“Yes,” Lucilla agreed reluctantly. “But not when she tried to make me accept an offer from Ninian!”
This, as Mr Carleton, cynically appreciative of this exchange, recognized to be (in his own phraseology) a leveller, did not prove to be a home-hit. Miss Wychwood rallied swiftly, and said: “I shouldn’t wonder at it if she thought she was promoting your welfare. Recollect, my love, that Ninian was quite your best friend when you were children! Mrs Amber may well have thought that you would find true happiness with him.”
“Are you—you, ma’am!—trying to persuade me to go back to Cheltenham?” Lucilla demanded, in sharp suspicion.
“Oh, no!” replied Miss Wychwood calmly. “I don’t think that would answer. What I am trying to do is to point out to you that if you, by some unlikely chance, could prevail upon your uncle to appoint me to be your guardian, in preference to any of your own relations, we should all three of us come under the gravest censure. Well, I shan’t attempt to conceal that I have no wish to incur such censure; and, in your case, it would be extremely damaging, for you may depend upon it that Mrs Amber would inform every one of her friends and acquaintances—and probably your paternal relatives as well—that you were quite beyond her control, and had left her to reside with a complete stranger, which—”
“.. . would have the merit of being true!” interpolated Mr Carleton.
“Which,” pursued Miss Wychwood, ignoring this unmannerly interruption, “would have a far more damaging effect on your future than you are yet aware of. Believe me, Lucilla, nothing is more fatal to a girl than to have earned (however unjustly) the reputation of being a hurly-burly female, wild to a fault, and so hot-at-hand as to be ready to tie her garter in public rather than to submit to authority.”
“That would be very bad, wouldn’t it?” said Lucilla, forcibly struck by this masterly representation of the evils attached to her situation.
“It would indeed,” Miss Wychwood assured her. “And it is why I am strongly of the opinion that your uncle should make arrangements for you to reside, until your come-out, with some other of your relations—preferably one who lives in London, and is in a position to introduce you into the proper ways of conducting yourself in Society before you actually enter it. He is the only member of your father’s family with whom I am acquainted, but I should suppose that he is not the only representative of it.” She turned her head, to direct a look of bland enquiry at Mr Carleton, and said: “Tell me, sir, has Lucilla no aunts or cousins, on your side of the family, with whom it would be quite unexceptionable for her to reside?”
“Well, there is my sister, of course,” he said thoughtfully.
“My Aunt Caroline?” said Lucilla, doubtfully. “But isn’t she a great invalid, sir?”
“Yes, being burnt to the socket is her favourite pastime,” he agreed. “She suffers from a mysterious complaint, undiscoverable, but apparently past cure. One of its strangest symptoms is to put her quite out of frame whenever she finds herself asked to do anything she doesn’t wish to do. She has been known to become prostrate at the mere thought of being obliged to attend some party which promised to be a very boring function. There’s no saying that she wouldn’t sink into a deep decline if I were to suggest to her that she should take charge of you, so I shan’t do it. I can’t have her death laid at my door.”
Lucilla giggled a little at that, but expressed her profound relief as well, saying frankly that she thought life with Lady Lambourn would be even more insupportable than life with Mrs Amber. “Besides, I am scarcely acquainted with her,” she added, as a clincher. “Indeed, I don’t think I’ve seen her more than once in my life, and that was years ago, when Mama took me with her to pay a morning call on her. I was only a child, but she didn’t seem to be invalidish. I remember that she was very pretty, and most elegant. To be sure, she did tell Mama that she could seldom boast of being in high health, but she didn’t say it in such a way as to lead anyone to suppose that she suffered from an incurable complaint.”
“Ah, that must have been before she attained the status of widowhood!” he replied. “Lambourn had the good sense to cock up his toes when he realized which way the wind was blowing.”
“What a vast number of enemies your tongue must have made for you!” observed Miss Wychwood. “May I suggest that instead of casting what I strongly suspect to be unjust aspersions on your sister, you bend your mind to the question of which of your relations you judge to be the most proper to have charge of Lucilla until Lady Trevisian is at liberty to introduce her into the ton?”
