Coronation Summer by Thirkell Angela

Author:Thirkell, Angela [Thirkell, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2019-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven — Leander versus Cambridge

My brother Ned came down from Cambridge about a week before the rowing match, but did not stay with us, because he had to be in training with the others of his crew. Mr. Darnley was similarly occupied, so we saw very little of him. I noticed, however, that Ned inquired most particularly of me what Emily’s engagements were, and if she were at home it was almost a matter of course that Ned should visit us. Emily appeared to take the greatest interest in his accounts of his dog, the gig he drives at Cambridge, his play at billiards, his racing bets, his rowing exploits, and all the subjects which a sister’s partiality finds so excessively boring. I also observed that Emily had a liveliness, verging at times on forwardness, when Ned was present, and a languor when he was absent, upon which I placed an interpretation very favourable to Ned’s advances. Knowing how annoying the presence of a relation can be in our tenderer moments, and remembering well how very trying my dear father used to be when Colonel Sparker rode over from Norwich to see me, always coming into the room to ask the Colonel to look at a gun or a dog, as if there were nothing else worth looking at, I took care to leave the two soupirants alone, while in the seclusion of my bedroom I devoured the literature supplied by the library. I remember that about this time I read The Vicar of Wrexhill by Mrs. Trollope, and thought highly of it. The character of the sanctimonious Evangelical parson, Mr. Cartwright, is excellently drawn, and I shuddered at the way in which he enmeshes the unhappy and foolish widow in his toils till he persuades her to give him her hand and fortune. It is a striking representation of the way in which a false religion can alienate even a mother from her children. The sufferings of Charles and Helen as they see their mother becoming a prey to the designing Cartwright, and find her affection subtly withdrawn from them and given to persons with whom she would once have been too fastidious to associate, are almost unbearable. How I rejoiced when, after the poor mother’s death, the villain is foiled and virtue triumphs, and the Anglican persuasion reigns once more.

One evening I mentioned the subject of religion to Mr. Vavasour.

‘Nature is my religion, Miss Harcourt,’ he said, ‘but that does not prevent me from recognizing other forms. For instance, I would readily dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as indeed I am to do to-morrow. Living in society, one should live sociably.’

‘Do not listen to him, Miss Harcourt,’ said Mr. Tom Ingoldsby, for this conversation took place at a concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society at the Hanover Square Rooms, which Emily and I were attending in company with the two gentlemen. The Sinfonia in B flat by Beethoven had just ended amid applause, and at last we could talk.

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