Chapter 7

So times are changed to and fro,

and chaunging times have chaunged us too.

—Gervase Babington, A very fruitfull exposition of the Commaundements (1583)

Pidgeley was given two letters to post that afternoon: one from Tyrone to his twin sister Araminta (with additional contributions and margin notes supplied by Aggie), and the other from Beatrice to her stepmama Mrs. Wolfe.

"So you wrote to dear Mrs. Wolfe, did you?" began Aggie at dinner, between sips of her fish soup. "We must write to her as well, Tyrone, since she and Mr. Wolfe are in Kent and will not be able to read the letter you sent to Minta."

"Indeed," he replied. "Though I suppose Bea's letter will serve the purpose. Wouldn't want us all to be repeating ourselves." He winced as his wife pressed his foot under the table with rather too much vigor, but fortunately Pidgeley was ladling more soup into Beatrice's bowl, his shaking hand providing a disconcerting distraction.

Once the footman made his creaking retreat, however, Beatrice replied, "No, I don't suppose my letter to Mama left anything out. I even told her how Joanie pinched her finger in the door and what Margaret said to Nurse."

"Then you—also told her about—er—your bathing accident and the swim lessons?" ventured Aggie.

"Of course. But not in a way to cause her anxiety, I hope. All being well that ends well." At this last, her voice shook the slightest bit, and she hastened to clear her throat. (Which caused Pidgeley to spring forward with a popping of knee joints to deposit a roast partridge breast upon her plate.) "Oh. Thank you."

They all three chewed and sipped quietly for some minutes, Tyrone now nudging his wife's ankle with his own foot, but then finally Beatrice set down her knife and fork and said boldly, "I told Mama about Mr. Clayton, naturally, and how very much we liked him, but—but I said I was afraid we would not see much of him anymore, now that his—friends—his intended bride and her companion, that is—were come to Bognor."

"Are you sorry about that, Beatrice?" asked her sister-in-law. "I know I am."

"We don't know for certain that we will not see him anymore," pointed out Tyrone. "Though perhaps we should have invited Miss Brand and Miss Croy to join us in anything they liked. We might have said, ‘the more the merrier,' or something to that effect."

"I suppose we could still send a note," his wife answered dubiously. Privately she thought it would hurt Beatrice more, to have Miss Brand about and to witness the engaged couple's bliss, if bliss it proved. Though she would never say so to Beatrice, to Aggie's mind, the appearance of his intended had not seemed to fill Mr. Clayton with overmuch elation.

Before Tyrone could answer, Beatrice interjected, her chin lifting. "I think Mr. Clayton would already know he—and therefore they—would be welcome, so…we had better leave it up to him. We mustn't—chase him, you know. It would appear…odd. Extreme."

Aggie made a helpless gesture. "Certainly that is not the impression we wish to make, dear Bea, but would it not appear equally suspect if we were to drop his acquaintance altogether, now that his friends have come and we have learned he is engaged? That would look like we only wanted his company because we—because we thought—"

"Because we thought he and I might like each other," finished Beatrice, her cheeks flaming. "You may as well say it, Aggie."

"May we have the apple tart, Pidgeley?" Aggie blurted. She fidgeted while the ancient footman pottered from the room before resuming, "Now that you mention it, Bea, we have nothing to be ashamed of for admitting it. A kind, congenial, talented young man. Of course Tyrone and I liked him! And it would have been unnatural if it never crossed our minds that you might like him as well."

Beatrice pushed her partridge to the edge of her plate. "Though my liking him is not the same thing as you and Tyrone liking him."

"No," said Aggie meekly. "Which is why we have guilty consciences. For…pushing the acquaintance."

"Guilty consciences? Don't be ridiculous." Beatrice pushed the partridge back to the center of the dish and studied it, her lips pressed together to prevent any trembling. "Even if Tyrone had not invited him to everything under the sun, I suspect I would have liked him in any case. But—it doesn't signify now. We—we did not then know he was engaged, and now we do. And now Miss Brand is here in Bognor, and as I said, I would be—greatly surprised if we see any more of him."

Beatrice was doomed to be surprised then, as it turned out, for the very next morning, as Tyrone negotiated the use of a bathing machine with one of the dippers, a quiet voice addressed her.

"Good morning, Miss Ellsworth, Mrs. Ellsworth."

Beatrice shivered, though she was well bundled and the morning air was still.

"Mr. Clayton. Good morning to you," the ladies replied, Aggie stifling a nervous giggle and Beatrice scarcely audible.

His gaze touched hers fleetingly, like fingertips probing a sore spot and shying away again. Then he turned toward the promenade. "Here they come. I hope you will forgive me for not joining the swim lesson this morning. Miss Brand and Miss Croy are eager to try bathing."

