'It would surprise me very much to learn that it was! You know, I have never been able to understand how anyone could escape by means of a rope-ladder, particularly a female. It's all very well to talk of throwing it up to the window, but the chances are one wouldn't be able to catch it, or would fall out of the window, trying to do so. And what would you attach it to, if you did catch it?'
'I can't think.'
'No, and even if it was attached I have a strong notion that it is not at all easy to come down a rope-ladder. Depend upon it, it requires a great deal of practice.'
'Hampered by your petticoats, too,' he said thoughtfully. 'I see that you have applied your mind to the problem: tell me all about it!'
She laughed. 'No, I won't allow you to divert me. This is not a funning matter. I know that you think it a great bore, but –'
'Well, don't you?'
'How could I? I think it vexatious – indeed, I could slap Fanny for being such a wet-goose! – but one cannot be bored by what nearly concerns anyone to whom one is very much attached, and for whom one is responsible, can one?'
'As I have never found myself in such a position, I can't say.'
She said, with quick sympathy: 'I know that, and I pity you! You told me once – you said that you were not an object for compassion, but you are, Mr Calverleigh!'
'Yes, I've come to that conclusion myself,' he said unexpectedly. 'I was used not to think so, but ever since I came to Bath I have been growing steadily more convinced that I was mistaken.'
Taken by surprise, feeling very much as if she had suffered an electric shock, Abby gave a gasp. After a brief, but perceptible, pause, she said with as much composure as she could summon to her aid: 'You might not have felt the want of family ties whilst you were abroad, I daresay. But we were speaking of Fanny, and you were about to explain to me why I need not be afraid that she will run away in the night, when we fell into an absurd digression on the subject of rope-ladders. I should be very glad to believe you, but – but why?'
'Oh, it would be much too dangerous! The poor girl would be obliged to get up and scramble on her clothes in the dark, in case some other member of the household should be wakeful, and see the light under her door. After which, she must grope her way down two pairs of stairs, and if their creakings didn't rouse you the approach of a chaise over the cobblestones at that hour of night would certainly do so. Then, too, she must draw back the bolts on the front-door, take off the chain, and lastly, most difficult task of all, shut the door behind her – all without a sound! Of course, she might choose to leave the house open to any chance marauder, but I feel sure that you will tell me she is not so lost to all sense of what is due to you as that !'
'Yes!' said Abby, perceiving the force of these objections. 'And her room is at the back of the house, so how could she know that your horrid nephew was punctual to his appointment? Some thing might have happened to detain him, and only think how awkward it would be for her! She would be bound to consider that possibility. Anyone would! Furthermore, Grimston – our old nurse – sleeps in a little room next to hers, and although I may believe that nothing less than a trumpet-blast in her ear would wake her, you may depend upon it that Fanny would be in a quake! Oh, I think you are undoubtedly right! She won't make the attempt at night, and I'll take good care she has no opportunity during the day, even if I must accompany her everywhere, like the dragon I vowed I never would be.'
'That might become a trifle tedious. Are you so sure that she is planning to elope with my horrid nephew?'
'No,' she replied at once. 'Sometimes I tell myself that I am suffering from a stupid irritation of nerves: that however much she might fancy herself in love she would never do anything so improper, so unprincipled! And then I think that he has taken such strong possession of her mind that she will do whatever he wishes. But she has been in low spirits lately, in a worry, I conjecture. It might be that she can't bring herself to do what she knows is very wrong. I did entertain the hope that she had quarrelled with Stacy, but she hasn't.' She sighed. 'He was at the concert last night, and she looked at him as if he were her whole dependence and delight.'
'No, did she? I envy him. Not, of course, that I've the smallest desire that Fanny should bestow such a look upon me, but I wish that you would.'
She was aware suddenly that her heart, in general a very reliable organ, was behaving in a most alarming way, first trying to jump into her throat, and then beginning to thump so violently that she felt breathless, and uncomfortably hot. It was an effort to speak, but she managed to do so, saying: 'Mr Calverleigh – I am in no mood – for flirting!'
'Now, when have I ever tried to flirt with you?' he protested.
She felt herself impelled to steal a look at him, which she instantly realised was a very imprudent thing to have done, because he was smiling at her, and in a way which made her
heart beat still more violently.
'I love you, you know,' he said conversationally. 'Will you marry me?'
The manner in which he made this abrupt proposal struck her as being so typical of him that a shaky laugh was dragged from her. 'Of all the graceless ways of making me an offer – ! No, no, you are not serious! you cannot be!'
'Of course I'm serious! A pretty hobble I should be in if I weren't, and you accepted my offer! The thing is that it is such a devil of a time since I proposed marriage to a girl that I've forgotten how to set about it. If I ever knew, but I daresay I didn't, for I was always a poor hand at making flowery speeches.' He smiled at her again, a little ruefully. 'That I should love a bright particular star! '
'Oh – !' she breathed. 'Oh, pray don't say such things!'
'I won't, if you dislike it,' he said obligingly.
