‘Yes?’ said Alverstoke encouragingly, the amusement deepening in his eyes.
Mr Trevor seemed to find it difficult to express himself; but after a pause, during which he obviously conjured up a heavenly vision, he said earnestly: ‘Sir, I have never before seen, or – or even dreamed of such a lovely girl! Her eyes! So big, and of such a blue! Her hair! like shining gold! The prettiest little nose, too, and her complexion quite exquisite! And when she spoke –’
‘But what were her ankles like?’ interrupted his lordship.
Mr Trevor blushed, and laughed. ‘I didn’t see her ankles, sir, for she remained in the carriage. I was particularly struck by the sweetness of her expression, and her soft voice. In fact, there is something very taking about her – if you know what I mean!’
‘I have a very fair notion.’
‘Yes, well – well, when she leaned forward, and smiled, and begged me to give the letter to you, I promised her I would do so – even though I knew you wouldn’t be above half pleased!’
‘You wrong me, Charles. I confess you haven’t aroused the smallest desire in me to make Miss Merriville’s acquaintance, but I must certainly meet her companion. Who, by the way, is she?’
‘I am not perfectly sure, sir, but I fancy she might be Miss Merriville’s sister, though she is not at all like her. Miss Merriville called her Charis.’
‘That confirms me in my dislike of Miss Merriville. Of all abominable abbreviations I think Carrie the most repulsive!’
‘No, no!’ expostulated Mr Trevor. ‘You misunderstood me, sir! Of course it isn’t Carrie! Miss Merriville distinctly said Charis! And I thought that never was anyone more aptly named, for it means “grace”, you know – from the Greek!’
‘Thank you, Charles,’ said his lordship meekly. ‘Where should I be without you?’
‘I thought you might have forgotten, sir – your memory being so bad!’
The Marquis acknowledged this demure hit by lifting one of his strong, slender hands in a fencer’s gesture. ‘Very well, Charles – damn your impudence!’
Encouraged, Mr Trevor said: ‘Miss Merriville said she hoped you would call in Upper Wimpole Street, sir: will you?’
‘I daresay – if you can assure me that I shall find the beautiful Charis there.’
Mr Trevor was unable to do this, but he knew better than to urge the matter further, and withdrew, not unhopeful of the issue.
Thinking it over, later, it occurred to him that in exposing Charis to Alverstoke’s destructive notice he might be doing her a vast disservice. He was not afraid that Alverstoke would try to seduce a gently-born female of tender years, however beautiful she might be: his lordship’s gallantries did not include such wanton acts as that; but he did fear that he might, if Charis captured his fancy, lure her into one of his à suivie flirtations, bestowing a flattering degree of attention upon her and perhaps leading her to think that he had formed a lasting passion for her. Remembering Charis’s melting look, and appealing smile, Mr Trevor felt that her heart could easily be broken, and his conscience smote him. Then he reflected that she could hardly be alone in the world, and decided that her protection from a notorious flirt might safely be left to her parents. Besides, very young females ranked high on the list of the things Alverstoke rated as dead bores. As for Miss Merriville, Mr Trevor felt that she was very well able to take care of herself. He had been dazzled by her beautiful companion, but he retained a vague impression of a self-possessed female, with a slightly aquiline nose, and an air of friendly assurance. He did not think that she would be easily taken-in. Further reflection convinced him that no attempt would be made to trifle with her affections: it was unlikely that so noted a connoisseur of beauty as Alverstoke would deem her worthy of a second glance. In fact, it was even more unlikely that he would in any way bestir himself on her behalf.
After several days, during which his lordship made no mention of her, and certainly did not go to pay her a morning call, it began to seem as though he had either decided to ignore her, or had forgotten her existence. Mr Trevor knew that it was his duty to remind him, but he refrained, feeling that the moment was unpropitious. His lordship had been obliged to endure three visits – two from his elder sisters, and one from his heir’s widowed mother – all of which had bored him so much that every member of his household took great pains not to put him out of temper. ‘For I assure you, Mr Wicken,’ said his lordship’s top-lofty valet, condescending to his lordship’s butler, ‘that when he is nettled his lordship can create quite a humdurgeon, as they say.’
