Black Sheep

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “W-well you can’t!” said Abby, rocked off her balance.

  “I know I can’t—not here and now, at all events!”

  “Ever!” she uttered, furiously aware of flaming cheeks.

  “Oh, that is quite another matter! Do you care to wager a small sum on the chance?”

  Making a desperate recovery, she said: “No! I never bet on certainties!”

  He laughed. “You know, you are a darling!” he said, completing her confusion.

  “Well, what you are is a—a—”

  “Hedge-bird?” he suggested helpfully, as she stopped, at a loss for words opprobrious enough to describe him. “Gull-catcher? Bermondsey boy? Rudesby? Queer Nabs?”

  She broke into laughter, and threw at him over her shoulder, as she went before him into the tea-room: “All of those—and worse! In a word, infamous! Mrs Grayshott! How do you do? And—which I know you will think more important!—How does your invalid do?”

  She sat down beside Mrs Grayshott as she spoke, wholly withdrawing her attention from the infamous Mr Calverleigh, who lounged away to procure her a cup of tea. Mrs Grayshott said: “My invalid is not as stout as I could wish, nor as docile! Dr Wilkinson has seen him, however, and assures me that I have no need to fear that any permanent damage has been done to his health. He recommends a course of hot baths, which, he tells me—and, indeed, I know from my own experience—do much to restore a debilitated frame. Abby, my dear, you must let me compliment you on this new way you have of dressing your hair! You look delightfully—and have set a new fashion in Bath, if I am any judge of the matter! Yes, I know you only care for compliments on Fanny’s appearance, so not another word will I say in your praise! I imagine you have had a surfeit of compliments already—if not from Mr Dunston, who appeared to me to be quite moonstruck, certainly from Mr Calverleigh!”

  “Not at all!” replied Abby. “Mr Calverleigh thinks me a candle in the sunshine of three veritable diamonds present tonight! Four, including Fanny!”

  “Does he, indeed?” replied Mrs Grayshott, a good deal amused. “I suspect he is what Oliver calls a complete hand! You know, my dear, I must own that I am glad to see you on such good terms with him, for it has been very much on my conscience that I almost forced him upon you, which, as I hope you know, I never meant to do!”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t, ma’am! I wish you won’t give it another thought. Sooner or later I must have met him, you know.”

  “And you like him? I was afraid that his free-and-easy manners might offend you.”

  “On the contrary! They amuse me. He is certainly an original!”

  Mrs Grayshott smiled, but said rather wistfully: “Why, yes! But not only that! He is so very kind! He makes light of the services he rendered Oliver throughout that weary voyage, but I’ve heard the truth from Oliver himself. But for Mr Calverleigh’s unremitting care I don’t think that my poor boy would have survived, for he tells me that he suffered a recrudescence of that horrible fever within two days of having been carried aboard! It was Mr Calverleigh, rather than the ship’s surgeon, who preserved his life, his long residence in India having made him far more familiar with the disorder than any ship’s surgeon could be! I must be eternally obliged to him!” Her voice shook; she overcame the little surge of emotion, and said, with an effort at liveliness: “And, as though he bad not done enough for me, what must he do but procure tickets for this concert tonight, and positively bully me into accompanying him! Something I must have said gave him the notion that I should very much like to hear Neroli, and I think it particularly kind in him to have given me the opportunity to do so, because I am afraid he is not himself a music-lover.”

  Having very good reason to suppose that Mr Calverleigh’s kindness sprang from pure self-interest, Abby was hard put to it to hold her tongue. It was perhaps fortunate that he rejoined them at this moment, thus putting an end to any further discussion of his character. She accepted the tea he had brought, with a word of thanks and a charming smile, but could not resist the impulse to ask him if he was not ravished by Neroli’s voice.

  He replied promptly: “Not entirely. A little too much vibrato, don’t you agree?”

  “Ah, I perceive that you are an expert!” said Abby, controlling a quivering lip. “You must enlighten my ignorance, sir! What does that mean, if you please?”

  “Well, my Latin is pretty rusty, but I should think it means to tremble,” he said coolly. “She does, too, like a blancmanger. And much the same shape as one,” he added thoughtfully.

  “Oh, you dreadful creature!” protested Mrs Grayshott, bubbling over. “I didn’t mean that,when I said I thought she had rather too much vibrato! You know I didn’t!”

  “I thought she had too much of everything,” he said frankly.

  Mrs Grayshott cried shame upon him; but Abby, caught in the act of sipping her tea, choked.

  When he presently restored her to her own party, she was spared the necessity of introducing him to Mrs Faversham by that lady’s greeting him by name, and with a gracious smile: Lady Weaverham had already performed that office, in the Pump Room that morning.

  Mr Faversham said, taking his seat beside Abby: “So that’s young Calverleigh’s uncle!” He looked critically after Mr Calverleigh’s tall, retreating figure. “Got the look of a care-for-nobody, but I like him better than his nephew: too insinuating by half, that young man!”

  “You don’t like him, sir?”

  “No, I can’t say I do,” he replied bluntly. “Fact of the matter is I set no store by these young sprigs of fashion! My wife calls me an old fogey: daresay you will too, for the ladies all seem to have run wild over him! Haven’t met him yet, have you?”

  “No, that pleasure hasn’t been granted me,” she said, in a dry tone.

  It was to be granted her on the following day. Mr Stacy Calverleigh, coming down from London on the mail-coach, arrived at the White Hart midway through the morning, and stayed only to change his travelling-dress for the corbeau-coloured coat of superfine, the pale pantaloons, and the gleaming Hessian boots of the Bond Street beau, before setting out in a hack for Sydney Place.