'Dislike it! How could anyone dislike to have such a thing said to her? But it won't do! You mustn't say any more on this head! Pray do not!'
'No, that's quite unreasonable,' he said. 'I won't pay you any compliments, but you can't expect me not to say any more! I've asked you to marry me, Abigail!'
'You must know I can't – how impossible it would be!'
'No, I don't. Why should it be?'
'The – the circumstances!' she uttered, in a stifled voice.
He looked to be a good deal puzzled. 'What circumstances? Mine? Oh, I'm perfectly well able to support a wife! You must have been listening to my horrid nephew.'
'I've done no such thing!' she said, much incensed. 'And if I had I shouldn't believe a word he said! What's more, con siderations of that nature wouldn't weigh with me, if – if I returned your regard!'
'Don't you? Not at all?'
'I – No! I mean – I mean, it isn't that!'
'Well, if it isn't that – Good God, you don't mean to tell me it's because I made a cake of myself over Celia Morval twenty years ago? No, really, my sweet life, that's doing it much too brown! What had it to do with you? You must have been in the nursery!'
'Yes, but – Oh, surely you can perceive how impossible it would be for me to marry you? She was my brother's wife!'
'No, she wasn't.'
'She was engaged to be married to him, at all events, and she became his wife! And, if it hadn't been hushed up, there would have been a shocking scandal – of your making!'
'But it was hushed up,' he pointed out.
She looked helplessly at him. 'How can I make you understand?'
'Oh, I do understand! You don't care a straw for all that ancient history, but you know that James would, and you're afraid he'd kick up the devil of a dust. He wouldn't, but I daresay he'd wear you to death, trying to heckle or cajole you into giving me up. However, you needn't let that worry you: I can deal with James.'
She said, in a low tone: 'I'm not afraid of James. If – if I knew that I was doing right. But it wouldn't be James only. My sisters – all my family – would be thrown into such an uproar! I only wish I might not be wholly cast off !' She glanced up fleetingly, and tried to speak more lightly. 'I shouldn't like that, you know. They may not know a
bout Celia – indeed, I am very sure they don't, though I suppose Cornelia might, being James's wife – but, alas, they do know that you are the prodigal son!'
'Alas? What if they didn't know it? Would my disreputable past weigh with you?'
Her head was down-bent; she shook it slightly. 'Not if I loved you enough.'
'That sounds to me remarkably like a leveller. Don't you?'
She said frankly: 'I don't know. That's to say, it is so easy to mistake one's feelings: that I do know, for I cut my eye-teeth years ago. I hadn't any thought of marriage, and I didn't think that you had either, so – so I've had no time to consider. I own that if the circumstances had been different I – I should have been sorely tempted! But to marry – and at my age, too! – to disoblige one's family ought not to be considered. Do you understand?'
'Well, I understand that you've the devil of a lot of scruples, but it's no use expecting me to enter into them,' he replied. 'Family ties don't mean anything to me: didn't I tell you so once? As for making a sacrifice of yourself to suit your family's notions of respectability, I call it addlebrained!'
She smiled reluctantly. 'You would, of course! But it isn't quite that. I don't think I can explain it, because it's all tangled in my head – making me addlebrained! Do I seem odiously missish?'
'Yes, but I wasn't going to say so,' he assured her.
The laughter sprang into her eyes. 'Obnoxious creature! If only you didn't always make me laugh! Sometimes I wonder if you have any proper feelings at all!'
'Almost none, I fear. Would you marry me if I had?'
She ignored this. 'Or any sense of shame either! But you have a great deal of quickness, and I'm persuaded you must see how outrageous it would be if I were to do the very thing I am trying to prevent Fanny from doing!'
'O my God!' he ejaculated. 'These Calverleighs – !'
'Exactly so!'
'Do you think exactly?' he asked diffidently. 'Would you object to it if I were to point out to you certain differences between the Calverleighs?'
She put out her hand impulsively. 'Oh, I know, I know!
There is no comparison between you!'
He took her hand, and held it lightly on his knee. 'Oh, there is some comparison! Shocking fellows, both of us! I was one of the roaring-boys when I was on the town: they used to say of me that I was a hell-born babe – too rackety by half ! But what no one ever said of me, not even my loving family, was that I was a bounce, or a queer-nabs!'
'Do they say that of Stacy?' she asked anxiously.
'So I've been informed, and I don't find it at all difficult to believe. Well, to continue our respective histories, each of us eloped with an heiress – or, rather, attempted to do so.'
'But you were in love with Celia! You didn't care for her fortune!' she interpolated swiftly.
'No, nor was I nine-and-twenty. I'm in love with you, and I don't care for your fortune.'
'You need not tell me that! Besides, I haven't a fortune. Not like Fanny! I think you would call it an independence, perhaps, or an easy competence.'
'Well, that's one objection disposed of: no one would be able to say that I married you for your fortune.'
'You wouldn't care if they did!' she said shrewdly.
'No, but you would.' There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes as they rested on her face. 'Just what do you imagine I've been doing during the past twenty years, dear innocent?'
