A Quiet Adjustment by Benjamin Markovits Read Free Book Online

making you love him?’
    Annabella recognized in this a more promising inquiry. She prided herself on her truthfulness, especially when she believed it might cost her pains. In fact, she was glad to give her impression of the poet; she wanted to talk of him and analyse her feelings out of their confusion. ‘He is certainly very agreeable in conversation and very handsome, etc. His manners prove him to be one of nature’s gentlemen. I confess that I felt he was the most attractive person in that company.’ Their coachman shouted at some disturbance in the street, and as she collected her thoughts Annabella congratulated herself on being confident enough in her affections to criticize them openly. ‘I was not bound to him by any strong sympathy,’ she continued, ‘until he said, not to me but in my hearing,I have not a friend in the world! There is an instinct in the human heart that attaches us to the friendless. I consider it to be an act of humanity and a Christian duty not to deny him any temporary satisfaction he can derive from my acquaintance—though I shall not seek to increase it.’ And then, when Mary only smiled at her, she insisted in a warmer tone, ‘He is not a dangerous person to me.’
    â€˜I respect you so greatly,’ Mary countered, ‘that I wonder if the same could be said about him, in regard to you.’
    As usual, Annabella felt, her friend had wilfully misunderstood her finer motives. But the carriage had arrived at Mary’s home in Wilmot Street, where it deposited her amidst mutual good wishes before carrying Annabella on to Gosford House and a sleepless bed.

Chapter Four

    THEIR ACQUAINTANCE, THUS BEGUN, had the full summer in which to ripen, but Annabella was becoming disappointed by its progress. She despaired of doing him any good by her example. His affair with Lady Caroline reached a pitch of excess that promoted it from the hushed gossip of the privileged few to the talk of the newspapers. Worse still, they both looked unhappy on it. Lady Caroline, whose charms were more animating than comfortable, had discovered to her cost the effects of repetition on even the warmest declarations of love. Her feelings had not altered, yet she could not disguise from herself the fact that the tone of their relations unquestionably had . The consciousness made her desperate. Lord Byron, who for his part hated a scene, found himself unwillingly placed in the midst of several. He was soft-hearted enough in the presence of affection to suffer anything for its sake, but absence quickly hardened him to sterner measures. And Annabella’s aunt, Lady Melbourne, seemed to grow tired of plotting the cuckoldom of her son: she began to entertain other plans for the young poet.
    Meanwhile, Sir Ralph and Judy had entrusted their daughter to the care of Lady Gosford. Annabella had written to her mother a full account of the evening at Lady Cowper’s. ‘What will you think,’ she began, ‘when I tell you that Lord Byron himself sought me out, in the gentlest manner, to sing my praises?’ In spite of her differences with Lady Milbanke, there was no one Annabella preferred for confession. Her mother, it should be said, had the strongest appetite for hearing her daughter admired; and Annabella had long since ceased to feel any shame in appealing to it. ‘I have met with much evidence of his goodness,’ she continued. ‘He sincerely repented his treatment of poor Blacket. You know how easily the noblest heart may be perverted by unkindness—perhaps the most easily a noble heart, because it is the more susceptible to ungenerous indignities. I believe that the criticisms he suffered from every quarter for his own first poetical effusions taught him only to visit similar judgements upon a young pretender. He freely confessed that he should have learnt forbearance instead. But while there are many virtues that depend on high feelings if they