‘I am well aware of that, Mr Knapp,’ returned his colleague, ‘being as I have been acquainted with his lordship from his cradle. He reminds me of his father, the late lord, but you, of course, didn’t know him,’ he added, depressing pretension.
His lordship had indeed been sorely tried. Lady Buxted, never one to accept defeat, had come to Alverstoke House, on the flimsiest of pretexts, accompanied by her eldest daughter, who, failing to soften her uncle’s heart by cajolery, had dissolved into tears. But as she was not one of those few, fortunate females who could cry without rendering themselves hideous he was as impervious to her tears as to his sister’s account of the straitened circumstances to which she had been reduced. Only penury, Lady Buxted declared, had compelled her to apply to her brother for his assistance in the all-important duty of launching her dearest Jane into the ton. But her brother, speaking with the utmost amiability, told her that parsimony, not penury, was the correct word; upon which her ladyship lost her temper, and gave him what James, the first footman, who was waiting in the hall, described to his immediate subordinate as a rare bear-garden jaw.
Mrs Dauntry was his lordship’s second visitor. Like Lady Buxted, she was a widow; and she shared her cousin’s conviction that it was Alverstoke’s bounden duty to provide for her offspring. There the resemblance between them ended. Lady Buxted was frequently designated, by the vulgar, as a hatchet; but no one could have applied such a term to Mrs Dauntry, who presented an appearance of extreme fragility, and bore with noble fortitude all the trials which beset her. As a girl she had been an accredited beauty, but a tendency to succumb to infectious complaints had encouraged her to believe that her constitution was sickly; and it was not long after her marriage that she began (as Lady Jevington and Lady Buxted unkindly phrased it) to quack herself. Her husband’s untimely demise had set the seal on her ill-health: she became the subject of nervous disorders, and embarked on a series of cures and diets, which, since they included such melancholy remedies as goat’s whey (for an imagined consumption), soon reduced her to wraith-like proportions. By the time she was forty she had become so much addicted to invalidism that unless some attractive entertainment was offered her she spent the better part of her days reclining gracefully upon a sofa, with a poor relation in attendance, and a table beside her crowded with bottles and phials which contained Cinnamon Water, Valerian, Asafoetida Drops, Camphorated Spirits of Lavender, and any other paregoric or restorative recommended to her by her friends or by the maker’s advertisement. Unlike Lady Buxted, she was neither ill-tempered nor hardfisted. She had a faint, plaintive voice which, when she was thwarted, merely became fainter and more exhausted; and she was as ready to squander fortunes upon her children as upon herself. Unfortunately, her jointure (described by the Ladies Jevington and Buxted as an easy competence) was not large enough to enable her to live, without management and economy, in the style to which, she said, she was accustomed; and as she was too invalidish to study these arts, she was for ever outrunning the constable. She had been Alverstoke’s pensioner for years; and although heaven knew how much she wished to be independent of his generosity she could not but feel that since her handsome son was his heir it was his duty to provide also for her two daughters.
As the elder of these, Miss Chloë Dauntry, was some weeks short of her seventeenth birthday, her presentation had not exercised Mrs Dauntry’s mind until she learned, from various garbled sources, that Alverstoke
was planning to give a magnificent ball in honour of Miss Jane Buxted. A weak female she might be, but in defence of her beloved children, she declared, she could become a lioness. In this guise she descended upon Alverstoke, armed with her most powerful weapon: her vinaigrette.
She made no demands, for that was not her way. When he entered the saloon, she came towards him, trailing shawls and draperies, and holding out her hands, which were exquisitely gloved in lavender kid. ‘Dear Alverstoke!’ she uttered, raising huge, sunken eyes to his face, and bestowing one of her wistful smiles upon him. ‘My kind benefactor! How can I thank you?’
Wholly ignoring her left hand, he briefly clasped the other, saying: ‘Thank me for what?’
‘So like you!’ she murmured. ‘But although you may forget your generosity, I cannot! Oh, I am quite in disgrace with poor Harriet, and the girls, for venturing out-of-doors in such chilly weather, but I felt it was the least I could do! You are a great deal too good!’
‘Well, that’s something new, at all events,’ he remarked. ‘Sit down, Lucretia, and let me have the word with no bark on it! What have I inadvertently done to excite your gratitude?’