Making a magnificent effort of which she would later be proud, Beatrice replied with seeming ease, "They could not have been favored with a more beautiful day for it, sir." And then, "Good morning to you, Miss Croy, Miss Brand."

Miss Brand gave a little hop, clapping her mittened hands together. She was, Beatrice thought with an inward sigh, a rather adorable creature. "Good morning, good morning! Ooh! I am frightened, I confess. Mr. Clayton tells me you are all ‘old hands' at this, but Cissy and I are filled almost equally with avidity and fear."

Beatrice thought the ratio of avidity to fear in Miss Croy far from equal, for the older woman was pale and twitching, but the sight of the woman's dread contrarily bolstered her own courage. "I think you will both enjoy it very much," she said. "And Mr. Clayton will secure you a competent dipper."

"I know it," answered Miss Brand with a little smile directed at the man in question. "Mr. Clayton is supremely capable."

It was not a proprietorial smile, per se, nor would Beatrice even categorize it as confident. It was meant to be…pleasing. It made her wonder how intimate Mr. Clayton and his betrothed were. How well they knew each other.

And Mr. Clayton smiled in return, but his was vague, polite. Beatrice thought she had seen more easiness when he challenged her to swim to shore or when they spoke over the teapot.

Stop it, she ordered herself. However Mr. Clayton and Miss Brand feel toward each other is not only none of your business, Beatrice Ellsworth, but it hardly matters. All that matters is that the deed is done. Mr. Clayton is engaged, and he is not engaged to you.

As if to reinforce this argument, when Mr. Clayton stalked off in the same direction as Tyrone toward the row of bathing machines, Miss Brand said, "I am so glad Mr. Clayton made friends in Bognor. I was a little afraid, coming unannounced, I should find him quite surly and drudging—he and Papa always worked so hard and so continuously, you understand. It required some effort on my part to wrest information from him, but I learned that he has been to supper at your house and to the library with Mr. Ellsworth and even that he has promised to try the assembly. You cannot imagine how my heart took wings to hear that last part! Because I told myself, if Mr. Clayton were recovered and were only going to sit at his desk and answer my questions Yes or No and silently wish me back to town, I would not long withstand such treatment. Surely it would end in Cissy and me returning to town in a week, and how uncomfortable that would be, when we have only just arrived, and Bognor took some getting at."

"Then Mr. Clayton still intends on being at Thursday's assembly?" asked Aggie.

"He does. He said he hoped I would pardon him, but he had already given his word that he would partner both you and Miss Ellsworth at least once, as if I would have any objection to that at all!" Another clap of the mittens. "I adore dancing, and it has grieved me in the past to think that Mr. Clayton did not dance. And now—!" Clap, clap. "I told him as well that, now that he has a hostess, he must return some of your family's kindness. Is it wrong of me to say he required convincing? But I insisted it would be no trouble at all to him—Cissy and I would arrange matters. He need only rise from his desk and repair to the dining room at the appropriate hour. So won't you come for supper tonight at seven?"

With care, Beatrice and Aggie managed not to exchange glances. If Mr. Clayton required convincing, how could they possibly impose on him and accept? To which Beatrice added the silent postscript to herself, You see? He has decided the friendship must be given up. Oh, please heaven, may it not be because he guesses I have feelings for him!

But then the gentlemen returned, Tyrone with the chosen bathing machine following behind and Mr. Clayton beside him.

"…It would be a pleasure, Clayton," Tyrone was saying. "I may speak for all of us and say we are at liberty to accept."

"Oh!" The little exclamation escaped Aggie, even as Miss Brand gave another of her hops and cried, "Oh, goody! You Ellsworths will come, then? You will see, Mr. Clayton, how painless Cissy and I will make things for you."

"Perhaps I ought to return to Spencer Terrace and tell Barnstable and Molly of our plans," suggested Miss Croy, eyeing the surf with some trepidation.

"Nonsense," declared her charge. "There is plenty of time for that later, Cissy. You are trying to avoid bathing. You had better lead the way, Mr. Clayton, before Cissy runs off altogether."

This was the signal for the group to split up, the Ellsworths heading toward the rocks where the swimming lessons took place and Miss Croy and Miss Brand remaining to trail after Mr. Clayton toward the bathing machine some yards in the opposite direction. And though he did not look over his shoulder, it made no difference—whether he would or no, he pictured what the morning might have been, had his intended and her cousin not come.

But they had come.

It had been perhaps three months or more since he had last seen Miss Brand, and that had been but an afternoon call. Before that, it had likely been the previous Christmas season. They had corresponded in the meantime, she diligently and he in his more desultory fashion, but he could not now recall any specific item communicated between them. She wrote to him of finishing her schooling and the summer spent with friends in Cirencester; he wrote to her of the completion of the Worcester project and negotiations for the next. Had their letters fallen into other hands, they might have been taken for messages between siblings or between an uncle and niece, but certainly not for love letters. Not once had mention been made of their arrangement or what the future held.

