expanding around her, but she seemed to remain, however it grew, at its centre. Her faith in her own deserving had at last been met, and beautifully, grandly, at that. She was on the verge of a choice, but it was lightened by just enough uncertainty to spare her the burden of the full, particular weight of a yes or a no. Even so, she could not delay for ever, in the sunshine, her reading of the second note. She must, in the end, turn to it; and as she did, her heart began to race with no simple consciousness of joy.

My dear Lady M.—or, dare I write it?—Aunt,

I have always openly professed my admiration of your niece and have ever been anxious to cultivate her acquaintance, but C told me she was engaged to E. So did several others, all being generally convinced that E would make the best husband in the world. Under these circumstances I withdrew and wished not to hazard my heart with a woman I was so extremely inclined to love but at the same time sure could be nothing to me. The case is now different—as your daughter-in-law herself has tenderly ‘put it’ to me. I have trusted you to my secret and am entirely in your power. I do not care about her fortune and should be happy if the floating capital of which I am now master could by some arrangements turn out to be advantageous to both. Does Miss M. waltz?—it is an odd question—but a very essential point with me. I wish I had any hopes that it should be possible for me to make myself agreeable to her, but my fears predominate, and will I am sure give me a very awkward appearance. I wish you would undertake to say a few words for me. Could you not say that I wish to propose, but I have great doubts of her, etc.

Excuse my asking this favour, but you have always been so kind to me in every crise de Coeur that I trust to your being my friend in this case. Everything rests with A.M. herself, for my earnest wish is to devote my whole life to her.

Yours ever,
B

There was, no doubt, a great deal in this to please a young lady, but enough to trouble her, too. That presumptive ‘aunt’ suggested how snugly Lord Byron supposed himself to be ‘in’ with one branch, at least, of the family to which he aspired to attach his name. It spoke, if nothing else, of his confidence in her answer, but the reference also revived in Annabella her suspicions of acting, as she had put it to herself, in a larger concert—which isn’t to say that she had ever paid heed to the rumours occasionally floated about the poet and her aunt. Lady Melbourne was, after all, nearly four decades his senior, and her charms, such as they may have been, had certainly aged into the wintry end of autumnal. Annabella herself, milkily complected, could hardly repress on occasion a tender abhorrence from kissing her aunt’s papery cheek. The lengths to which a lover’s attraction might reasonably be expected to go produced in her a shiver of disgust. But the breath of that disgust was drawn in fear, and her own distaste struck her—as she entered, almost unwillingly, this avenue of her curiosity—as perhaps the clearest proof of her naivety in these matters. She did not trust herself to guess the enticements a young man counted on in such relations. She was far from confident of possessing them in any useful measure. Lord Byron’s appetites, it was generally understood, were well seasoned; and Annabella was perfectly aware that she could not, in the event of her accepting him, presume to satisfy only his sense of her virtue. There were other senses that demanded their due, and she was conscious, in her own life, of having starved them.

Her eye tended to stop, too, as she reread the letter, on that pretty piece of vagueness which Lord Byron himself had casually accented. Her aunt’s daughter-in-law was, of course, Lady Caroline, but just what was meant by the way in which she had ‘tenderly put’ the ‘case of Miss M.’ to the poet was a subject that began to occupy Annabella’s jealousies. The rumour of their affair was well established; its truth could be little doubted. What her interest might be in proving Miss Milbanke free to bestow her hand, Annabella had already questioned—bafflement had been her only answer. She had supposed herself too innocent to enter into any sympathy with the motives or appetites of that spoilt creature. But Annabella’s curiosity, now excited, knew neither bounds nor bars and ventured forth in every direction. The worst imaginings began to appal her thoughts, in a manner that first and foremost convinced her of the depths of her own corrupting fancy. She was not, she discovered, above being involved herself in the scenes that her darkest fears luridly conjured up.

But there were other, simpler, reflections to upset her, which she turned to almost for the relief of her deeper anxieties. That business about the waltz: she would have liked to believe him capable of merely teasing her, quietly, through the medium of her aunt. Surely a man who had pledged to devote his life to her happiness could not so quickly have forgotten the circumstances of their first meeting? True, they had not spoken, but Annabella had played so prominent a part in directing the steps of the ladies that only a gentleman blind to their charms or madly in love with one of them could have failed to perceive her. Unless, indeed—and this was a more comfortable line of thought—he had been so occupied by his sister that he had no attention to spare for flirtations. A fact, if true, which spoke well not only of Lord Byron’s sense of brotherly tendresse but of his general indifference to the world of beauty where there was one particular relation at hand to claim his solicitude. And, if he was teasing her, Annabella was too well aware of her tendency ‘to mount herself on stilts’, in her aunt’s phrase, to resent for long the gallantry of a gentleman who discreetly tapped against them, by way of reminder. Finally, there was that off-hand business of the ‘etc.’, which she read over and over again, till she could make nothing of it but her instinctive dislike of abbreviation.