‘No,’ agreed Endymion gloomily.
‘Well, for God’s sake – !’
‘Haven’t got anything in mind,’ explained Endymion. ‘Just thinking it would be a devilish good thing if it could be done.’
Luckily, since Harry, striving to recover his breath, showed alarming signs of allowing his feelings to overcome him, the symposium was brought to an end by the clock on the mantelshelf, which, inexorably striking the hour, recalled Endymion to the realisation of his military duties. Taking hurried leave, he fled.
‘If ever I met such a knock-in-the-cradle!’ exploded Harry. ‘“Just thinking it would be a devilish good thing if it could be done – !” Yes, and another devilish good thing would be if either of you had as much rumgumption as a couple of sparrows! Only you haven’t, and it’s my belief you never will have!’
Charis burst into tears.
Twenty-six
Except that Harry, repenting of his harsh words, became reconciled with his sister, matters were in the same unsatisfactory state when the Hertfordshire party returned to London three days later.
Before her feet had touched the flagway, Frederica saw that Charis was looking pale and fagged; but in the bustle of arrival there was no opportunity for any private talk. Not until the baggage had been carried in, the servants greeted, Felix’s medicine unpacked, and Felix himself persuaded, not without difficulty, to retire to bed, to recover from the journey, was Frederica able to turn her attention to her sister. She then invited her to come to her own bedchamber, to help her to unpack her portmanteau, saying: ‘It seems as if I hadn’t seen you for months! I hope to heaven we never have to live through another such period!’
‘Oh, no!’ said Charis, shuddering. ‘It must have been so dreadful for you!’
‘Well, it was,’ admitted Frederica. ‘Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Alverstoke I don’t know how I should have managed. I can never be sufficiently grateful to him. So firm and patient with Felix! Such an unfailing support to me, particularly during those two days when I feared – But don’t let us talk of it! My dear, have you been ill? You are looking positively whey-faced!’
‘Oh, no! I am perfectly well! It’s the hot weather.’
‘Very likely. I have been feeling it very much myself, even in the country: horridly languid, and a sort of lowness and oppression. It must have been far worse here. Indeed, when we got between the houses Jessamy said it was like driving into an oven. Never mind! I hope we shall be many miles from London within a few days. Did Alverstoke tell you of the delightful scheme he has made for us?’
‘No,’ Charis answered, staring at her apprehensively.
‘We are to go down to Alver, and to stay there for as long as we choose!’ said Frederica, beginning to unpack her portmanteau. ‘I daresay I ought to have declined the offer, but it was too tempting! so exactly what the boys will like! It is in Somerset, you know, and quite near Bath, which is an advantage. – Oh, dear, just look at this muslin! I shall coax you to do my packing when we set out for Alver!’ Receiving no reply, she looked round, to find that Charis had sunk into a chair, and had buried her face in her hands. ‘Charis! Dearest, what’s the matter?’
‘I am so very unhappy!’
‘Good God, why?’
‘I don’t want to go to Alver!’
Curbing her exasperation, Frederica said calmly: ‘Do you mean that you had liefer go to the seaside?’
‘Oh, no! I don’t wish to go anywhere!’
‘Charis, I don’t think you perfectly understand the case,’ said Frederica. ‘It is necessary for Felix’s health to take him out of London. And if this is what London is like during the summer months, so intolerably stuffy and dusty, I am very sure it is necessary for all our healths! Are you thinking that it will be dull? Perhaps you may find it so, after our rakings, but you were not used to think the country dull. I believe Alver is a most beautiful place, too: do you remember what the guide-book said about its park, and its pleasure gardens, and its lake, with all the rare shrubs planted round it? We shall never be tired of sketching there! Alverstoke says that the boys may fish the trout-stream, too – I wish you might have seen Jessamy, when he learned of the scheme! You wouldn’t want to deny him such a treat! After all, love, neither he nor Felix grudged us ours, did they?’
‘Oh, no, no! I didn’t mean – Of course they must go! If only I might remain here! I thought perhaps I could stay in Harley Street. If Aunt Seraphina goes with you, poor Aunt Amelia will be glad to have me, I daresay.’
