Frederick rode to Uppercross regularly, for he had a standing invitation.
It was soon known in the parish that he was flirting with the Miss Musgroves, who flirted back with happy indiscrimination; as the sisters readily invited all the young ladies within riding distance to impromptu dances, there was no whispering beyond smiling wagers on which one he might pick.
Sophy saw Frederick drawn back again and again, though there appeared to be no desire to exchange flirtation for courtship, that is, to walk alone with one or other of the Miss Musgroves in the apple orchard, or along a lonely road.
More important to Sophy, though he flirted readily and openly with both Musgrove sisters, her brother did not behave like a man in love.
She had learnt by now by years of experience with young men as well as those not so young, that love manifested in many ways.
She had never seen Frederick in love, still, her vast experience among naval gentlemen had led her to expect some discussion, at least, however trivial: “Miss Harriet looked especially charming last night, I thought,” or “Miss Louisa expressed a partiality for Carlo Campioni. I will look out the music to a melody of his I once heard in Naples.” There was none of that, and even less the gaiety of a man about to make a choice, certain of his reward—for she knew from bits of parish gossip that both of the young ladies enthusiastically did everything they could to encourage the connection.
That was as much as she could observe from a distance, until the little boy was deemed recovered enough for the Musgroves to invite the Crofts as well as Captain Wentworth to dine. At last Sophy would see Frederick in company with Anne Elliot. She had hopes she would understand more.
Initially she had little enough to go on. Anne Elliot was so quiet and retiring that her voice was never heard above the more boisterous exclamations of the Musgroves.
During and after the dinner the Miss Musgroves united in arch displays of naval ignorance, prompting Frederick for details of shipboard life, and afterward with a shared air of triumph produced the navy list. Each gave Frederick smiles of invitation to sit on the couch between them, with the stated wish to look out a listing of his own ships.
Sophy watched Miss Anne, whose dark gaze darted from speaker to speaker as the Musgrove girls commented and Frederick answered. The subject of the navy list roused the admiral’s attention, and he gave over talking of sport with the Musgrove gentlemen to laugh and expostulate.
“Pho! Pho! What stuff these young fellows talk,” said he, and more besides.
Sophy looked for an opportunity to guide the talk in such a way as to draw Miss Anne into contributing, but hard on the admiral’s well-intentioned, “What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together? If a man has not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again,” Sophy felt all the danger that these easy words brought.
She saw the impact in the tightening of Frederick’s lips, and Anne Elliot’s getting up to move to the farther sofa, where Mrs. Musgrove sat with a complacent air, obviously following little of the conversation.
And here was Miss Louisa, equally unaware of any currents but her own, crying archly with a play of pretty eyes, “But Captain Wentworth, how vexed you must have been when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you.”
Frederick was the first to recollect himself. As he went on to relate some his exploits—rendered suitable for present company—loudly did the sisters unite in their pretense of shock and horror. Sophy saw the real emotion in Anne’s paled complexion.
“And so then, I suppose,” observed Mrs. Musgrove to her eldest son, “so then he went away to the Laconia, and there he met with our poor boy.”
She went on in a low voice to Charles Musgrove, but not too low to be overheard. Sophy could see in Charles’ private grimace his misgivings about this unknown brother, apparently lost at sea. Their mother’s sighs and laments went completely unheeded by both sisters, who were obviously wanting Frederick’s attention back again, as they turned their exclamations to the Laconia.
They did without success. Sophy then understood that the missing son had been one of Frederick’s reefers, moreover, from the way he was avoiding the hints, a troublesome one, however in response to direct appeal from Mrs. Musgrove, he smoothed the derisive curl of his lip, sat down at the farther end of the sofa from Anne, and uttered diplomatic phrases best suited to a grieving parent.
Sophy suspected strongly that the admiral also knew of this troublesome son, for he had taken to walking about the room in his quarterdeck stride.
Sophy raised her voice in one of their Yarmouth signals, “Admiral, may I pour you some tea?” whereby he recollected himself.
But in his effort to return to his social duty, he blundered again, all unknowing, “If you had been a week later at Lisbon, last spring, Frederick, you would have been asked to give a passage to Lady Mary Grierson and her daughters.”
Perhaps the admiral meant to be gallant, but he inspired the opposite effect. Sophy was aghast at the anger Frederick masked beneath his cold words about women aboard ship, ending with, “I hate to hear of women on board, or to see them on board; and no ship under my command shall ever convey a family of ladies anywhere, if I can help it.”
“Oh, Frederick!” Sophy frowned his way. “I cannot believe it of you. All idle refinement!” Against whom had that been directed? Though she knew women aplenty who deserved this opprobrium, she could not believe it of Anne Elliot, and she saw how the works struck the young lady. “Women maybe be as comfortable on board as in the best house in England,” she said, and a great deal more to the point.
Proud as Lucifer! He argued right back, until at last she was driven to exclaim, “I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman.” She saw that strike home, and added, “As if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”
“Ah, my dear.” The admiral stepped up behind Sophy, taking her hand. “When he has got a wife, he will sing a different tune. When he is married, if we have the good luck to live to another war, we shall see him do as you and I, and a great many others have done. We shall have him very thankful to anybody that will bring him his wife.”
“Ay, that we shall,” she said, relenting.
“Now I have done,” Frederick cried, raising his hands.
The Musgrove girls laughed appreciatively as he spoke rallying words, and he moved away from them all to where the squire and his son began to talk of shooting the next morning.
