by Clare Darcy
Lady Letitia, obediently putting down her knife and fork, said she would do her best, though, really, she couldn’t see that it made a great deal of difference now, since it had all happened so long ago and she—that is, Cressida—was going to marry Lord Langmere.
“You see, my love,” she said patiently, “your great-aunt Estella was quite convinced that the chief reason for Captain Rossiter’s having offered for you was his belief that she would leave her fortune to you—not that she had the least cause to think such a thing of him, as I myself pointed out to her, since no one, even in the family, had had the faintest inkling up to that time that she intended to leave you a penny. I am sure Arthur always considered that he would be the heir, and I believe he borrowed a great deal of money on the strength of his expectations—so disagreeable for his creditors, but then I expect they were not at all the sort of men one ought to feel sorry for, because one hears such dreadful stories about moneylenders—”
“Yes, yes!” said Cressida, seeing with alarm that if Lady Letitia was not headed off she would no doubt spend the next quarter hour happily enlarging on the theme of the inhumanity of moneylenders, with copious illustrations drawn from the experiences of the unfortunate derelicts who came within the range of her charitable works. “But Rossiter—?”
“Well, yes—Captain Rossiter,” said Lady Letitia, reluctantly returning to her main subject. “I told Aunt Estella that it seemed quite unlikely to me that he could have believed you to have expectations, since no one else did; but she had taken the idea firmly in her head— you know what fancies invalids sometimes have—and nothing would do but that I should have an interview with Captain Rossiter and tell him of the arrangements she proposed to make.”
“The—arrangements?” Cressida asked.
“Why, yes, my dear—the testamentary arrangements,” Lady Letitia explained. “I was to tell him that you would inherit her entire fortune—except, of course, for a few minor bequests—in the event you didn’t marry him, but that if you did, she would cut you off without a shilling. And she told me to name the amount it would come to,” continued Lady Letitia, in an even lower tone than the one in which she had been speaking up to this time, “really an enormous sum, my love! I had had no idea, you see—she always lived so simply, quite without ostentation. And I could see that it placed Captain Rossiter in a really dreadful position. He had begun, you see, by being polite but very firm with me, and told me quite plainly that if you could not succeed in obtaining your relations’ consent to your marrying him, he was prepared to wait until you came of age. But when he learned what a sacrifice you must make to marry him— well, really, my dear, I could see that the situation presented itself to him in an entirely new light. I assure you, I quite felt for him, for it was plain that his attachment to you was genuine, and that your great-aunt’s decision had placed him in a most difficult position—”
Cressida made a stifled sound.
“Did you say something, my dear?” Lady Letitia enquired, peering at her across the table.
“No. I— Cressida had an odd, dazed feeling that time had rolled back seven years and she was young Cressy Calverton again, in a round gown, her hair tied with a ribbon, standing with one hip thrust out in an awkward, schoolgirl pose in the cluttered drawing room of Great-aunt Estella’s Cheltenham villa, and listening with an expression of obstinate resentment upon her face as a younger and very grave Rossiter had put before her the facts of his financial situation.
“But I didn’t understand!” she wanted to cry out. “I thought he was only trying to tell me that he didn’t want to be poor all his life because he had married a girl with no fortune! Why didn’t Great-aunt Estella tell me what the choice was for me? Oh, but I know why! Because she knew I would choose Dev, not the money, if she did, and she knew that if she left me in ignorance of the matter it would throw the whole burden upon him—that he must take the responsibility of choosing for me between himself and that gaudy, impossibly large fortune! And of course, whether he cared for me or not, she stood to win her game, for a fortune-hunter would never marry me if he knew I wouldn’t have a penny if he did, and a man who was in love with me—Oh, how could she have placed him in such a position, to have to weigh what he could give me against that fortune—!”
She became aware, coming momentarily out of the whirling rush of her thoughts, that Lady Letitia was peering at her anxiously over the breakfast table.
“My love, are you sure you are feeling quite the thing this morning? You are looking very odd!” she said solicitously. “I hope it has not disturbed you, my bringing up this sad matter—”
“No, not in the least!” Cressida said, hastily collecting herself and coming back to present reality. “It is only —you see, I knew nothing of all this, Cousin Letty—I mean that you had talked to Captain Rossiter about Great-aunt Estella’s intentions. What did he—what did he say when you told him—?”
“Well, my dear, he was very much taken-aback, of course, as well he might be,” Lady Letitia said seriously. “Really, as I told you, I quite felt for him, for I could see that it placed him in a dreadful dilemma. As I said to Aunt Estella afterwards, I was persuaded that his attachment for you was genuine; but of course no gentleman with the slightest degree of principle would have pressed his suit under such circumstances. And he quite agreed with Aunt Estella’s position that you should be kept in ignorance of the situation, as the matter was of far too great an importance to be left to a girl of eighteen to decide—”
“And so you all decided for me—you, Dev, Great-aunt Estella—that inheriting a fortune would make me far, far happier than being married to him!” Cressida burst out, suddenly unable to contain all the bitterness inside her any longer. “The three of you—Oh, I could kill you all!”
