Lady Wychwood said, when she was alone with Annis: “How devoted he is to you, dearest! You shouldn’t have sent him away on my account!”
“Yes, I know you have a tendre for him,” said Annis, gravely shaking her head. “I am very sorry to be so disobliging, but I feel it my duty to Geoffrey to keep such a dashing blade away from you.”
“For shame, Annis! It’s very naughty of you to poke fun at the poor man! Keep him away from me indeed! How ridiculous you are!”
“No more ridiculous than you, my dear.”
Lady Wychwood’s eyes flew to her face. “Why—why what can you mean?” she faltered.
“Haven’t you come here to keep Oliver Carleton away from me?” Annis asked her, a little satirical smile lilting on her lips.
Colour flooded Lady Wychwood’s cheeks. “Oh, Annis!”
Annis laughed. “Don’t sound so tragical, you goose! I’m well aware that this absurd notion is Geoffrey’s, and not yours.”
“Oh, Annis, pray don’t be vexed!” Lady Wychwood said imploringly. “I would never have ventured to presume—I was perfectly sure you would never do anything imprudent! I begged Geoffrey not to meddle! Indeed, I went so far as to say that nothing would prevail on me to come to stay with you! I was never nearer falling into a quarrel with him, for I knew how bitterly you would resent such interference!”
“I do resent it, and wish very much you hadn’t yielded to Geoffrey,” Annis replied. “But that’s past praying for, I collect! Oh, don’t cry! I am not angry with you,love!”
Lady Wychwood wiped away her starting tears, and said, with a sob in her voice: “But you are angry with Geoffrey, and I cannot bear you to be!”
“Well, that too is past praying for!”
“No, no, don’t say so! If you knew how anxious he has been! how fond he is of you!”
“I don’t doubt it. Each of us has a good deal of fondness for the other, but we are never so fond as when we are apart, as you know well! His fondness doesn’t lead to the smallest understanding of my character. He persists in believing me to be a sort of bouncing, flouncing girl, with no more rumgumption than a moonling, who is so caper-witted as to stand in constant need of guidance, admonition, prohibition, and censure from an elder brother who thinks himself far wiser than she is, but—if you will forgive me for saying so—very much mistakes the matter!”
These forceful words made the gentle Amabel quail, but she tried, bravely, to defend her adored husband from his sister’s strictures. “You wrong him, dearest! indeed, you do! He is for ever telling people how clever you are—needle-witted, he calls it! He is excessively proud of your wit, and your beauty, but—but he knows—as how should he not?—that in worldly matters you are not as experienced as he is, and—and his dread is that you may be taken-in by—by a man of the town,which he tells me this Mr Carleton is!”
“I wonder what it was that gave poor Geoffrey such a dislike of Mr Carleton?” said Annis, considerably amused. “I would hazard a guess that he received from him, at some time or another, one of his ruthless set-downs. I remember that Geoffrey told me he was the rudest man in London, which I don’t find it difficult to believe! He is certainly the rudest man I ever encountered!”
“Annis,” said Lady Wychwood, impressively sinking her voice, “Geoffrey has informed me that he is a libertine!”
“Oh, no! Has he sullied your ears with that word?” Annis exclaimed, her eyes and her voice brimming over with laughter. “He didn’t sully my virgin ears with it! It was what he meant, of course, when he said that Mr Carleton was an ugly customer whom he would not dream of presenting to me, but when I asked him if it was what he meant all the answer he made was to deplore my want of delicacy of mind! Well! You and I, Amabel, cut our eye-teeth years ago, so let us, for God’s sake, have the word with no bark on it! I should be amazed if a bachelor of Mr Carleton’s age had had no dealings with straw damsels, but I am still more amazed at his apparent success in that line! It must, I conjecture, be due to his wealth, for it cannot have been due to his address, for he has none! From the moment of our first meeting, he has neglected very few opportunities to be unpardonably uncivil to me, even going to the length of informing me that Maria had no need to fear he was trying to seduce me, because he had no such intention.”
“Annis!” gasped her ladyship. “You must be funning! He could not have said anything so—so abominably rude to you!”
