Read Online An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan - Free Book Online Page B

Usually Mary began to
recover by Hatfield: at Baldock or Biggleswade she would eat with a country
appetite, and by Eaton she would be remarking with interest on the state of the
crops.
    Which, Lydia could see,
was poor. After the coldest winter in memory 1799 could come up with only a
damp, laggard spring. Distress was still hovering over the country and
agitating the nerves of propertied gentlemen who feared an English Bastille;
though the invasion scare of last year was gone, and the victory of the Nile
had raised hopes that the war could be won, or at least not so persistently
lost.
    Lydia ardently wished it
over because it would stop men being killed, because it would put an end to the
tiresome military fashions, and because she longed to go abroad again. She had
visited Paris with her father just before the Revolution, been entranced, and
had hoped for a present return. Ten years was a long time to nurture a hope,
but she had done so: knowing, however, that lately she kept the spindly thing
alive only by ignoring her father’s declining vigour. Doubtless if the
Continent opened again he would put his age and lameness to the test of a
Channel crossing and a French diligence, just for Lydia’s sake — if, that
is, she were so spoiled and selfish as to allow it.
    Spoiled and selfish. The
Bath song trilled in her head again. She silenced it by an act of will and an
invocation: Heystead. She would only think about that dilemma (what dilemma? —
there could be none: she was not going to spend the summer bear-leading a
feather-headed chit about Bath, and that was that: problem, then, call it a
problem) when she was back at Heystead. There reason and harmony would be
restored along with Mary’s Lincolnshire vowels.
    At post-chaise speed it
was just possible to complete the journey up the Great North Road to Heystead
in a day. Lydia had done it once: never again: you arrived fractious and
exhausted and then had to sleep on your face. Instead they broke the journey
overnight at the Wheatsheaf in Alconbury, where the mutton and the fleas were
alike tolerable, and came into Lincolnshire fresh the next day, under a noon
sun beginning to fight free of marauding cloud. Everywhere looked green. A
fallacy, no doubt, but she was too contented to explore it.
    And here was the steep
lane between ancient beeches with its wickerwork of shadows, the ruined
gatehouse, the mossy stone walls, the winding drive; and Heystead Priory itself
heaving into sight, a listing ship in a turf sea. Lopsided: heavy: splendid.
Behind the neat horizontal line of the parapet jostled the old medieval
roofline, all spikes and twisting chimneys: relics in a hatbox. The colour of
the walls was somewhere between chestnuts and cider.
    ‘Oh, I shan’t be
hurrying to goo away from here agin for a proper while,’ Mary said cheerfully.
    Lydia’s heart echoed
her. The post-chaise drew up in the courtyard with a last soft gravelly growl,
and Dr Templeton emerged from the shady whale’s-mouth of the great porch. Very
lame now, and leaning heavily on his stick, but determined, he came to let down
the step and hand Lydia and Mary out of the carriage.
    ‘That’s it. That’s well.
Ah, here we are. Sound in wind and limb, yes? Capital, capital . . . Daniel, if
you will be so good as to see to the luggage — and, Mrs Gilmore, I feel sure
the postilion would welcome some of your veal-and-ham pie . . .’ At last Dr
Templeton took Lydia’s arm and smilingly said, as he always did: ‘“The harvest
truly is plenteous.”‘ And then she knew she was home.
    An observer, knowing
nothing of Dr Templeton and his daughter, and recruited to spy upon their
reunion from behind the priory’s oak panelling, might have concluded that no
very strong attachment existed between them. No fond embraces, no gabbling of
news and I-missed-you avowals: instead civil enquiries and measured exchanges,
before Lydia presently went upstairs to change out of her travelling-dress.
    What the