‘Aunt Seraphina will not go with us, for I don’t mean to ask her. I see no need for any chaperon, and if I did I shouldn’t call upon her services, for I’m quite out of charity with her! As for leaving you with Aunt Amelia, you may put that notion out of your head!’
‘Oh, Frederica – !’
‘If you don’t want to drive me into a pelter, stop moaning!’ snapped Frederica. ‘You may stop shamming it, too! Upon my word, Charis, I wonder at you! What you wish to do is to remain in London, making a cake of yourself over Endymion Dauntry, and well I know it! I should suppose that that is what you have been doing while I was away! I wish you may not have set people in a bustle!’
‘I love Endymion!’ declared Charis, rearing up her head. ‘And he loves me!’
‘Then I see no occasion for all these die-away airs,’ responded Frederica prosaically.
Charis started up, eagerness in her face. ‘Do you mean – can you mean that you consent to our marriage?’
‘There’s no saying what I might do, if your attachment proved to be more lasting than any of your previous ones,’ replied Frederica lightly.
‘You don’t mean to let me marry him – ever!’ said Charis, in throbbing accents. ‘You mean to separate us!’
‘What, by spending a few months at Alver? If your mutual passion won’t survive –’
‘Always! Always!’ Charis interrupted. ‘You will contrive to keep us apart, hoping that I shall forget him! But I shan’t, Frederica, I shan’t!’
‘Well, don’t fall into a lethargy! Remember that in two years you will be able (if I haven’t relented) to do precisely what you choose!’
‘Oh, you don’t know what it is to be in love!’ Charis said passionately.
‘No, and I must own that I’m thankful I don’t – if it means fretting, and fuming, and falling into this sort of extravagant folly! You may be thankful too, let me tell you! Excessively uncomfortable you would have found it! Do, pray, draw bridle, my dear! This isn’t the moment to be making such a piece of work about nothing. You shall see how you feel when you have had time to reflect. There, don’t let us rub against one another! I don’t mean to be unkind, but I’ve suffered too much anxiety to be able to enter into what seems to me to be such a very –’
She stopped, but Charis finished the sentence for her. ‘Unimportant matter!’ she flashed, and ran out of the room.
Frederica made no attempt to follow her. She had managed to keep her temper, but she had never been nearer to losing it with her sister. It seemed to her monstrous that, after all she had undergone, she should have been greeted on her homecoming by such a scene, and when she herself was suffering from lowness of spirits. Perhaps Charis did not realise that when one had passed through a time of terrible anxiety relief did not immediately restore the tone of one’s mind. To be sure, she herself had not expected that after the first raptures she would find herself subject to fits of dejection, and much inclined to be crotchety; but still Charis should have known better than to have enacted a tragical scene within an hour of her arrival.
The truth was, she told herself, that she was still very worn-down, and perhaps allowed herself to be too easily provoked. The last week at Monk’s Farm had tired her, when Alverstoke was no longer there to arrange everything for her. She had grown so much accustomed to turning to him for help or advice that naturally she had felt quite lost without him. She had missed his companionship, too; and rather thought that if he had remained at Monk’s Fa
rm she would not have fallen into such low spirits. That also was quite natural: however much one loved one’s young brothers one couldn’t talk to them as one could to Alverstoke – or, of course, to any other adult person.
This reflection led her into reverie; and while she hung her dresses in the wardrobe, and transferred her chemises and her petticoats from the portmanteau to the chest of drawers, she recalled the drives and the walks she had enjoyed in Alverstoke’s company, pondering some of the things he had said to her, smiling reminiscently at others.
These pleasurable, if nostalgic, thoughts were interrupted by a perfunctory knock on the door, followed immediately by the entrance of Harry, who demanded impetuously: ‘What is this I hear, Freddy? Charis says you mean to spend the summer at Alverstoke’s place in Somerset! Upon my word, I wonder that you should wish to be so much beholden to him, and I’ll tell you to your head that I do not! I am very well able to take care of my family myself, and so you may tell him! What’s more, I should like to know what sort of a rig he’s running! You may not know what his reputation is, but I do, and – and damme, I won’t have it!’