She obviously was more shocked by this evidence of Mr Carleton’s crude manners than by Sir Geoffrey’s allegation that he was a profligate. Miss Wychwood’s eyes began to dance; but all she said was: “Wait until you have met him!”
“I hope never to be compelled to meet him!” retorted Amabel, the picture of affronted virtue.
“But you will be bound to meet him!” Annis said reasonably. “Recollect that his niece—and ward—is in my charge! He comes frequently to this house, to assure himself that I am not permitting her to encourage the advances of such gazetted fortune-hunters as Denis Kilbride, or to overstep the bounds of the strictest propriety. He does not, if you please, consider me a fit and proper person to have charge of Lucilla, and doesn’t scruple to say so! I’m told it is always so with loose-screws: they become downright prudes where the females of their own families are concerned! I imagine that must be because they know too much about the wiles of seducers—from their own experiences! Besides, my dear, how can you possibly protect me from him if you run out of the room the instant he is ushered into it?”
Lady Wychwood could find no answer to this, except to say, weakly, that she had told Geoffrey that no good could come of his insisting on her going to stay in Camden Place.
“None at all!” agreed Annis. “But don’t let that cast you in the mops, love! I hope I have no need to assure you that I am always happy to welcome you to my house!”
“Dear, dear Annis!” uttered Lady Wychwood, powerfully affected, and wiping away a fresh flow of tears from her brimming eyes. “Always so kind! So much kinder to me than my own sisters! Believe me, one of the wishes nearest to my heart is to see you happily married, to a man worthy of you!”
“Beckenham?” enquired Annis. “I don’t think I’m acquainted with anyone worthier than he is!”
“Alas, no! I wish very much that he had been able to fix his interest with you, but I know there is no chance of that: you think him a bore, and a bobbing-block, and—I sometimes think—are blind to all his excellent qualities.”
“Oh, no! He is stuffed with good qualities, but the melancholy truth is that however much I may respect a man’s good qualities they don’t inspire me with a particle of love for him! I shall either marry a man stuffed with bad qualities, or remain a spinster—which is the likeliest fate to befall me! Don’t let us talk any more about my future! Tell me about yourself!”
But Lady Wychwood said that there was nothing to tell. Annis asked her whether she indeed meant to take a course of Russian vapour-baths. This made her giggle. “Oh, no, and so I told Geoffrey!”
“Well, he depends on me to persuade you to do so! I told him that I should deem it an impertinence to do any such thing. Is it true that you have been out of sorts?”
“No, no! That is to say, I had a slight cold, but it was nothing! And then, of course, I had all the anxiety about Tom, which has made me look horridly hagged. I daresay that was what made Geoffrey get into one of his ways. Perhaps I might drink the waters, just—just to satisfy him! After all, that can’t do me any harm!”
“Unless they make you feel as sick as I did, the only time I ever took a glass! We shall soon see! Since Lucilla came to stay with me I have visited the Pump Room almost every day, so that she can meet her new friend, who accompanies her mother to the Pump Room. I fancy you have met Mrs Stinchcombe: did she not come to dinner here when you and Geoffrey visited me last year?”
“Oh, yes! A most agreeable woman! I remember her very well, and shall be happy to renew my acquaintance with her. But this Lucilla of yours! Where is she?”
“You will see her presently. She has gone to take a walk in the Sydney Garden, with Corisande and Edith Stinchcombe. She and Corisande have become almost inseparable, for which I am truly thankful! I am extremely attached to the child, but I own I find it more than a little boring to be obliged to go everywhere with her! Chaperonage is no light task, I promise you!”
“No, indeed! I was shocked when I heard that you had taken it upon yourself to look after Miss Carleton. You are much too young to be any girl’s duenna, no matter who she may be. Geoffrey thought you should have restored her to her aunt, and I must own I cannot but feel he was quite right. I don’t mean to say that she is not an agreeable girl: Geoffrey was pleasantly surprised by her manners, which he tells me are very pretty—but what a responsibility to have assumed, dearest! I cannot like it for you.”
