‘Seems a good enough sort of a fellow,’ Freddy said cautiously. ‘Mind, I didn’t like his waistcoat, but, then, I don’t like yours either, coz, so I daresay it don’t signify. Where did you meet him? I haven’t seen him before.’
‘But you have been in Leicestershire, Freddy,’ Jack reminded him. ‘I fancy the Chevalier has not long been amongst us, though I am told that he was reared in England.’
‘Yes, that is quite true,’ Kitty said. ‘I think my uncle came to England on account of the troubles in France, but Uncle Matthew so much dislikes French people that he would never invite my relations to Arnside. And so I never saw Camille more than once in my life, and that was when I was quite a little girl. But I never forgot him, or how kind he was in mending the doll Claud sent to the guillotine!’
‘I cannot tell you, my dear Kitty, how happy I am that it has been my privilege to bring you together again,’ said Jack, rising from his chair. ‘I must tear myself from you, Meg. How unkind it was of you, by the way, not to have invited me to go with you tonight! Our dear Kitty’s first visit to the theatre! It is an event—one which I would give much to witness. But you will tell me all about it, Kitty, won’t you?’
‘You would find that a great bore, I am persuaded!’ she retorted.
‘No, no! When have I ever been bored by your confidences?’ he said, quizzing her.
‘But, Jack, I will not be so wronged!’ Meg cried. ‘It is Freddy’s party, you must know, not mine!’
‘Then it was very unkind of Freddy,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips.
‘Thought you was promised to Stichill tonight?’ said Freddy.
‘I am, of course,’ admitted Mr Westruther. ‘But it was still very unkind of you not to have invited me!’ He then took an unconventional leave of Kitty, pinching her chin, and bidding her enjoy herself, and went away.
‘Never knew such a complete hand!’ said Freddy. ‘I must say, I’m glad he ain’t coming. For one thing, he’d very likely cut the piece up, and for another, five’s an awkward number. Stonehouse is going along with us, and we’ll have supper afterwards at the Piazza. You’ll like that, Kit.’
There could be no doubt of this; her eyes were sparkling already in anticipation of the treat. Mr Standen, returning to his lodging in Ryder Street, to change his dress for the evening’s entertainment, nourished a faint hope that a visit to the theatre might give her thoughts a new turn. He was perfectly willing to escort her to any place of amusement frequented by ladies of quality, but he was much inclined to think that any more expeditions such as those which had rendered the last two days hideous would send him into Leicestershire on a repairing lease.
The success of the evening was assured from the moment that Mr Stonehouse, a shy young gentleman afflicted with a slight stammer, made his bow, and showed plainly by his demeanour that he very much admired Miss Charing’s style of beauty. To a girl who, besides having lived in rural seclusion, had never been used to think herself even tolerably handsome, the appreciative gleam in Mr Stonehouse’s eye was as exhilarating to the spirits as a glass of champagne. When they took their seats in the box, they attracted some attention, and several persons, who had exchanged bows and smiles with Meg, looked very hard at Kitty, one foppish man even going so far as to level his quizzing-glass in her direction. She thought this very rude, but she was not altogether displeased until Freddy, observing the interest of the dandy, said in a resigned tone: ‘There’s that fellow Luss. Thought he was out of town. Pity he ain’t. Never knew anyone more inquisitive! Lay you odds we shall have him here in the first interval, trying to nose out who you are, Kit!’
‘Is he staring so because I am a stranger?’ asked Kitty, a trifle dashed.
‘That’s it. No need to put yourself about,’ Freddy said reassuringly. ‘It ain’t that there’s anything amiss: in fact, you look very becomingly.’
This temperate praise exercised a rather damping effect upon her spirits, but these soon rose again, for Mr Stonehouse showed unmistakable signs of wishing to engage her attention. While Freddy and his sister exchanged desultory remarks about their various acquaintances in the audience, he drew his chair rather closer to Kitty’s, and politely enquired if she was enjoying her visit to the Metropolis. He seemed surprised to learn that it was her first; and when she told him innocently that Freddy had been so obliging as to take her to Westminster Abbey and to the Tower, looked quite stunned.
‘F-Freddy?’ he repeated. ‘D-did you say W-Westminster Abbey?’
‘Yes, and also the Tower. We meant to go into St Paul’s as well, but the guide book seemed not to think highly of the interior, so we did no more than look at the outside. But we saw the Elgin Marbles!’
‘N-Not Freddy!’ he said incredulously.
‘Yes, indeed he did! Though I am bound to own that he did not care much for them.’