She got up from the table so impetuously that it tottered and the saltcellar fell over. Lady Letitia stared at her in piteous alarm.
“But, my love—dearest Cressy—you are happy! You are going to marry Lord Langmere!” she bleated.
It can’t make a difference to you now—!”
“Well, it does!” Cressida said fiercely. “It was my life you were deciding, all of you—Great-aunt Estella playing God with her fortune, Dev being noble—Dev! I’m sure it was the only time in his life—”
Much to Lady Letitia’s discomposure, she gave the table another push, as if she would have liked to up-end it entirely and send plates and cups flying, and walked out of the room.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” whispered Lady Letitia, and began to cry.
As for Cressida, she seized a broad-brimmed hat, tied the ribbons beneath her chin with angry energy, and went out to walk off the agitation into which Lady Letitia’s revelations had flung her.
It was a fine May morning, bright with sunshine and gay with a bird-song, but she might have been walking through a tunnel in which she could not see her hand before her face for all the impression the surrounding landscape made upon her. It was as if her whole life, and particularly that part of it in which Rossiter had played a role, had suddenly turned topsy-turvy, so that she saw it all from a startling new perspective. Rossiter had cared for her then; the confrontation he had provoked with her had indeed, as she had always suspected, had the purpose of leading her to break off their engagement, but for a motive quite different from the one she had been attributing to him all these years. He had been thinking of her, not of himself, acting from chivalry—“for the first and only time in his life!” she thought vengefully. “If only he had told me, allowed me to decide—!”
But of course he had known very well, she was forced to acknowledge, what her decision would have been if he had done so. She was eighteen, and head-over-ears in love; a fortune, no matter how awe-inspiringly splendid a one, would have meant nothing to her then. But afterwards—? she could imagine Rossiter thinking. Afterwards, when she had had a taste of genteel poverty as the wife of a marching soldier, when she was older, wiser, and realised what she had thrown away—? Of course
, not being a coxcomb, he would have had doubts that the happiness he was able to bring her would appear sufficient compensation to her then for what she had so hastily given up.
And so, she thought bitterly, he had stepped out of her life, leaving her with her legacy of disillusionment and the opportunity to become the immensely rich Miss Calverton, who would certainly be sought after by the most eligible partis in the realm. And for himself—?
She suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the lane down which she had been unseeingly walking. There were no trees overhead here, and she became aware abruptly of a dazzle of yellow morning sunlight almost blinding her as she stood facing the east and the ascending sun. But no blinder now, she thought, than she had been these past several weeks. Why had he come back to England, why had he so persistently appeared to seek her out, why had he first begun calling in Mount Street? “I believe I recall hearing that you were engaged to a viscount when I visited England briefly several years ago, ” he had said on the occasion of their first meeting in Octavius Mayr’s office. He had come back then—in the hope of a reconciliation? It might have been. And, finding her engaged to another man, he had gone off again.
And now she, still angry and bitter even after seven years, had done her best to drive him away from her again from the moment they had first come together so unexpectedly on that morning in Octavius Mayr’s office. She had been brittle and cool and condescending, had refused so much as to dance with him, had turned every overture he had made to her into a challenge to battle—
“And as a result,” she told herself in a cold fury, as she began to walk on slowly again towards that blinding sun-dazzle, “you have all but flung him into Kitty Chenevix’s arms! What a fool you have been, Cressy Calverton! What a self-willed, destructive little fool! And now you will have to live with what you have done for the rest of your life!”
But even as the words said themselves in her head, she knew that they were not true. She had been a fool— yes, there was no denying that. But if anything she could do or say now had the power of erasing the effects of her stupid and odious behaviour, she was certainly going to do and say it. She had not stopped loving Dev Rossiter— it was no good not admitting that to herself now—and if there was even the remotest chance that, in spite of all her disagreeableness to him and the disagreeableness to her that it had evoked in return, he still cared for her as well, she was most assuredly going to give him every opportunity to discover that his feelings were reciprocated.
The first step along this line obviously was an immediate departure from Calverton Place, and she accordingly turned her steps back at once towards the house. As she was entering the front door she came upon Arthur Calverton, and requested him without ceremony to send round to the stables and have her chaise made ready at once to leave for London.
“What—leaving already?” Mr. Calverton enquired, looking astonished but also somewhat relieved. “I don’t know what’s got into people this morning—first Rossiter haring off at the crack of dawn, after he’d told me he was going to stop till the end of the week, and now you—” Cressida, coming out of her preoccupation with her own disturbed thoughts, gave him her sudden mischievous smile.
“And don’t tell me you won’t be happy to see my back, she said, “because I know differently. Where is Cousin Letty? I must see her, too, before I go.”
“You aren’t thinking of taking her with you?” Arthur Calverton said hopefully. “No reason for her to stop on here now—”
“What, and wait hours for her to decide whether she wishes to go or not and then for her to pack up her things? I am in the greatest haste to leave, Uncle Arthur! Please understand that, and have that message sent round to the stables at once!”