“Well, if she were to be with me permanently I shouldn’t like it either,” admitted Miss Wychwood. “She is a lovely little innocent, had never been in Society—what she calls ‘grown-up’ parties—until she came to Bath, and made an instant hit! Already she has I know not how many young men dangling after her, which makes it necessary for me to keep a strict watch over her. To make matters worse, she is a considerable heiress: a sure bait for fortune-hunters! Fortunately, the Stinchcombes have a governess to whom the girls are devoted—even Lucilla likes her, having previously taken the whole race of governesses in detestation!—and so I am able to relinquish Lucilla into her care when it is a question of going for walks, or buying fripperies in the town. I only wish the Stinchcombes lived in Camden Place, but they don’t! They have a house in Laura Place, so that I am obliged to provide Lucilla with an escort when she visits them. However, Mr Carleton gave me leave to engage a maid for her, who, I judge, is to be trusted to fill my place at need.”
“But, Annis, is it so necessary to chaperon girls in Bath? Why, even in London my sisters tell me that nowadays it is quite unremarkable to see two girls walking together without even a footman coming behind them!”
“Two girls, yes!” said Miss Wychwood. “But not one girl alone, I think! Mrs Stinchcombe is an indulgent parent but I am very sure she would not permit Corisande to come up to Camden Place unattended. And in Lucilla’s case—no, no! Out of the question! Mr Carleton has, however reluctantly, confided her to my care until he has made other arrangements for her, and what a horrid fix I should be in if I let her come to harm!”
“He had no right to lay such a charge upon you!”
“He didn’t. He had no alternative but to leave her with me, having himself, as he so gracelessly told me, no turn for the infantry, and not the smallest intention of taking Lucilla into his own charge. I will allow that he has enough sense of his duty to his ward to place her in the temporary guardianship of a—a lady of unquestioned respectability, which I flatter myself I am! But it went sadly against the grain with him to do it, and I fancy nothing would afford him more satisfaction than a failure on my part to guard Lucilla from all the hazards threatening a green young heiress on her first emergence from the schoolroom!” She checked herself, and, after a moment’s consideration, said: “No! Perhaps I am wronging him! He would certainly derive satisfaction from the knowledge that he had been right to doubt my ability to take proper care of Lucilla; but I do him the justice to think that he would be seriously displeased if Lucilla were to come to harm.”
“I wish you had never met her!” sighed Lady Wychwood.
But when Annis presented Lucilla to her that evening she was quite as pleasantly surprised as her husband had been, talked very kindly to her, and later told Annis that it was difficult to believe that such a sweet and pretty-behaved child could be the ward of a man of Carleton’s reputation. She was rather puzzled by Ninian’s presence at dinner, still more by the familiar terms he stood on with Annis, her house, and her servants. He behaved as if he had been a favoured nephew, or, at any rate, a boy who had known Annis all his life and it was evident that he ran tame in the house, and more often than not dined there. She wondered if he was perhaps related to Lucilla, and when Annis disclosed his identity she was at first incredulous, and then so forcibly struck by the absurdity of the situation that she went into paroxysms of laughter.
“Oh, I haven’t been so much diverted since Mrs Preston’s hat was carried off by the wind, and took her wig with it!” she gurgled. “The end of it will be, of course, that they will marry one another!”
“God forbid! What a cat-and-dog life they would lead!”
“I don’t know that. You say they disagree on every subject, but it didn’t seem like that to me, listening to them at dinner. I think they have a great deal in common. Only wait for a year or two, when they will both be wiser, and see if I am not right! They are still only a pair of bickering children, but when they are a little older they won’t bicker, any more than I bicker with my sisters—though when we were all in the schoolroom we were used to bicker incessantly!”
“I can’t conceive of your bickering with anyone!” smiled Annis. “As for Lucilla and Ninian, the Iverleys no longer wish for that marriage, and would—if they are to be believed—strongly oppose it. It wouldn’t astonish me if Mr Carleton opposed it too, for he doesn’t like Iverley.”
