Nancy by Rhoda Broughton (1873)

This novel is marked in a couple of ways. The most insistently noticeable is that it is written in the present tense. We follow Nancy Grey as one of six 'children' in a mid-Victorian family in the country. At their sizeable house, the children (who are in reality aged between 11 and the early twenties) still occupy the supplicant position in their home - they are all still regular denizens of the nursery, where their tea is taken separately, and they indulge in boisterous games. This is an excellent reminder of the very different position of young adults at that time. Whilst on the one hand they are frightened of their gruff father, and repair to their upper floor to shout and carry on, on the other the older ones are thinking about marriage and smoking freely. The unusual feel of the present tense keeps this unusual (for us, not them) situation humming. An old school friend of their despised father, Roger Tempest, who is in his late forties, is staying with them. Previously his age has kept him apart, but he has proved interesting because he doesn't appear to harbour the same bitterness as their parent. Needless to say, he shows signs of interest in Nancy, who is around 20. She is youthful, immature, noisy-but-thoughtful - and cannot wait to get away from childhood and their grim father. So, despite his incredible age, she accepts him. On their honeymoon in Germany they meet a young neighbour of Roger, Frank Musgrave, who pays Nancy a lot of attention and clearly finds her company appealing. Nancy persists, in her ignorance, in regarding him simply as a friend in these tough first times away from the only companions she has ever known. Back in England, and ensconced in her new large home, Musgrave is a regular visitor. He tells her of another neighbour, Zelphine Huntley, who he claims was Roger's fiancee in both their youths, and who abandoned him. Nancy's bounding nature jumps to jealousy, much as Musgrave may have hoped it would. Every time she sees Zelphine, she seems to be having private tete-a-tetes with Roger - at parties and balls she favours him and whisks him off for private conversations. Nancy is left reeling, and the all-but-confrontations she and Roger keep having keep amounting to nothing at the last moment. Roger is absent for a while in the West Indies on business, trying to save Zelphine's dissolute husband from making even more of a mess of his affairs. Musgrave capitalises on this to press his suit. Again and again, the same almostness pervades the scene. They keep almost coming to grips, and missing it by inches. Nancy remains apparently blissfully unaware of the deeper affections which surround her, and yet.....not completely so. One evening, in a wood between their estates, Musgrave finally blurts out his feelings directly, and Nancy is "horrified" and crying, despite there having been hints of her nascent understanding of him. She emerges from the wood, teary and flustered, only to see Zelphine driving by, and noticing her particularly with a meaning look! When Roger returns it soon becomes clear that Zelphine has mentioned it. Roger urges Nancy, in guarded terms, to come clean about what has occurred, clearly thinking that she's been unfaithful to him. Nancy is lost in her own suspicions about Zelphine and her husband, as well as shame at having seemed to lead Musgrave on and been involved in 'questionable' behaviour in public, and makes an odd decision - to lie. Nothing has happened at all, she insists to Roger, Zelphine is lying. They both go through agonies of uncertainty and non-communication with one another, and their marriage looks doomed. Musgrave, bitter and confused, seeks out Nancy's softer elder sister Barbara, and asks her to marry him, which had been the outward plan all through his secret affection for Nancy. Barbara is delighted that her seemingly terminally hesitant suitor has finally come around, and Nancy feels separation from her for the first time in her life - she can't tell her the real story for fear of breaking Barbara's heart. All this time, Nancy and Barbara's oldest brother, Algy, has been the faithful dog at Zelphine's feet, having fallen for her and developed drooping and sotted habits as his fortunes with this temptress rise and fall, and jealousy at Roger's closeness to her takes its toll. Eventually he becomes ill, and is near to dying. Barbara nurses him back from the brink of succumbing to the fever which has been decimating the district, only to feel its effects herself almost as soon as Algy is out of danger. Barbara is not so lucky as her brother, and catastrophe comes in her death. Nancy is prostrate with grief, and nothing at her new home is calling her to stay. She heads back to the family home, and to a period of intense reflection. Having decided to try to forgive Roger his love for Zelphine, and ask him for his forgiveness for her lies, she returns to the marital home, stopping in first to the churchyard where Barbara is buried. There she encounters a miserable Roger by Barbara's grave, and they finally have the honest conversation which has been in the offing for so long, clearing the air and providing the makings for a chastened new beginning. Roger and Zelphine's engagement is revealed as a gossip-originated construction of Musgrave's in order to gull Nancy, and so the road is cleared for reconciliation with Nancy's own honesty about what happened in the wood. My impatience with the consistent avoidance of these two (and Nancy and Musgrave's) coming to an understanding resides in the fact that it doesn't follow their characters as set up - they are both engagers, and Nancy is a perversely honest blurter. It makes for a feeling of trumped-upness which mars this a little. Broughton is still as charming as always, however, so it's a flaw in the crystal which is more noticeable, and yet not terminal. Here's hoping for more psychologically tenable plotting from her in future.