‘I shouldn’t think he w-would,’ said Mr Stonehouse. ‘I c-can’t imagine how he was p-prevailed upon to go!’ He coloured, and added apologetically: ‘No, I d-don’t mean that! I c-can, of course, but it’s very surprising! The best of good fellows, you know, b-but—’ His voice broke. ‘Elgin Marbles!’ he uttered. ‘Oh, lord!’
Freddy, overhearing, said severely: ‘Yes, but there’s no need for you to spread it all over town, Jasper!’
‘I c-couldn’t resist it!’ said Mr Stonehouse frankly. ‘D-didn’t you admire ’em, Freddy?’
Since Mr Standen felt strongly on the subject, it was fortunate that his sister created a diversion at that moment by calling Kitty’s attention to a box on the opposite side of the house. ‘Look, Kitty! There is the Chevalier, just come in with Lady Maria Yalding and her sister! Freddy! If she has not brought Drakemire with her! Well!’
Kitty, following the direction of her eyes, saw a party of four people in the box. A stout woman, very fashionably dressed but neither beautiful nor in quite the first blush of youth, was disposing herself in her chair, assisted by the Chevalier, who held her fan and her reticule for her, and carefully arranged her elaborately trimmed cloak over the back of the chair. A thinner edition of herself, who bore more the appearance of a hired companion than of a sister, sat down beside her, somewhat perfunctorily attended by the fourth member of the party, a desiccated man with a misogynistic expression.
‘Lady Maria is the fat one, and that’s her elder sister, Lady Jane,’ explained Meg. ‘Annerwick’s daughters, you know: he has five, and all as plain as puddings! No fortune, of course: Mama says that old Lord Annerwick ran through thirty thousand pounds before he was twenty-five years old even!’
‘Good gracious!’ said Kitty, looking in surprise towards Lady Maria’s box. ‘I had supposed her to be very rich indeed! She wears so many jewels and feathers!’
‘Oh, yes! For, by the luckiest chance, Mr Yalding wished to marry her, and although he was quite an ungenteel person—I believe, in fact, a merchant!—the Annerwicks could not but be thankful.’
‘Didn’t want to marry her,’ interpolated Freddy. ‘Wanted to be in the ton. Offered for the Calderbank girl first, but he smelled too much of the shop for Calderbank. Queer old fellow! Didn’t do him much good, either. Nailed up a couple of years ago.’
‘N-no, but it d-did Lady M-Maria good,’ said Mr Stonehouse. ‘He left his whole f-fortune to her. She saw to that! D-dragon of a female!’ He glanced across the house. ‘Stupid, too. Who’s the young b-blade making—’ He stopped abruptly, his question cut short by a nip from Meg’s fingers.
But Freddy, who had moved beyond the reach of his sister’s hand, answered it. ‘Cousin of Miss Charing’s. French fellow. Think he’s dangling after her, Kit?’
‘Oh, Freddy, surely he would not do so?’ exclaimed Kitty, shocked.
‘Might,’ said Freddy. ‘Wouldn’t myself, but plenty of fellows have. Well, bound to! Worth a hundred thousand, they say. Trouble is, she’s a dashed queer-tempered woman. Uphall made a push
to fix his interest with her. She’d have had him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself up to scratch. Told me he’d sooner be rolled-up. Says it ain’t so bad in a sponging-house—once you get used to it. Good God! For the lord’s sake, don’t look to the left, Meg! Aunt Dolphinton!’
With great presence of mind, Meg unfurled her fan, and plied it so that it hid her profile. ‘Has she seen us?’ she hissed.
‘Don’t know, and I’m dashed well not going to look. She’s got Dolph with her, that’s all I can tell you. We shall have to take a stroll outside after the act, or she’ll start beckoning to us. You know what she is!’
Just then the curtain rose, and although Freddy’s enjoyment of the drama was marred by what he felt to be the urgent necessity to evolve a scheme that would enable them all to escape a compulsory visit to Lady Dolphinton’s box, Kitty instantly forgot the ordeal ahead, and sat throughout the act in a trance of rapt interest, her lips just parted, her gaze riveted, and her hands tightly clasping her fan. At the fall of the curtain Freddy made a creditable attempt to hustle the ladies out of the box before his redoubtable relative had had time to observe them; but owing to Meg’s having lost her handkerchief, and to Kitty’s having to be roused from her lingering trance, this failed. Before he could achieve his end, a knock fell on the door, and the Chevalier entered, so that the project had to be abandoned.