“Certainly!” he responded, with the utmost cordiality. “I shall make every effort to do so, but at this present I find myself at a stand, and must, reluctantly, beg you to continue in your self-appointed post as her chaperon.”
“In that case,” she said, getting up from the table, “we have no more to do here, and will take our leave of you, sir. Come, Lucilla! Thank your uncle for his kind hospitality, and let us go home!”
He made no attempt to detain them, but murmured provocatively, as he put Miss Wychwood’s shawl round her shoulders: “Accept my compliments, ma’am! Were you obliged to put great force on yourself not to rise to that fly?”
“Oh, no, none at all!” she retorted, without an instant’s hesitation. “My father taught me many years ago never to pay the least attention to the ill-considered things uttered by rough diamonds!”
He gave a shout of laughter. “A facer!” he acknowledged. He turned from her to flick Lucilla’s cheek lightly with one careless finger. “Au revoir,niece!” he said, smiling quite kindly at her. “Do, pray, strive to re-establish the family’s reputation, which I have placed in such jeopardy!”
He then escorted them downstairs, and, while Miss Wychwood’s carriage was called for, engaged her, with the utmost civility, in an exchange of very proper nothings. These were interrupted by the entrance from the street of a somewhat rakish looking gentleman whose lively eyes no sooner perceived Miss Wychwood than he came quickly forward, exclaiming: “Ah, now, didn’t I know fortune was going to smile on me today? Most dear lady, how do you do?”
She gave him her hand, which he instantly carried to his lips, and said: “How do you do, Mr Kilbride? I collect you are in Bath on a visit to your grandmother. I trust she is well?”
“Oh, in a state of far too high preservation!” he said, with a comical look. “Out of reason cross, too! It is most disheartening!”
She ignored this, and briefly introduced him to her companions. Her manner, which was slightly chilly, did not encourage him to linger, but he was apparently impervious to hints, and, after exchanging nods with Mr Carleton, with whom he was already acquainted, turned to address himself to Lucilla, which he did to such good purpose that she told Miss Wychwood, on the drive to Camden Place, that he was the most delightful and amusing man she had ever met.
“Is he?” said Miss Wychwood, with calculated indifference. “Yes, I suppose he is amusing, but his wit is not always in good taste, and he is an incurable humbugger, which I find a little tedious. By the bye, your uncle has charged me with the task of engaging a new abigail for you, so will you go with me tomorrow morning to the Registry Office?”
“No, has he?” cried Lucilla, astonished. “Yes, indeed I will, ma’am! And may we take a look in at the Pump Room? Corisande will be there, with her mama, and I told her I would ask you if I might join her.”
“Yes, certainly. And while we are in the town we must buy a new pair of gloves for you, to wear at our rout-party.”
“Evening-gloves?” Lucilla said eagerly. “They will be the first I have ever possessed, because my aunt will buy mittens for me, as if I were a mere schoolgirl! Did my uncle say I might have them as well as a new maid?”
“I didn’t ask him,” replied Miss Wychwood. “From what I have seen of him, I am tolerably certain that he would have answered in a disagreeably rusty way that he knew nothing about such matters, and I must do what I thought best.”
Lucilla gave
a gurgle of laughter, and said: “Yes, but the thing is, will he pay for them? For I know how expensive long gloves are, and—and I haven’t very much of my pin-money left!”
“There is no need for you to tease yourself about that: of course he will do so!” replied Miss Wychwood, adding, with a good deal of mischievous satisfaction: “His pride makes it a hard matter for him to be forced to permit his ward to reside with me, as my guest, and I take great credit to myself for having imbued him with enough respect to have prevented him from offering to pay me for taking charge of you! I shouldn’t wonder at it if he tried to transfer the allowance he makes Mrs Amber to me. As for cutting up stiff at being required to meet the cost of whatever you may purchase—pooh! he is a great deal more likely to encourage you to be extravagant, for fear that if he refused to pay your bills I might do so!”