Nothing had ever been known to disturb the saintliness of Mrs Dauntry’s voice and demeanour; she replied, as she sank gracefully into a chair: ‘Dissembler! I know you too well to be taken-in: you don’t like to be thanked – and, indeed, if I were to thank you for all your goodness to me and mine, your never-failing support, your kindness to my loved ones, I fear I should become what you call a dead bore! Chloë, dear child, calls you our fairy godfather!’
‘She must be a wet-goose!’ he responded.
‘Oh, she thinks no one the equal of her magnificent Cousin Alverstoke!’ said Mrs Dauntry, gently laughing. ‘You are quite first-oars with her, I assure you!’
‘No need to put yourself in a worry over that,’ he said. ‘She’ll recover!’
‘You are too naughty!’ Mrs Dauntry said playfully. ‘You hope to circumvent me, but to no avail, I promise you! Well do you know that I am here to thank you – yes, and to scold you! – for coming – as I, alas, could not! – to Endymion’s assistance. That beautiful horse! Complete to a shade, he tells me! It is a great deal too good of you.’
‘So that’s what you came to thank me for, is it?’ said his lordship, a sardonic look in his eye. ‘You shouldn’t have ventured out on such an unnecessary errand: I said, when he joined, that I would keep him decently mounted.’
‘So generous!’ she sighed. ‘He is deeply sensible of it! As for me, I wonder sometimes what must have become of me when I was bereft of my beloved husband if I had not been able to depend upon your support through every trial.’
‘My faith in you, dear cousin, leads me to believe that you would have lost no time in discovering some other support,’ he answered, in a voice as sweet as hers. He smiled slightly, watching her bite her lip, and said, as he opened his snuff-box: ‘And what is the trial at present besetting you?’
She opened her eyes very wide at this, saying in a bewildered tone: ‘My dear Alverstoke, what can you mean? Apart from my wretched health – and I never talk of that, you know – none at all! I’ve discharged my errand, and must take my leave of you before my poor Harriet begins to fancy I’ve suffered one of my stupid spasms. She is waiting for me in the carriage, for she wouldn’t hear of my coming alone. Such good care as she takes of me! I am quite spoilt between you all!’ She rose, drawing her shawl around her, and putting out her hand. But before he could take it she let it fall, exclaiming: ‘Oh, that puts me in mind of something I have been wanting to discuss with you! Advise me, Alverstoke! I am quite in a quandary!’
‘You put me to shame, Lucretia,’ he said. ‘As often as I disappoint you, you never disappoint me!’
‘How you do love to joke me! Now, be serious, pray! It is about Chloë.’
‘Oh, in that case you must hold me excused!’ said his lordship. ‘I know nothing of schoolgirls, and my advice would be worthless, I fear.’
‘Ah, you too think of her as a schoolgirl! Indeed, it seems almost impossible that she should be grown-up! But so it is: she’s all but seventeen; and although I had thought not to bring her out until next year, everyone tells me it would be wrong to postpone the event. They say, you know, that the dear Queen’s health is now so indifferent that she may pop-off at any moment, and even if she doesn’t she won’t be equal to holding any Drawing-rooms next year. Which has me in a worry, because naturally I must present the sweet child – it is what poor Henry would have wished – and if the Queen were to die there can be no Drawing-rooms. As for presenting her at Carlton House, I wouldn’t for the world do so! I don’t know how we are to go on. Even if the Duchess of Gloucester were to take the Queen’s place – which, of course, the Prince Regent might desire her to do, for she has always been his favourite sister – it wouldn’t be the same thing. And who knows but what one might find that odious Lady Hertford in the Queen’s place?’
Alverstoke, who could think of few more unlikely contingencies, replied sympathetically: ‘Who indeed?’
‘So I feel it to be my duty to present Chloë this season, whatever the cost!’ said Mrs Dauntry. ‘I had hoped to have been so much beforehand with the world next year as to have been able to do the thing handsomely, but that, alas, can scarcely be! Dear child! When I told her that I should be obliged to present her in one of my own Court dresses, because the cost of such a dress as one would wish her to wear is utterly beyond my means, she was so good and so uncomplaining that it quite went to my heart! I couldn’t forbear to sigh: she is so pretty that I positively long to rig her out to the best advantage! But if I must bring her out this season it cannot be.’
