“My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the com-pany of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
“You are mistaken,” said he, gently, “that is not good company—that is the best. Good company re-quires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice.”
—jane Austen, Persuasion
Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century, if they did not quite have to undergo the ordeal facing travelers to the ancient Greek colonies—Charles did not actually have to deliver a Periclean oration plus comprehensive world news summary from the steps of the Town Hall—were certainly expected to allow themselves to be examined and spoken to. Ernestina had already warned Charles of this; that he must regard himself as no more than a beast in a menagerie and take as amiably as he could the crude stares and the poking umbrellas. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom, whose only consolation was the little scene that took place with a pleasing regularity when they had got back to Aunt Tranter’s house. Ernestina would anxiously search his eyes, glazed by clouds of platitudinous small talk, and say “Was it dreadful? Can you forgive me? Do you hate me?”; and when he smiled she would throw herself into his arms, as if he had miraculously survived a riot or an avalanche.
It so happened that the avalanche for the morning after Charles’s discovery of the Undercliff was appointed to take place at Marlbo-rough House. There was nothing fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits. There could not be, since the identities of visitors and visited spread round the little town with incredible rapidity; and that both made and maintained a rigorous sense of protocol. Mrs. Poulteney’s in-terest in Charles was probably no greater than Charles’s in her; but she would have been mortally offended if he had not been dragged in chains for her to place her fat little foot on—and pretty soon after his arrival, since the later the visit during a stay, the less the honor.
These “foreigners” were, of course, essentially counters in a game. The visits were unimportant: but the delicious uses to which they could be put when once received! “Dear Mrs. Tranter, she wanted me to be the first to meet ...” and “I am most surprised that Ernestina has not called on you yet— she has spoiled us—already two calls . . .” and “I am sure it is an oversight—Mrs. Tranter is an affectionate old soul, but so absent-minded ...” These, and similar mouthwatering op-portunities for twists of the social dagger depended on a sup-ply of “important” visitors like Charles. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat—several dozen hungry cats, to be exact.
When Mrs. Tranter and her two young companions were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting, Sarah rose at once to leave the room. But Mrs. Poulteney, whom the thought of young happiness always made petulant, and who had in any case reason enough—after an evening of Lady Cotton—to be a good deal more than petulant, bade her stay. Ernestina she considered a frivolous young woman, and she was sure her intended would be a frivolous young man; it was almost her duty to embarrass them. She knew, besides, that such social occasions were like a hair shirt to the sinner. All conspired.
The visitors were ushered in. Mrs. Tranter rustled for-ward, effusive and kind. Sarah stood shyly, painfully out of place in the background; and Charles and Ernestina stood easily on the carpet behind the two elder ladies, who had known each other sufficient decades to make a sort of token embrace necessary. Then Ernestina was presented, giving the faintest suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand.
“How are you, Mrs. Poulteney? You look exceedingly well.”
“At my age, Miss Freeman, spiritual health is all that counts.”
“Then I have no fears for you.”
Mrs. Poulteney would have liked to pursue this interesting subject, but Ernestina turned to present Charles, who bent over the old lady’s hand.
“Great pleasure, ma’m. Charming house.”
“It is too large for me. I keep it on for my dear husband’s sake. I know he would have wished—he wishes it so.”
And she stared past Charles at the house’s chief icon, an oil painting done of Frederick only two years before he died in 1851, in which it was clear that he was a wise, Christian, dignified, good-looking sort of man—above all, superior to most. He had certainly been a Christian, and dignified in the extreme, but the painter had drawn on imagination for the other qualities. The long-departed Mr. Poulteney had been a total, though very rich, nonentity; and the only really signifi-cant act of his life had been his leaving it. Charles surveyed this skeleton at the feast with a suitable deference.
“Ah. Indeed. I understand. Most natural.”
“Their wishes must be obeyed.”
“Just so.”
Mrs. Tranter, who had already smiled at Sarah, took her as an opportunity to break in upon this sepulchral Introit.
“My dear Miss Woodruff, it is a pleasure to see you.” And she went and pressed Sarah’s hand, and gave her a genuine-ly solicitous look, and said in a lower voice, “Will you come to see me—when dear Tina has gone?” For a second then, a rare look crossed Sarah’s face. That computer in her heart had long before assessed Mrs. Tranter and stored the resul-tant tape. That reserve, that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. Poulteney’s presence, momentarily dropped. She smiled even, though sadly, and made an infinitesimal nod: if she could, she would.
Further introductions were then made. The two young ladies coolly inclined heads at one another, and Charles bowed. He watched closely to see if the girl would in any way betray their two meetings of the day before, but her eyes studiously avoided his. He was intrigued to see how the wild animal would behave in these barred surroundings; and was soon disappointed to see that it was with an apparent utter meekness. Unless it was to ask her to fetch something, or to pull the bell when it was decided that the ladies would like hot chocolate, Mrs. Poulteney ignored Sarah absolutely. So also, Charles was not pleased to note, did Ernestina. Aunt Tranter did her best to draw the girl into the conversation; but she sat slightly apart, with a kind of blankness of face, a withdrawnness, that could very well be taken for conscious-nes............