And now she was here, literally on his doorstep. The future had come to him. The cloudy future had become the all-too-distinct present.

"I am so glad they will come tonight," Miss Brand was saying, the slightest bit breathless from the effort of walking in the loose sand. "I like the looks of them very well. And I hope they will invite us to Number Four again in return, for I would like to see the Tyrone Ellsworths' little girls. Have you seen them?"

"I have." He gestured toward the chosen bathing machine which the ladies might share. Taking a deep breath, Miss Croy set her shoulders and entered, like a comtesse mounting the steps to the guillotine, but Miss Brand hesitated.

"Mr. Clayton—John. May I call you John? I wish you might call me Priscilla now. At last, I mean. Now that I am grown."

He bowed his head in acknowledgement.

She gave a wavering smile. "Thank you. John. I realize we don't know each other very well…yet. Somehow writing letters is not the same as seeing another person face to face, is it? But it is all right that Cissy and I are here, is it not? You aren't angry, that is?"

"I am not angry," he replied gravely. It was the truth. He was not angry with her. Only with himself.

Her smile flickered and then faded, and she turned to follow her cousin up the steps of the little cabin.

Clayton gave a sigh of his own. He must do better than this. He must. It was not fair to Miss Brand, who had every right to expect not only courtesy but even enthusiasm from him.

It was this gap between what he knew was expected of him and what he had so far been able to muster which led to him agreeing to the supper. In the context of his work, John understood that, when a strut in a framework gave way, it must not only be replaced, it must be reinforced. It must be shored up, if it was not to break again. In the same way, entirely without conscious effort or forethought, he knew he had placed too much weight on the untried structure of his engagement, only to find it failing beneath him. He had believed, because he had never been in love, that he might then never be. He had believed he should and would work on developing affection for his betrothed when the time came, only to find that affection could develop on its own, unasked for, and with no regard for convenience or propriety.

And for this mistake in judgment he must punish himself. The engagement must be rebuilt, strengthened, tested. Which meant he must apply the pressure of Miss Ellsworth's presence to ensure the repair would hold. Because he had been so wrong to indulge himself, moreover, he must be absolutely proper now. He could only hope, when Priscilla had appeared, bringing everything figuratively down about his ears, Miss Ellsworth had suffered no injury. That too must be tested.

Therefore, the supper. The supper and, heaven help him, the assembly.

Squaring his own shoulders much as Cissy Croy had, John Clayton took up his invisible burden and headed for the neighboring bathing machine.

"Why did you say we would go, Tyrone?" Aggie hissed at last, when she saw Beatrice swimming back to shore. "After Bea told us this morning of her feelings for Mr. Clayton?"

"It could not be avoided," he returned. "I hemmed and hawed and looked a fool when he issued the invitation, as you might expect, but Clayton told me we had entertained him so much that he must return the favor."

"I don't like him anymore," his wife declared unreasonably. "Mr. Clayton. Given his circumstances, he oughtn't to insist and cause her pain."

"But that's just it, Aggie—he doesn't know he's causing her pain. He means to be friendly and generous, I daresay. It's our own fault for nursing the idea and passing it to Bea like a bad cold. Certainly that wasn't Clayton's intention! How could it be, when he always had Miss Brand in reserve?"

His wife scowled and made no reply, but Tyrone knew her to be a rational creature, however disappointed she might be in the moment. Under cover of the water he gave her a fond pinch. "Come on, then. Smile, my love, and promise you won't take a bite out of Clayton tonight. Beatrice is looking this way, and having managed to infect her with fondness for our neighbor, now we must try for the cure."

"You mean, try to make her dislike him?"

"Nothing so ambitious, I'm afraid. But unless either he or we decamp from Bognor posthaste, we had better learn to practice indifference."

Having emerged from the bathing machine in her dry clothing, Beatrice nodded to the dipper perched on the rocks. She suspected the Ellsworths must be favorite customers by this point, since whomever they employed was excused from actual dipping and had only to wait while they swam.

Tyrone and Aggie were still frolicking in the waves, and her gaze drifted up the beach toward where they had left Mr. Clayton and his party. She could not tell which machine they used, each one having its own canvas shelter for privacy, but, squinting, she picked out a dark spot bobbing outside of one. It might have been a seal, but when, after another bob and duck, the spot rose and became a dark head of hair above a lithe form, to which a linen shirt clung damply, there could be no doubt.

Even at this distance, she blushed fiercely and half turned her own head away, in case Mr. Clayton should see her watching him. So he was still working on his swimming, though he must stay with Miss Brand and Miss Croy? Somehow the thought acted as a balm on her wounded heart. He might be engaged to Miss Brand—nay, he was engaged to Miss Brand—but he had enjoyed learning to swim all the same. And perhaps the tiniest, most infinitesimal part of that enjoyment had been her company.