‘In that case, my advice to you is to wait until next year,’ responded Alverstoke. ‘Consoling yourself with the reflection that if there are no Drawing-rooms then none of the season’s fair come-outs will enjoy an experience which is denied her.’
‘Ah, no! How could I be so improvident?’ she countered. ‘Somehow I must contrive to present her this spring! A dance, too! But how to do that, situated as I am –’ She broke off, apparently struck by a sudden idea. ‘I wonder if Louisa means to bring Jane out this season? Sadly freckled, poor child, and such a deplorable figure! However, you may depend upon it that Louisa will make a push to present her creditably, though she is such a nip-cheese that I’m persuaded she will grudge every penny she is obliged to spend on the business. Indeed,’ she added, softly laughing, ‘rumour has it that you are to give a ball in Jane’s honour!’
‘Yes?’ said his lordship. ‘But rumour, as I daresay you know, is a pipe – er – Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures – I forget the rest, but do let me assure you, dear Lucretia, that when invitations are sent out for a ball to be held here Chloë’s name will not be forgotten. And now you must allow me to escort you to your carriage: the thought of the devoted Harriet, patiently awaiting you, is beginning to prey upon my mind.’
‘Stay!’ said Mrs Dauntry, struck by yet another idea. ‘How would it be if Louisa and I cast our resources into a pool-dish, as it were, and gave a ball in honour of both our daughters? I am afraid that my lovely Chloë would quite outshine poor Jane, but I daresay Louisa won’t care for that, if she can but make and scrape a little.’ She raised her hands in a prayerful gesture, and added, in a voice of nicely blended archness and cajolery: ‘Would you, dearest Vernon, if Louisa liked the scheme, permit us to hold the ball here, in your splendid ballroom?’
‘No, dearest Lucretia, I would not!’ replied his lordship. ‘But don’t repine! The occasion won’t arise, since Louisa wouldn’t like the scheme at all, believe me! Yes, I know that I am being so abominably disobliging as to make you feel faint: shall I summon the faithful Harriet to your side?’
This was a little too much, even for Mrs Dauntry. Casting upon him a deeply reproachful glance, she departed, her mien challenging comparison with that of Mrs Siddons, as portrayed by the late Sir Joshua Reynolds as the Tragi
c Muse.
The Marquis’s third visitor was Lady Jevington, who came, not to solicit his favour, but to adjure him not to yield to Lady Buxted’s importunities. She expressed herself in measured and majestic terms, saying that while she had neither expected him to lend his aid in the launching of her Anna into the ton, nor asked him to do so, she would be unable to regard it as anything but a deliberate slight if he were to perform this office for Miss Buxted, who did not (said Lady Jevington, with awful emphasis) share with her cousin the distinction of being his goddaughter. And if, she added, his partiality were to lead him to single out That Woman’s daughter Chloë, for this particular mark of favour, she would thenceforward wash her hands of him.
‘Almost, Augusta, you persuade me!’ said his lordship.
The words, spoken dulcetly, were accompanied by the sweetest of smiles; but Lady Jevington, arising in swelling wrath, swept out of the room without another word.
‘And now,’ the Marquis told his secretary, ‘it only remains for your protégée to demand a ball of me!’
Three
In the face of these experiences it did not seem probable that the Marquis, who rarely felt it incumbent upon him to please anyone but himself, would respond to Miss Merriville’s appeal; nor did Charles Trevor venture to jog his memory. But, whether from curiosity, or because he found himself one day in the vicinity of Upper Wimpole Street, he did pay her a visit.
He was admitted to the house by an elderly butler, who conducted him up the narrow staircase to the drawing-room on the first floor, at a pace eloquent of age and infirmity, and announced him.
The Marquis, pausing on the threshold, and casting a swift look round, felt that his suspicion was confirmed: this unknown connection was demonstrably indigent; for the room was furnished without elegance, and was even a little shabby. Lacking experience, he failed to recognise the signs which would have informed less fortunately circumstanced persons that the house was one of the many hired for the season, and equipped as cheaply as possible.