‘Won’t you, Harry?’ said Frederica, in a voice of dangerous quiet. ‘Then start to take care of your family! You haven’t yet made the least push to do so! You wouldn’t even find me a lodging, when I asked you! You have permitted – oh, no! you have encouraged Endymion Dauntry to sit in Charis’s pocket, without caring a straw for the consequences! You have never made the smallest attempt to – to accept your responsibilities! You have been content to leave everything to me! And now – now, when I am almost at my wits’ end, and my cousin – not my brother! – comes to my aid, you have the effrontery to say that you won’t have it, and that you don’t choose to be beholden to him! You wonder that I should wish to be! Well, I don’t wish it, but I shall be, because there is no one else on whom I can depend! You wonder at me! Not as much as I wonder at you, believe me!’
Her voice broke; she turned away, as aghast as Harry. She had kept her temper with Charis; she had not dreamt that she would lose it with Harry; she had not meant to utter such reproaches to him; and was now horrified that she had done so. What had come over her she could not imagine; but suddenly she had found herself trembling, and with such rage possessing her as she had never before experienced. It left her weak, bewildered, and struggling to hold back a rush of tears. She said, in a stifled voice: ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it – I’m out of frame – tired! Forget it – pray! And go away, if you please!’
‘Oh, certainly!’ replied Harry. ‘I am very willing to do so!’
With that, he stalked out of the room, seething with mortification, and a burning sense of injustice. There was just enough truth in Frederica’s intemperate accusations to touch his conscience, and this made him much angrier than if there had been none. Whose fault was it that he hadn’t accepted his responsibilities? Frederica’s, of course! a rare dust there would have been, if he had tried to interfere in her management of the family! When had she asked him for aid? Never! At all events, never until she had begged him to devote himself to Charis during her own absence from London. Had he done it? Yes, he had, and without a word of complaint, although he had been obliged to forgo all the entertainments to which he had been looking forward! Was it to please himself that he had remained in London during the past few weeks? No, by God it was not! He had done so at her request. Left to himself, he would have posted down to Monk’s Farm immediately.
He continued in this way for some time, posing questions to himself, and finding answers to them which were irrefutable, and yet afforded him little satisfaction. His sense of ill-usage increased; and when Charis sought him out presently to implore him to help her he was in exactly the right mood to lend himself to any enterprise likely to vex Frederica.
In view of her enforced, and possibly imminent, incarceration at Alver, Charis considered it to be of vital importance to consult Endymion: would her dearest Harry convey a message to him? and could he think of any respectable rendezvous?
Certainly he could! He would visit Endymion that very evening; as for a respectable rendezvous, nothing could be easier! They would meet in Kensington Gardens, and he himself would escort Charis there.
‘Oh, Harry, I knew I might depend on you!’ breathed Charis.
This was balm to his injured feelings. At least one of his sisters appreciated him! It was a pity, in a way (but not in other ways), that Frederica wasn’t present to hear this declaration of faith; but at all events she would very soon be made to realise that he was not the contemptible fribble she seemed to think him, but a force to be reckoned with.
But when she came into the drawing-room, just before dinner, much of his rancour faded. He was alone, and she went straight up to him, and put her arms round his neck, kissing his cheek, and saying: ‘Oh, Harry! Such an archwife as you have for a sister! Forgive me!’
The sense of injury was still strong in him. It was melting fast, but it prompted him to say: ‘Well, I must own, Freddy, I think it was pretty unjust of you!’
He was prepared to prove to her, point by point, just as he had proved it to himself, that she had grossly misjudged him; and had she allowed him to do it he would very soon have talked himself into goodhumour. But she did not. She had already endured two agitating scenes; she was tired; her head ached; she wanted, more than anything, to go to bed; and less than anything to become engaged in any further argument. So she said: ‘Yes, dear, I know it was. Let us talk of something else!’
