Childish Loves by Benjamin Markovits Page A

perhaps she is unhappy because of her eyes. You mean, I suppose, that she is too pretty to be happy? Though as for that one can’t be always happy. Even I, with five hundred pounds to my name and a hook nose, am not always happy.’
    â€˜What are you conspiring about?’ Mary called from within. ‘I have been having most unpleasant dreams; I keep hearing my name.’
    â€˜We have been talking about you, of course,’ Miss Wollaston said, turning round.
    *
    Lord Grey has taken up residence in Newstead. I returned one afternoon for the sake of a few books I had left in his study and found him quite naturally installed in my former bedroom. I came up the back way, through his study, through the dark. ‘Alice,’ he said, as I pushed open the door; but he received me very hospitably and offered to send for her and bid her make up a bed in a corner of the great hall.
    â€˜I suppose old Owen has been telling you stories about the crickets,’ he added, on seeing my face. ‘I have no objection to sharing my own – we get used to bed-fellows quickly enough at school.’
    But in the end I decided to take my luck in the hall; and after a sleepless night, returned in the morning to Annesley. Lord Grey and I breakfasted together. He had caught the sun, as he said, in his mountains, and looked for once quite happily indifferent to his own appearance: very brown and red in the face. I invited him to join our expedition to Peaks Hole and was rather relieved when he declined. He had travelled enough for one summer. But he inquired pleasantly into the arrangements. Miss Chaworth was a wonderfully pretty girl, and he knew Mr Musters slightly at college – he had the reputation of a ‘Man of Method’. I asked him what this meant. Most of his college set, he said, had a touch of the Method – it signified very little, but then he broke off to ask if by this stage they were decently engaged?
    â€˜You mean,’ I said, ‘Miss Chaworth and Mr Musters? Nobody will say, though it is generally presumed.’ I added, ‘Mr Musters claimed your acquaintance. He said you often went hunting together.’
    â€˜A kind of hunting,’ Lord Grey replied.
    *
    My mother has written again and again, complaining of my absence. She wishes to know when I intend to return to school. She has had a letter from Mr Hanson about it, who had a letter from Dr Drury; and now she is threatening to come to Newstead herself. But I am hardly at Newstead these days, with everything in preparation for Peaks Hole. I will make up my mind about school on my return. The dance at Matlock Bath has been put off, owing to a small fire in the kitchens. There was some talk it would be abandoned altogether, but a new date has been fixed, and we have arranged ourselves accordingly. But the weeks have passed. August is over, and already the chestnut trees, which run either side of the approach to Annesley, begin to lose their leaves – they have withered in the heat. After a wet beginning, the summer has had no rain, and the farmers almost despair of it. But the great day is here at last, which has been looming so large. Tomorrow morning the party from Southwell arrive at Annesley, for a hasty breakfast, before we dispose ourselves in the two carriages and continue our journey into Derbyshire.
    ***
    Mr Becher and I have been given a room together, at the Old Bath Hotel; but his bed is empty, he is still at the dance below, the sounds of which make their way up through the chimney and boards of the hotel. And I have lit a candle and sat down to the only table at hand, and pushed the washbasin aside, to write – in order to relieve my feelings, which are strained to bursting.
    The breakfast party went off well enough. The duty of introductions fell by necessity to me, which was painful to my diffidence, but I acquitted myself tolerably. There was only one awkward moment. Mr Becher, mistaking John Musters for