Chapter 7
Just as Miss Wychwood and Lucilla were walking next morning along Upper Camden Place on their way to Gay Street, they encountered Ninian Elmore, striding towards them. It became immediately apparent that he was labouring under a strong sense of resentment, for hardly waiting to greet them he burst out with the rather unnecessary information that he was coming to visit them, adding explosively: “What do you think has happened, ma’am?”
“I have no idea,” replied Miss Wychwood. “Tell us!”
“I was coming to do so. You wouldn’t believe it! I scarcely do myself! I mean to say, when you consider all that has taken place, and how it was their fault, and not mine—well, it makes me as mad as Bedlam, and so it would anyone!”
“But what is it?” demanded Lucilla impatiently.
“You may well ask! Not but what it will send you up into the boughs when I tell you! For of all the—”
She interrupted him, stamping her foot, and hugging her pelisse round her against the sharp wind that was blowing. “For heaven’s sake tell me, instead of talking in that hubble-bubble way, and keeping us standing in this detestable wind!” she almost screamed.
He glared at her, said with stiff dignity that he was just about to tell her when she had so rudely broken in on him, and, pointedly turning his shoulder towards her, addressed himself to Miss Wychwood, saying portentously: “I have received a letter from my father, ma’am!”
“Is that all?” interpolated Lucilla scornfully.
“No, it is not all!” he retorted. “But how anyone can utter more than a word with you interrupting—”
“Peace!” intervened Miss Wychwood, considerably amused. “You cannot quarrel in the street—at least, I daresay you can, but I beg you won’t! Has your father disinherited you, Ninian? And, if so, why?”
“Well, no, he hasn’t done that, precisely,” he replied, “but it wouldn’t astonish me if he did do so—except that I rather fancy it isn’t within his power, on account of the Settlement which was executed by my grandfather. I didn’t pay much heed to it at the time, though I know that I had to sign some document or other—but he threatens to discontinue my allowance (besides repudiating any debts I may incur in Bath) if I do not instantly return to Chartley! I—I wouldn’t have believed he could ever have behaved in such a manner! It has opened my eyes, I can tell you! He has always seemed to me to be the—the best of fathers, and—and the most understanding, and I don’t scruple to say that this business has wounded me deeply! And, what’s more, I’ll be—dashed—if I crawl back to Chartley with my tail between my legs, as though I had done something wrong, which I have not!”
“It certainly seems very odd,” acknowledged Miss Wychwood. “But perhaps there is an explanation! Will you walk with us to Gay Street, before Lucilla becomes quite frozen, and tell us why your father has issued such an ultimatum?”
He agreed to this, and, falling into step between them, disclosed that Lord Iverley (like Mrs Amber) had washed his hands of Lucilla, whose conduct had shown him that she was unworthy to be admitted into the family, being such as to convince him that she was so wholly wanting in propriety, modesty, and delicacy as to have sunk herself below reproach.
Ignoring an indignant gasp from Lucilla, he ended by saying: “And so if you please, he forbids me to have anything more to do with her, but to return instantly to Chartley—under pain of his severest displeasure! As though the blame for her running away didn’t lie at his door! Which it did! By God, Miss Wychwood, it has put me in such a rage that I have a very good mind to marry Lucilla immediately!”
Lucilla, who had listened to this speech with strong resentment, said warmly: “He would be very well served if you did! But, for my part, I think you should ignore his letter. Because neither of us wishes to be married, and even if we did I don’t think my uncle would give his consent. And I can’t marry anyone without it, unless, I suppose, I eloped to the Border, which nothing would prevail upon me to do, even with someone I wished to marry! That would sink me below reproach, wouldn’t it, ma’am?”
“It would indeed,” agreed Miss Wychwood. “Besides condemning you both to a lifetime of regret!”
“Well, I know, but I didn’t really mean it!” growled Ninian. “All the same, I’d as lief be shackled to you as submit tamely to such an unreasonable order as this, and that I do mean!”
To Miss Wychwood’s relief, Lucilla took this in perfectly good part. She said: “I must say, it is enough to drive anyone to desperation. It isn’t even as though you had been an undutiful son, for the case has been far otherwise. And what seems to be most extraordinary is that he never kicked up such a dust when you were trying to fix your interest with that female in London, and she was by far more improper than I am, wasn’t she?”