'I don't know. How should I? You have never told me!'
'I'll tell you now. I've been making my fortune, of course.'
She laughed. 'So now you are a nabob! How stupid of me not to have guessed it!'
An odd smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. 'Just so!' he said. 'You aren't even interested, are you?'
'Well, no!' she confessed. 'Except that I did think you were perhaps a trifle purse-pinched, and I collect that this isn't the
case, which I'm glad of, for your sake.'
'Thank you,' he said meekly.
'You know, if you were a rich nabob, your nephew might look to you rather than to Fanny to rescue him from his embarrass ments,' she said.
'Not unless he was touched in his upper works! That would be rainbow-chasing, my dear!'
She smiled, but her own words had recalled her overriding anxiety to her mind. She drew her hand away, which had been resting snugly in his clasp, and gave a sigh. 'Wouldn't you do it, if it lay within your power? No, I suppose you wouldn't. Isn't there anything you might do to save my poor Fanny?'
'I thought it wouldn't be long before we came back to your poor Fanny. You are determined to embroil me in her affairs, aren't you?'
'Don't be vexed with me!' she begged. 'It is so very important! Perhaps you couldn't do anything, but you might be able to – if not for Fanny's sake, for mine?'
'Yes, well, let us now emerge from this pretty fairy-story!' he said, with a touch of astringency. 'If you imagine that I have the smallest desire to receive your hand as a reward for having performed a difficult task to your satisfaction you're beside the bridge, my child! I've no fancy for a reluctant wife. I want your love, not your gratitude.'
'I didn't say that!' she faltered. 'Indeed, I didn't!'
'You came mighty near it, didn't you?' he said quizzically. He got up, and held out his hands to her. 'Come! If we don't make our way back to that inn, and get the horses put-to again, we shall be devilish late, and Miss Wendover will be thinking that you have eloped, not Fanny!'
She allowed him to pull her to her feet. As she walked beside him, towards the inn where they had left the curricle, she said tentatively: 'I hope you are not offended?'
He glanced down at her, and she was relieved to see that he was smiling again, very tenderly. 'No, not a bit. I was trying to decide whether I love you most when you're awake upon every suit, or when you're a pea-goose.'
Her eyes sank, as her colour rose; she said, with an uncertain laugh: 'I must seem like a pea-goose, I know. It is your fault, for – for putting windmills into my head! It doesn't seem so to you, but you have set me a problem, which I must solve, I think, by myself – if you understand me?'
'Well enough, at all events, not to press you further today. When I do press you further, I'll take care I don't do so here! Or in any other place where there's a hoary legend to take possession of your mind!'
'Hoary legend?' she repeated, momentarily puzzled. Her brow cleared suddenly. 'Oh, the bride and her attendants being turned into those stones! I had forgotten it.'
This interlude did much to lessen her constraint. During the drive back to Bath he talked on indifferent topics, so that she was very soon at her ease. She was careful not to introduce Fanny's name into her conversation, and was considerably surprised when he did so, saying abruptly: 'Don't tease yourself too much over Fanny! Have you any reason for fearing that she means to run away with Stacy? I'm inclined to doubt it, you know.'
She replied calmly: 'I don't know. She doesn't mean to do so before Thursday, I believe. She was discussing which of her new gowns she should wear for the party only this morning, so I think myself reasonably safe for the present. Afterwards – well, if she does mean to elope, she will find it a more difficult adventure than she bargained for!'
'I should think you would be more than a match for her,' he said. 'But that puts me in mind of something! I must make my excuses to your sister: I shan't be in Bath next week.'
She was conscious of feeling a disproportionate degree of disappointment, and a little disquiet. She said: 'My sister will be sorry. Are you – do you expect to be away for long?'
'Not longer than I need. There's some business I must attend to, and it won't do to put it off.'
'No, of course not,' she replied sedately. Then, as a thought occurred to her, she uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and said: 'Now, if only I had known, we need not have sent a card to Stacy!'
'Did you do so? Why?'
'Oh, because Selina would have it that if you were to be invited, Stacy must be too!'
br /> 'No! Did she really wish to invite me so much that she was prepared to receive Stacy? I must have made a bigger hit with her than I knew!' he remarked, in gratified accents.
Abby bit her lip, and replied with great dignity: 'My sister – I regret to say! – doesn't hold him in dislike. She thinks him very pretty-behaved, so it isn't a hardship to her to be obliged to entertain him!'
Twelve
The news that Mr Calverleigh had left Bath was brought to Sydney Place by Miss Butterbank on the following morning. She was a little disappointed to find that Miss Wendover was already aware of it, having received a brief note from him excusing himself from attending her rout-party; but as he had not divulged his reason for leaving Bath, his destination, or the means by which he proposed to travel, she was quickly able to repair two of these omissions. She was known, behind her back, as the Bath Intelligencer, but although she could tell Miss Wendover that Mr Calverleigh had set out on the London Mail Coach, at five o'clock on the previous evening, she had not discovered the nature of his business, and could only advance a few conjectures.