Lady Vernon and Her Daughter: A Novel of Jane Austen's Lady Susan Page 9

“And was Charles disappointed?”

  “I daresay he was—and I confess that I teased him a good deal about what a poor sort of banker he must be! How could he expect to coax strangers out of their money when he could not succeed with his own brother, said I! I am sorry to think what sport I made of him when the day ended so badly, but I understand that Vernon was often at Churchill while Sir Frederick was on the mend, so between them there was no ill feeling. You will not be left at the mercy of one who regards your claims as provisional or who will drag his feet where any money but his own is at stake—a brother will be conscientious out of family feeling.”

  “I don’t believe that I ever gave Charles his due in regard to his family feeling,” Lady Vernon replied coolly.

  “Indeed. I don’t think I love Maria half so much!” Manwaring laughed. “How I wish that Eliza had been left to a brother instead of in the guardianship of Mr. Johnson. She was left quite as handsome as you, after all, but Mr. Johnson withholds all but a very insignificant allowance. Yes, you will always be better served by family than by friends.”

  He continued to congratulate her on how well off she had been left until Lady Vernon began to think that Manwaring’s pursuit of her had been motivated, in some part, by supposing her to be a woman of fortune.

  chapter eighteen

  Lady Vernon to Mr. Vernon

  Langford, Somerset

  My dear brother,

  I find that I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted, of being received by you and Mrs. Vernon at Churchill Manor, and therefore, if it is quite convenient, I hope that I shall very soon be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to know.

  Though my kind friends here are most affectionately urgent that I prolong my stay until they go to town in February, their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind.

  It is my plan to leave Langford for London upon the first of December. Frederica is to be placed in one of the best private schools in town, and I shall leave her there myself, which will allow me to be of use as a chaperone to Miss Lucy Hamilton, who is to be enrolled as well. As Frederick’s long illness prevented us from opening the house on Portland Place last season, this journey will also allow me to see to Mrs. Forrester’s management of it and to determine whether I will be equal to its continued maintenance.

  The separation from my only child must make the prospect of familiar surroundings and a family circle my only comfort, and it would pain me to learn that it will not be in your power to receive me.

  Indeed, I am determined not to be denied, for I truly long to be made known to your dear little children, in whose hearts I shall be very eager to secure an interest, and to be introduced at last to my sister.

  Your most obliged and affectionate sister,

  Susan Vernon

  Lady Vernon showed this letter to Frederica before it was sent to post.

  Frederica confessed herself astonished and doubtful. “If, when the grief of my father’s passing was immediately before him, my uncle would not admit of any duty to us, he will not be any more obliging after so many weeks have passed. And why to Churchill? My uncle is so often in town that he cannot avoid you if you settle there.”

  “Nobody is so easily avoided anywhere as in town. But in his family home, in the presence of his wife and children, your uncle will be forced to appear hospitable and obliging, which may kindle something like a sense of duty. If I had any hope of legal redress, I would not put myself in his way—even for my own welfare, I would not do it, as I might sell the Portland Place house and live very comfortably. But if, as Mr. Manwaring attests, your father expressed how much he meant to settle on you, I must make some attempt to call him to account.”

  “I do not wish, for my sake, that you expose yourself to the duplicity of my uncle. I will not forget how he came to us at Churchill Manor while my father was in frail health, preying upon family feeling in a very underhanded manner, and to a most mercenary end! How the brother of a man as kindhearted and generous as my father can be so selfish and wicked! To have the same mother and father and yet to turn out so unlike! I pity my aunt and cousins—to have such a vile man for their husband and father!”

  “You may be as liberal as you like with your pity,” replied Lady Vernon. “I will reserve mine for us.”

  “But what of the Manwarings? They talk of you returning to them after I go to London. Maria says that they quite depend upon it.”

  “I think that Mr. Manwaring does, but I cannot think that Eliza is feeling as charitable as she did when the invitation to Langford was first given. Eliza was willing to tolerate me as an object of pity, but a woman can never be charitable for long when she believes—however wrongly!—that she has a rival for any man’s attentions, even if that man is only her husband.”