He cast her a fulminating glance. “I’ll tell you this, Lucy! It will be well for you to learn to keep your tongue between your teeth! Besides, you know nothing about it! I was not trying to fix my interest with her! A mere flirtation! Bachelor’s fare! You wouldn’t understand, but you may depend upon it my father did!”
“Well, if he understood that, why doesn’t he understand this?”Lucilla asked reasonably. “It seems to me to be quite addle-brained!”
“It seems to me,”interposed Miss Wychwood, “as though Lord Iverley wrote to you when he was in too much of a flame to consider what might be the effect of sending you such an intemperate letter, Ninian. I daresay he will be sorry for it by now; and I am very sure that it came as a shock to him when he found himself in a quarrel with you, for I fancy that had never happened before. Nor do I doubt that, however little he may acknowledge it, he knows he has been at fault in his dealings with you and Lucilla. So, having been pandered—having had his own way for a great number of years, he was naturally put into a pelter when he met with opposition—particularly from you, my dear boy! You told us yourself that you had parted from him on the worst of bad terms, and I expect he was sadly hurt—”
“Yes, I did, but I was sorry for it later, and was meaning to go back, to beg his pardon, when his letter reached me! But I shan’t now! I could forgive his cutting at me,but the things he said about Lucy I cannot forgive—unless he withdraws them! It isn’t that I approved of her running off as she did, for I didn’t, but to accuse her of wanton behaviour, which he did, though I didn’t intend to repeat that, besides having sunk herself below reproach, is unjust, and unforgiveable!”
Keeping her inevitable reflections on Lord Iverley’s unwisdom to herself, Miss Wychwood responded, with soothing tact: “You will of course do what you feel to be best, but I cannot help feeling that you ought, in common civility, to send your father an answer to his letter—and not an angry one! If you already had the intention of going back to beg his pardon—”
“I had, but I haven’t that intention now!” he declared pugnaciously.
“When you’ve come out of the mops,” she said, smiling at him in a disarming way, “I am persuaded that your good sense will make you perceive the propriety of offering him an apology for having expressed yourself more forcefully than was becoming. I don’t think you should mention Lucilla at all, for what purpose could be
served by your defending her against accusations which Lord Iverley must know very well are unjust? As for his summons to you, it would be foolish to refuse to obey it, for that, you know, would make you seem like a naughty little boy, shouting ‘I won’t!’ Far more dignified, don’t you agree, to write that you will of course return presently to Chartley, but that you have several engagements in Bath in the immediate future from which it would be grossly impolite to cry off.”
Much impressed by this worldly wisdom, he exclaimed: “By Jove, yes! That’s the dandy! I will write to him, exactly as you suggest! I should think it must make him ashamed, besides showing him that I am not a schoolboy but a grown man, not to be ordered about but to be treated with respect! What’s more, I’ll send my duty to Mama, though after the things she said to me—However, whatever they choose to do, I hope I am not one to rip up grievances!”
Miss Wychwood applauded this; and as they had reached Gay Street, took leave of him, recommending him, if he had nothing better to do, to stroll down to the Pump Room, where she and Lucilla were going as soon as they had executed some business, and done a little shopping. Since her object was to prevent his writing a reply to his father’s letter until his smouldering anger had had time to die down, she was glad to see that this suggestion found favour with him. When Lucilla, adding her helpful mite, told him that he would find her dear friend, Miss Corisande Stinchcombe, there, and charged him with a message for her, his clouded brow lightened perceptibly, and he went off quite happily down the hill. “Which,” Lucilla informed Miss Wychwood confidentially, “I had a notion would give his thoughts another direction, because I could see yesterday that he took a marked fancy to her!”
“Then it was very well done of you,” approved Miss Wychwood. “Which reminding him of his London-flirt was not!”
“No,” admitted Lucilla guiltily. “I knew I had said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Though why he should have taken snuff at it I haven’t the least guess, for he told me all about her himself!”
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