Kitty could not but be glad. That her handsome cousin should dangle after a fortune was a suggestion that distressed her. His prompt appearance in Freddy’s box seemed to give the lie to it; and nothing in his demeanour betrayed the least desire on his part to return to Lady Maria’s side. In full view of his hostess, he stayed chatting, very gay and debonair; and when Kitty, rendered quite uncomfortable by a fixed stare from the opposite box, told him that she feared he might be offending Lady Maria, his brows flew up in surprise, and he exclaimed: ‘But no! How should it be possible? I have informed her that my cousin is present—my cousin whom for so many years I have not seen!’
‘Well, she looks very cross,’ said Kitty.
‘I am not very well acquainted with Lady Maria, but it seems that she suffers from bad humours,’ he said, with a droll look. ‘But I should not say so! I am, in effect, an ingrate! She has been most kind to one who is without friends in London, and—you understand my lips are sealed!’
‘All very w-well,’ said Mr Stonehouse, when, by tacit consent, he and Mr Standen withdrew from the box to take an airing in the corridor, ‘b-but if he hasn’t any f-friends in London, w-why did he c-come here? N-not one of the Embassy people, is he?’ He added hastily: ‘I don’t m-mean to say that he isn’t p-perfectly respectable! It just struck m-me that it was odd!’ He became aware of a lanky figure in his path, and put up his glass. ‘Oh! Dolphinton! How d’ye do?’
Lord Dolphinton addressed himself to his cousin, briefly and to the point. ‘Mama says you are to bring Kitty to her box,’ he stated. ‘Freddy, I didn’t know you were going to bring Kitty to town, did I?’
Mr Standen, though irritated by this peremptory command, was not deaf to the note of appeal in Lord Dolphinton’s voice. ‘No, no!’ he said soothingly. ‘At least, I don’t know what you knew, Dolph, but no need to get into a taking, old fellow! Too late to bring Kit along to see my aunt now! You go back and tell her so! Bring her after the next act!’ He then turned his relative gently round, and gave him an encouraging thrust, remarking to Mr Stonehouse, as Dolphinton ambled away: ‘Seven-months’ child, y’know: daresay it accounts for it! Better go back and warn Kit!’
‘Freddy!’ said Mr Stonehouse, detaining him. ‘What is this? I m-mean, Elgin M-Marbles—Westminster Abbey—! Are you g-going to be m-married?’
‘No, no!’ Freddy said involuntarily. Recollecting himself, he added: ‘What I mean is—only betrothed! Keeping it a secret, Jasper! Family reasons!’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Stonehouse, much mystified. ‘Of c-course, if you d-don’t want it known, I shan’t s-say anything! But why—’
‘Curtain’s going up!’ interrupted Freddy desperately, retreating into his box much in the fashion of a rabbit hotly pursued by a terrier.
Ten
Considerably to their surprise, and not a little to their relief, Lady Dolphinton received the engaged couple later in the evening with a degree of affability which was as rare as it was unexpected. She was a hard-featured woman, with a predatory mouth, a smile that never reached her eyes, and an air of consequence. At no time had she been popular with her deceased husband’s relations, for she was both proud and ill-natured, insolent to persons whom she considered to be her social inferiors, tyrannical to her son, and ruthless in the methods she employed to achieve her ends. Even Lady Legerwood, always prone to take the kindliest view of everyone, could not like Augusta. In her eyes, Augusta was a bad mother, whose treatment of her dull-witted son had, she maintained, done much to increase his imbecility. She could say no worse of anyone. The younger members of the family were frightened of her when children, and avoided her when they grew up. Mr Penicuik detested her. He made very little secret of his belief that his nephew’s untimely decease might be laid at her door; and none at all of his conviction that his great-nephew’s peculiarities were directly inherited from her. He said that all the Skirlings were loose screws, adding darkly that he didn’t blame them for setting it about that old James Skirling had been drowned while fishing on a Scottish loch. No one, he said, could be expected to advertise the fact that a member of the family had to be confined in a room at the top of the house, with a couple of attendants to see that he came to no harm.
Knowing how much she must have angered the Countess by rejecting Dolphinton’s suit, Kitty went to her box in considerable trepidation, clutching Freddy’s arm tightly enough to draw from him a remonstrance. She begged pardon, and expressed the hope that her ladyship would not say anything very dreadful. He seemed surprised, and said: ‘Lord, Kit, you ain’t afraid of her?’
‘N-no. At least—yes, I am a little! I think she is an evil person! And she can say such cruel things!’
‘Go away if she does,’ said Freddy.
‘Oh, Freddy, would you dare?’ she asked, laughing a little.
‘No question of daring: easy thing to do!’