  chapter nineteen

  Sir James Martin, having exhausted his appeals to bring his cousins to Ealing Park, departed from Langford on the following day. His absence was but briefly felt; four gentlemen, eager for gaiety and diversion, came to fill his place, so that there was no time to lament the absence of one. Indeed, they began to be sorry that Lady Vernon had not followed her cousin to town, for she seemed resolved upon making herself so charming that, when she announced her decision to leave them some weeks before her proposed departure, nobody was sorry save for Manwaring and his sister. Manwaring’s defense of her was in proportion to what he supposed her fortune to be, and Maria would not join in the censure of one whose conduct she had never observed to be improper and whose daughter had become her closest friend. The other ladies, however, began to resent that Lady Vernon managed to be more elegant in bombazine and crepe than they could manage in velvet and silk, and the gentlemen pronounced her “monstrous pretty”—too pretty for a widow—and they would not want their own wives to be so gay after they were cold in the ground. “I daresay everything I ever heard about her is quite true!” declared Charles Smith, a lively, forward young man who had come to Langford with a friend. “She is too much the coquette for my taste,” he determined, though Lady Vernon had said little more to him than a polite “Good morning” when she came down to breakfast and an equally civil “Good evening, sir” when she retired at night. “And her daughter, entirely the reverse!” he continued. “So dull and bookish—so entirely without style or elegance!”

  Lady Hamilton approved these speeches and declared that Mr.

  Smith was a very sensible young man and not one to be fooled by appearances. She would not scruple to set down all of Lady Vernon’s coquetry and impropriety in her letters to Lady deCourcy and to her niece at Churchill Manor—indeed, every letter posted from Langford had something of Lady Vernon in it.

  Mrs. Manwaring to Mrs. Johnson

  Langford, Somerset

  My dear friend,

  You were mistaken, my dear Alicia, in supposing that Lady Vernon and her daughter would be with us for the rest of the winter. Had I not been so overcome with pity for her situation, I would never have had her come to Langford. Though she was so recent a widow, I was not without apprehension, and she had not been here very long before she began to invite the attentions of every gentleman present, not excluding those of my own husband! Upon Sir James Martin, she bestowed what notice was necessary to detach him from Maria, and now it appears that, though Sir Frederick has been gone for scarcely three months, Sir James has every intention of making his proposals for Miss Vernon. I have learned from Maria that Miss Vernon is not at all inclined toward the match, which, if that is true, must make her the greatest simpleton on earth! I have no doubt, however, that her mother will be rewarded for her exertions as wicked people so often are, and that the scheme of placing her in the care of Miss Summers’s Academy on Wigmore Street is only done to give the girl a bit of polish before entering into the engagement.

  We are in a sad state, but that will soon be relieved as Lady Vernon leaves us at the begin
ning of December. It is said that she will not open her house in town but only install Miss Vernon in school and then go down to Churchill Manor. I cannot think that she would go to them unless there were truly no place in England open to her—to Churchill she is to go, however, until something better comes into view, and so she may plague Mrs. Charles Vernon and flirt with her husband—who was once Lady Vernon’s beau. What an abhorrent thing for Mrs. Vernon to have to receive her!

  Adieu. I beg you, my dear Alicia, to give my warmest regards to Mr. Johnson and tell him that I do not at all resent his throwing me off upon my marriage, which—considering the conduct of my husband—showed a greater affection for me than I gave credit. If I had been one degree less contemptibly weak, I should never have married him, for you know that I was applied to by more than one title above baronet—yet I was foolish and romantic and would not be satisfied by riches alone. If Lady Vernon were not to leave us very soon, I might find myself so desperate as to appeal to Mr. Johnson—but I will not impose upon your domestic tranquillity just yet. I will know better how things stand after we are relieved of Lady Vernon’s presence.

  Yours, etc.,

  Eliza Manwaring

  Lady Vernon, accompanied by her daughter and Miss Lucy Hamilton, quit Langford in the first week of December. Mrs. Manwaring was so overcome with joy at seeing them go that she was almost restored to cordiality. Manwaring, on the other hand, was so despondent that Lady Vernon might have felt sorry for him had she not believed that the Christmas season would bring him many more visitors who had pretty wives and sisters, and that he would not want for somebody to flirt with. Miss Manwaring was genuinely unhappy at the loss of a pleasant companion, but the promise of a steady correspondence and the prospect of being in London within a few months herself reconciled her to the loss of Miss Vernon’s company.

  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 arrival:

  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 Lad
y 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.

  Mrs. Vernon to Lady deCourcy

  Churchill Manor, Sussex

  My dear Mother,

  I am very sorry to tell you that it will not be in our power to keep our promise of spending this Christmas with you; and we are prevented that happiness by a circumstance that is not likely to give us any pleasure. Lady Vernon, in a letter to her brother, has declared her intention of visiting us. I was by no means prepared for such an event, nor can I account for her desire to come to us when she has a perfectly suitable house in town. I can only suspect that her extravagant manner of living and her determination to have Miss Vernon schooled in London at great expense has left her in narrow circumstances, and that she wishes to have my husband render her some pecuniary assistance.