She then walked up the stairs in search of Moodle, leaving Mr. Calverton quite bewildered by this sudden burning desire of hers to quit the premises, and had the good fortune to come upon Lady Letitia just emerging from her bedchamber with a very damp handkerchief in her hand, into which she had been crying without interruption ever since Cressida had left the house.
“Oh, Cousin Letty, how glad I am to see you!” Cressida said, swooping down upon her and enveloping her in such a violently affectionate embrace that Lady Letitia was quite terrified. “I am off for London at once, but first I must thank you for telling me everything! And if things do not turn out exactly as I wish, you really must not blame yourself, for it was not in the least your fault, I know, because Great-aunt Estella could always bullock people into doing anything she wished them to!”
She then vanished into her own bedchamber, where she was immediately to be heard instructing Moodle to pack up her portmanteaux in the greatest haste. Lady Letitia, left alone and bewildered in the passage, had the dreadful feeling that somehow she had managed, by her revelations, to open Pandora’s box (though what was in that mysterious casket she had not the faintest idea) and thought she might be going to cry again, but on the whole found the situation too interesting to take the time for it, and went off instead into a state of rather agitating but highly gratifying romantic speculation.
CHAPTER 11
It was not until her travelling-chaise was bowling well on its way over the grey-green Cotswold hills that it occurred to Cressida that it was all very well for her to be pelting back to London as fast as she could go, but that once she arrived there she had not the least idea how to go about attaining the object that had sent her speeding from Calverton Place in such haste.
If it had been a question of getting up an ordinary flirtation with a man—any man—she had not been six years on the town for nothing, and could have brought the matter about during a single waltz, without missing a step or causing her heart to beat a fraction of a second faster. But it was quite another thing to be obliged to inform one particular man that you had been thinking ill of him without cause for seven years, and had behaved, as a result, quite horridly to him, but that if he wished to fall in love with you now all over again, you would have not the least objection to it.
“The worst of it is, ” she thought despairingly, “that if I simply try to tell him quite frankly how I feel, he will undoubtedly think I am being horrid again, only in a different way, and that I have it in mind to do something very clever and disagreeable as soon as I have brought him round my thumb. And if he says as much to me, I shall certainly lose my temper and it will all end in another quarrel. Deuce take it, why must men be so difficult?”
Which was hardly fair to Captain Rossiter, perhaps, as he had certainly been no more difficult than had she; but then her brain was in such a whirl of astonishment, joy, and apprehension at the moment that it was not surprising that her mental processes were, on the whole, more than a little erratic.
The turmoil in her mind was not improved by the additional consideration that the first thing she must do upon reaching London was to send for Lord Langmere and inform him that under no circumstances did she now wish to avail herself of his flattering offer to make her his wife. It was an interview that she looked forward to with no pleasure at all and a considerable sense of guilt, as there could be not the least doubt that she had given his lordship a good deal of reason to expect that his suit would be successful.
However, as it was obvious that she could never convince Rossiter that she was now prepared to accept an offer from him unless she had previously made it crystal clear that she had no intention of accepting one from Langmere, it was a deed that had to be done, and her first care, upon reaching London just before noon on the following day, was therefore to sit down at her writing-desk and dash off a note to his lordship, requesting him to call upon her in Mount Street at his earliest convenience.
This was not accomplished without a number of interruptions from Lady Constance, who could not understand why she had had to travel all the way to Gloucestershire only to turn around and come back almost as soon as she had arrived there. She first asked a great many questions, and then told her that Rossiter had stood up for three dances with Kitty at the
Russian embassy ball the night before, having arrived very late and made Drew Addison look nohow by taking her down to supper just as Addison, in his infuriatingly superior way, had signified his intention to a select circle of intimates to do her the honour of taking her down himself.
“I do think he—I mean Captain Rossiter, of course —is quite upon the verge of making her an offer, ” Lady Constance confided, with justifiable pride at the prospect of bringing such a prize catch into her protegee’s net. “He has been so very particular in his attentions, my dear, and everyone is saying now that his buying Calverton Place proves he has the intention of settling himself permanently in England, and that dear Kitty must be the bride he has in mind. If only Addison does not contrive somehow to throw a rub in the way—for you know he can be a perfect fiend when his vanity is wounded, and he has no regard whatever for what is comme il faut when he is in a rage—I am quite persuaded that we shall see Kitty settled at Calverton Place before the year is out.”
All this, of course, did nothing to soothe the tumult in Cressida’s mind, and it was all she could do not to sit down at once and write another note, this one to Rossiter, requesting him to call in Mount Street too, so that she could tell him how her feelings towards him had changed.
But this was manifestly quite impossible; that was a matter that would require far more subtlety than the frank statement she must make to Lord Langmere. She was pleased to gather from Lady Constance’s conversation, at any rate, that she was certain to see Rossiter if she attended the ball to be given that evening by Lady Maybridge in honour of one of the visiting German princelings, as he had signified his intention to be present at it; and she accordingly determined to possess her soul in patience until that time.
Meanwhile, there was Lord Langmere to be faced, who presented himself in Mount Street, with loverlike impatience, a mere half hour after her message to him had been delivered.