‘That’s all very well, but it was you who brought up the subject of Endymion and Charis, and –’
‘For heaven’s sake, Harry, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t and I won’t enter into argument with you!’
He read into this an elder sister’s contempt for his opinion, and instantly stiffened, saying with freezing civility: ‘As you wish!’ She knew that she had wounded his sensibilities, and that she ought to reassure him, but she also knew that it would require tact and patience, both of which virtues had deserted her; so she merely smiled wearily at him, excusing herself with the reflection that Harry’s miffs never lasted for long.
Charis came down to dinner, rather red-eyed, but quite composed; and when she and Frederica retired to the drawing-room, she took up her stitchery, responding to Frederica’s attempt at conversation, but inaugurating none herself.
They went early to bed; and Frederica’s heart was lightened by the clinging embrace she received, in answer to her good-night kiss.
She fell asleep almost at once, but Charis lay awake, listening for Harry’s step on the stairs. When it came, she sat up expectantly, for he had promised to let her know the result of his mission. She called ‘Come in!’ in a hushed voice, when he tapped softly on her door, and scarcely waited for him to shut it before demanding: ‘Oh, Harry, did you see him?’
‘Yes, of course I did. Don’t speak so loud!’ he replied, with a significant glance at the wall which separated her room from Frederica’s.
‘What did he say?’ she asked, obediently lowering her voice. ‘What does he think we should do?’
‘He said he must have time to consider the matter,’ he answered, unable to repress a grin.
‘It naturally came as a great shock to him,’ said Charis, with dignity.
‘Lord, yes! Knocked him bandy! Didn’t seem able to say anything at first but “What a devilish thing!” However, we’re to meet him tomorrow, so you may be easy! By-the-by, we had better decide on some errand, in case Frederica wants to know where we are off to – which you may lay your life she will!’
‘Oh, no, Harry, must we? I can’t bear to deceive her!’ Charis said wretchedly.
‘Well, if that’s the case you had better not meet Endymion!’
‘But I must!’
‘Then stop being a goose! Isn’t there anything you wish to purchase?’
After prolonged thought, Charis said that if she were forced to go to Alver she would need some drawing-paper – not that she w
ould have the heart to use it; so this subterfuge was agreed upon, and Harry went off to bed, recommending her not to get into one of her worries.
She was terribly nervous next day, but fortune favoured her. When it was time to set out for Kensington Gardens, and she went to take leave of Frederica, she found that she was entertaining a morning visitor, in the person of Lord Buxted.
Her entrance created a welcome interruption. His evil genius had prompted his lordship, as soon as he had shaken hands with Felix, who was lying on the sofa, to express the hope that he would never again cause his sister to suffer so much anxiety. Frederica intervened, but to no avail. Lord Buxted had decided long since that she was by far too indulgent, and he said, with a smile which instantly set up the hackles of all three Merrivilles: ‘You have a very forgiving sister, Felix! I am afraid I think you deserved all that happened to you! I’ll say no more, but –’
‘I wouldn’t listen to you, whatever you said!’ Felix burst out, his cheeks scarlet, and his blue eyes flaming. ‘You’ve no right! You aren’t my guardian!’
‘Felix, hold your tongue!’ Jessamy said sharply, pressing him back against the cushions. He glanced at Buxted, and said, carefully choosing his words: ‘It is quite unnecessary to scold my brother, sir, I assure you.’
‘It isn’t his business to scold me!’ declared Felix furiously. ‘It’s Cousin Alverstoke’s business, and he did! And it wasn’t a – bear-garden jaw, because he’s a right one, and he knew I was as sorry as I could be, and if he chooses to make me regret I was ever born if I do it again he may!’
Since it was obvious that Felix was fast working himself into a state of undesirable excitement, and even more obvious that an attempt to wring an apology from him would be violently rebuffed, Frederica greeted her sister’s entrance with heartfelt relief.
She did not for a moment believe that Harry was going to escort Charis on a shopping expedition, but she accepted the story, merely saying: ‘Are you taking Lufra? I shouldn’t, if I were you!’