‘Freddy, she would be as mad as fire!’ said Kitty, awed by the very thought.
But the practical Mr Standen refused to be intimidated. ‘Wouldn’t make any odds to us if she was. Shouldn’t be there to see it,’ he pointed out. ‘No need to be in a quake: I won’t let her frighten you.’
This unexpected sangfroid greatly impressed Miss Charing, but she could not be sorry that it was not put to the test. They found the Countess wreathed in smiles, arch felicitations to Freddy and broad compliments to Kitty issuing smoothly from between her thin, painted lips. Kitty was even permitted to kiss her ladyship’s cheek; and learned, with incredulity, that nothing had more pleased the Countess than the news of her engagement.
While his mother was overwhelming Kitty with her goodwill, Dolphinton, having acquired a grip on Freddy’s coat, was subjecting it to a series of tugs. Freddy, a wary eye on his aunt, was at first unconscious of this attempt to attract his attention, but when the tugs became imperative they attracted it to rather more purpose that Lord Dolphinton desired. ‘Stop it, Dolph!’ he said indignantly. ‘First time I’ve had this coat on, and between the pair of you, you and Kit—’ He paused, meeting his cousin’s anguished look of entreaty, and said: ‘Oh, very well! What’s the matter, old fellow?’
‘Never told me you was bringing Kitty to town!’ said Dolphinton imploringly.
‘Of course I didn’t! Why should I?’ replied Freddy.
‘He never told me!’ said Dolphinton, addressing his parent.
She laughed, but in a way (as Miss Charing later told Mr Standen) that boded ill for him. ‘Good God, Foster, what is that to the purpose? I wish you will strive to be a little less foolish! And so you a
re staying with dear Margaret, Kitty? Such a sweet creature, but perhaps not quite the person to take care of you! Naughty girl! Why did you not come to me? I am sure, if I have begged poor Uncle Matthew once to send you to me for a season, I have done so fifty times! I promise you, I grudge you to Margaret! It was always the wish of my heart to bring out a daughter!’
She rattled on in this style until it became time for them to return to their own box, her eyes flickering all the while from Kitty’s face to Freddy’s, and back again. She enquired solicitously after Mr Penicuik, after the Legerwoods, after Mr Westruther, whom she had not seen for an age: could it be that he was still out of town? She wanted to know if Kitty was being tolerably well entertained in London: did Meg mean to procure a voucher for her, admitting her to Almack’s? Had Freddy taken her driving in Hyde Park? But this was something Kitty must grant Dolphinton the pleasure of doing! She must know that he was an excellent whip: drove the prettiest turn-out. ‘You must take Kitty up beside you one afternoon, Foster: you will like to do that, I know!’
‘Like to do that,’ he repeated obediently, but looking so miserable that Kitty was hard put to it to refrain from laughing.
‘And, I must say,’ she told Freddy, once they were out of earshot, ‘I hope he does not offer to take me, for I am persuaded he would overturn me!’
‘No, there you’re wrong,’ replied Freddy. ‘Wouldn’t think it, but he’s a first-rate fiddler. Bruising rider too, if ever he had the chance! She don’t let him hunt, but we had him down to stay in Leicestershire once. Never saw the poor fellow so happy! Dashed if he didn’t lay his leg over the ugliest customer m’father ever had in the stables! Brute went like a lamb with him, what’s more. You’d be quite safe. Not that I think he’ll take you: looked devilish blue, didn’t he?’
She agreed, but, knowing the Countess, she was not surprised when he came to pay a morning-call in Berkeley Square the following day, escorting that determined lady. The Countess, graciously embracing her niece, had come to congratulate her on her situation. She had been calling in Mount Street, to enquire after the invalids, and had learnt from her dearest sister that Meg was increasing. But her ungrateful niece, observing with amazement the affability she showed towards Miss Charing, thought that she had come rather to ingratiate herself with a girl whose adoption by Mr Penicuik she had deplored for years. She heard Dolphinton, acting under his mother’s goad, make an assignation to take Kitty for a drive in the Park that very afternoon, and was quite at a loss to understand the meaning of these strange tactics. ‘For what,’ she argued, when these unwelcome visitors had left the house, ‘can she hope to achieve, when she is apprized of your engagement to Freddy? I perfectly understand how greatly she must have wished you to marry Dolph, when my uncle made you his heiress, for Mama says that his estates are much embarrassed, and she, you know, is shockingly expensive! Did you remark the furs she was wearing? I could not but stare, and wonder how she contrived to rig herself out so handsomely on a jointure which Mama says cannot have been large!’