“Oh, that settles it!” said Lady Wychwood, laughing. “Opposition is all that is wanting in the case!”
Annis could not help thinking that opposition from Mr Carleton would probably take a ruthless form, impossible to withstand, but she kept this reflection to herself.
She was destined, a few hours later, to be confronted by a dilemma. Lucilla, peeping into her bedchamber on her return from Laura Place, to thank her for having sent the carriage to bring her home, and to tell her how much she had enjoyed her first visit to the Sydney Garden, with its shady groves, its grottoes, labyrinths, and waterfalls, said, her eyes and cheeks aglow: “And Mr Kilbride says that during the summer they have illuminations, and gala nights, and public breakfasts! Oh, dear Miss Wychwood, will you take me to a gala night? Pray say you will!”
“Yes, certainly I will, if your heart is set on it,” replied Miss Wychwood. “Did Mr Kilbride tell you of the galas and the illuminations last night?”
“Oh, no! It was this afternoon, when I told him that I was going to explore the Garden with Corisande. We walked smash into him, Brigham and I, not two minutes after we left the house. He said he was coming to visit you, but he very obligingly turned back, to escort me to Laura Place. Wasn’t that kind of him, ma’am? He was so amusing, too! He had me in whoops with the droll things he said! I do think he is a delightful creature, don’t you?”
Miss Wychwood took a full minute to respond to this, covering her silence by pretending that her attention was concentrated on the pinning of a brooch to her corsage. In truth, she knew not what to say. On the one hand, she felt it to be incumbent on her to warn Lucilla against the wiles of a charming but impecunious man on the look-out for a rich wife; on the other, she neither wished to destroy Lucilla’s innocence, nor—which would be worse—to arouse in the child a rebellious spirit which might, too easily, lead her to flout the authority of her elders, and to encourage Kilbride’s advances.
She compromised. She said, with an indulgent little laugh: “Kilbride’s ingratiating manners and lively wit are his stock-in-trade. Pray do not you, my dear, administer to his vanity by adding yourself to the list of his victims! He is an irreclaimable here-and-thereian, and cannot see a personable female without making up to her! I long since lost count of the silly girls left languishing on his account.”
Her words brought a crease between Lucilla’s brows. She said hesitantly: “Perhaps he found that he didn’t truly love any of them, ma’am?”
“Or that they were none of them as well-endowed as he had supposed!”
No sooner had she uttered these acid words than she regretted them. Lucilla’s eyes flashed, and she said hotly: “How can you say anything so—so detestable about him, ma’am? I thought he was a friend of yours!”
She ran out of the room, leaving Miss Wychwood with nothing to do but to blame herself bitterly for having been betrayed into saying precisely what she had determined not to say. She could only hope that no malicious tongue had informed Mr Carleton that his ward had been escorted through the town by a man whom he knew to be a gazetted fortune-hunter.
It was an empty hope. On the following morning, she went with Lady Wychwood and Lucilla to the Pump Room. Mrs Stinchcombe, who was seeking a cure for her rheumatism by drinking a glass of the famous water every morning, was there, with both her daughters, and Annis led Lady Wychwood up to her at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing the two ladies fall instantly into very friendly conversation. She left them together while she went across the room to procure a glass of the water from the pumper, and was wending her way back with it to Lady Wychwood’s side when she saw Mr Carleton advancing purposefully towards her. She braced herself, but the first words he spoke were quite unalarming. “Well met, Miss Wychwood!” he said cheerfully. “Ought I to condole with you? Are you too a martyr to rheumatism?”
“No, indeed, I’m not!” she replied lightly. “This is for my sister-in-law, not for me! What brings you here this morning, sir?”
“The hope of finding you here, of course. There is something I wish to say to you.”
Her heart sank, but she replied coolly enough: “Well, you may do so, but first I must give this horrid drink to my sister-in-law. I should like, besides, to present you to her.” Another two steps brought her to Lady Wychwood’s side, and she handed the glass to her saying: “Here you are, my dear! I believe it should be drunk hot, so take hold of your courage and gulp it down immediately!”
Lady of Quality Page 18