His place was taken by Mrs. Musgrove, stirred to amazement by the talk of ladies traveling. Sophy was very much amused by this placid, good-natured woman who clearly had not journeyed beyond her own parish boundaries, excepting to Bath. As they spoke further, Sophy reflected that her own life might have followed a similar course as housekeeper for Edward, only to find herself finally superseded by his wife.
Impatient with a conversation that did not devolve around themselves, the Musgrove girls waited for the first decent pause, and called for dancing, which brought Frederick’s attention back to them.
Sophy was grieved to see Anne Elliot, daughter of the refined Sir Walter Elliot, go to the instrument as if she were a governess or a lady’s companion expected to earn her bread. The Musgroves appeared to be fond of her, but not enough to give her another thought as Miss Anne sat playing and playing, while silent tears dripped down her face.
o0o
Sophy was determined to discover the mystery behind this silent struggle, her brother clearly still angry, the lady as unhappy. Anne Elliot was so gentle-spoken, unlike either of her sisters, that Sophy could not encompass the haughty rejection that the elder Miss Elliot surely would have given him. There was some other cause, some force at work here, and she meant to find it if she could—and somehow alter the situation.
But easy as it is to resolve such a thing, carrying it out is another matter entirely. At long last the admiral’s gig was delivered, and now, between the garden, the sheep, the house, and the stable, he must learn to drive—and because he and Sophy had been going snacks in everything except actually commanding a ship action, perforce she must take her place beside him.
A good, thing, too. His delight in tooling about behind a horse was mitigated by the fact that he drove as if manning the tiller of a boat. But a horse was not a boat, and Sophy—who had learnt rowing, but never manned a tiller—frequently found herself taking the reins while the admiral was distracted by birds, one of the tenants waving from his field, or the direction of the wind.
Divided between her husband and her brother, Sophy felt that she could not give the latter her full attention, the more so because he seemed impatient of her concern.
He had no interest in driving, when he could ride; he had less interest in their sheep; he took no interest in the tenants, whose houses the admiral delighted in improving, once he had discovered what a neglectful landlord Sir Walter had been.
It was completely by chance that Sophy was able to see Miss Anne again, after encountering her along with the rest of the young people gathered at the gate leading to the lane below Winthrop.
At a glance Sophy could see that the party was not united. Miss Harriet and the young Hayter parson stood a little apart, talking earnestly; Mrs. Charles looked cross and her husband impatient; only Miss Louisa chattered incessantly to Frederick, who, when Sophy first caught sight of him, was gazing at the horizon. And Miss Anne walked quietly behind everyone, her shoulders sagging, her face hidden by her bonnet as she watched the ground where she stepped.
“Pull up, dear,” Sophy said to the admiral, and to the waiting faces, she called, “Surely someone here is in want of a ride.”
“Not I,” declared Miss Louisa, following Frederick as he stepped into the lane. “I declare I am not in the least tired—I am determined I could walk like this forever.”
“No, thank you,” Miss Henrietta said, blushing as young Mr. Hayter echoed her.
Mrs. Charles stepped back, looking affronted. “I am very well, thank you,” she said in languishing tones, as her husband gave a little sigh and closed the gate behind Miss Anne, who had stepped last into the lane, behind everyone else.
The admiral shook the reins, and the horse bobbed its head and had taken a step or two when Frederick covered the distance in a quick stride, put his hand out to catch the reins, and said, “I believe there is one here of the party who might welcome a chance to save an extra mile.” He spoke no name, nor glanced in her direction, but Sophy understood by his manner whom was meant.
To test her supposition, she called with real pleasure, “Miss Elliot, I am sure you are tired. Do let us have the pleasure of taking you home. Here is excellent room for three, I assure you. If we were all like you, we might sit four. You must indeed, you must.”
“Come, Miss Elliot,” the admiral called. “See? I have shifted over, and you are so slight the horse will not notice the extra. He is brisk enough.”
Sophy saw Miss Elliot’s head lift, her manner uncertain until Frederick, without speaking, put his hand under her elbow. Unresisting she permitted him to guide her the few steps, and he lifted her up.
She sat, she looked down, the admiral let the reins loose, and the horse was in motion.
Sophy sat back in delight. At last she had got Miss Anne away from the others. “Did you have a pleasant walk?”
“Yes, thank you.” The low voice sounded a little breathless, as if Miss Anne were winded.
“Fine day for a walk, eh?” the admiral said. “We’ve waited these two days, first for the rain to end, and then for the lanes to dry out. At all events, someone else certainly seems to think a fine day for a walk.” He chuckled. “But he might have been equally content to carry an umbrella over his young ladies.”
“With all the good will in the world,” Sophy said, “I doubt very much that even Frederick can manage to keep three people dry under a single umbrella.” She felt the slender form next to her stiffen at the word ‘Frederick.’
“He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls, Sophy, but there is no saying which. He has been running after them, too, long enough . . .” and the admiral cheerfully carried on in this manner.
Though Sophy still could not see past the frame of the bonnet next to her, she could feel Miss Anne’s attention, and she returned an easy answer—a joke—to shift attention away from Frederick.
The admiral appeared at first to accept the alteration in topic, reminiscing about their own marriage, but hard on that he said, “I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvas, and bring us home one of these young ladies to Kellynch. Then, there would always be company for them. And very nice young ladies they both are. I hardly know one from the other.”
Sophy said calmly, “Very good humored, unaffected girls, indeed,” without any further flights of enthusiasm. She knew that Frederick, were he to marry either of them, would be sadly bored within a week.
She passed to compliment the family in general, and then took the reins, as she often had to, guiding the horse past a post the admiral had not noticed; she had to seize them again when they met a dung cart in the lane, as the admiral reminisced about their early days at Yarmouth.