  The ladies were all at home, Abby, who had just come in from a visit to Milsom Street, submitting to her sister’s critical inspection some patterns of lace; Selina reclining on the sofa; and Fanny wrestling with the composition of an acrostic in the back drawing-room. She did not immediately look up when Mitton announced Mr Calverleigh, but as Stacy advanced into the room he spoke, saying in a rallying tone: “Miss Wendover! What is this I hear about you? Mitton has been telling me that you have been quite out of frame since I saw you last! I am so very sorry!”

  His voice brought Fanny’s head up with a jerk. She sprang to her feet, and almost ran into the front room, exclaiming with unaffected joy: “ Stacy! Oh, I thought it was only your uncle!”

  She was holding out her hands to him, and he caught them in his, carrying first one and then the other to his lips with what Abby, observing her niece’s fervour with disapprobation, recognized as practised grace. “You thought I was my uncle? Now, I begin to suspect that it is you rather than Miss Wendover who must be out of frame!” he said caressingly. “Indeed I am not my uncle!” He gave her hands a slight squeeze before releasing them, and moving forward to drop on his knee beside the sofa. “Dear Miss Wendover, what has been amiss? I can see that you are sadly pulled, and my suspicion is that you have been trotting too hard!”

  The demure laughter in his voice robbed his words of offence. Selina all too obviously succumbed to the charm of a personable and audacious young man, scolding him for his impertinence, in the manner of an indulgent aunt, and favouring him with an account of her late indisposition.

  Abby was thus afforded an opportunity to study him at her leisure. She thought that it was easy to see why he had made so swift a conquest of Fanny: he was handsome, and he was possessed of ease and address, his manners being distinguished by a nice mixture of deference and assurance. Only in the slightly aquiline c
ast of his features could she detect any resemblance to his uncle: in all other respects no two men could have been more dissimilar. His height was not above the average, but, in contrast to Miles Calverleigh’s long, loosely-knit limbs, his figure was particularly good; he did not, like Miles, look as if he had shrugged himself into his coat: rather, the coat appeared to have been moulded to his form; the ears of his collars were as stiff as starch could make them; his neckcloths were never carelessly knotted, but always beautifully arranged, whether in the simple style of the Napoleon, or the more intricate folds of the Mathematical; and he showed exquisite taste in his choice of waistcoats. Such old-fashioned persons as Mr Faversham might stigmatize him as a tippy, a dandy, a bandbox creature, but their instinctive dislike of the younger generation of dashing blades on the strut earned them too far: Stacy Calverleigh was a smart, but not quite a dandy, for he affected few of the extravagances of fashion. His shirt-points might be a little too high, his coats a trifle too much padded at the shoulder and nipped in at the waist, but he never overloaded his person with jewellery, or revolted plain men by helping himself to snuff with a silver shovel.

  His profile, as he knelt beside the sofa, was turned towards Abby, and she was obliged to acknowledge that it was a singularly handsome profile. Then, when Fanny seized the opportunity offered by a pause in Selina’s garrulity to present him to her other aunt, and he turned his head to look up at Abby, she thought him less handsome, but without quite knowing why.

  He jumped up, exclaiming, with a boyishness which, to her critical ears, had a false ring: “Oh! This is a moment to which I’ve been looking forward—and yet dreading! Your very humble servant, ma’am!”

  “Dreading?” said Abby, lifting her brows. “Were you led to suppose I was a gorgon?”

  “Ah, no, far from it! A most beloved aunt!”

  His ready smile curled his lips as he spoke, but Abby, looking in vain for a trace of the charm which awoke instant response in her when the elder Calverleigh smiled, realized that it did not reach his eyes. She thought they held a calculating look, and suspected him of watching her closely to discover whether he was making a good or a bad impression on her.

  She said lightly: “That doesn’t seem to be a reason for your dread, sir.”

  “No, and it’s moonshine!” Fanny said. “How can you talk such nonsense, Stacy?”

  “It isn’t nonsense. Miss Abigail loves you, and must think me unworthy of you—oh, an impudent jackstraw even to dream of aspiring to your hand!” He smiled again, and said simply: “I think it too, ma’am. No one knows better than I how unworthy I am.”

  A sentimental sigh and an inarticulate murmur from Selina showed that this frank avowal had moved her profoundly. Upon Abby it had a different effect. “Trying to take the wind out of my eye, Mr Calverleigh?” she said.

  If he was disconcerted he did not betray it, but answered immediately: “No, but, perhaps—the words out of your mouth?”

  Privately, she gave him credit for considerable adroitness, but all she said was: “You are mistaken: I am not so uncivil.”

  “And it isn’t true!” Fanny declared passionately. “I won’t permit anyone to say such a thing—not even you, Abby!”

  “Well, I haven’t said it, my dear, nor am I likely to, so there is really no need for you to fly up into the boughs! Tell me, Mr Calverleigh, have you made the acquaintance of your uncle yet?”

  “My uncle?” he repeated. He glanced at Fanny, a question in his eyes. “But what is this? You said, when I came in, that you thought I was my uncle! The only uncle I possess—if I do still possess him—lives at the other end of the world!”

  “No, he doesn’t,” replied Fanny. “I mean, he doesn’t do so now! He brought Lavinia Grayshott’s brother home from Calcutta, and he is here, at the York House!”

  “Good God!” he said blankly.

  “He is not at all like you, but very agreeable, isn’t he, Aunt Selina?”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Selina. “He is quite an oddity—so informal, but I daresay that comes of having lived for so long in India, which does not sound to me at all the sort of place anyone would wish to live in, but that, after all, was not his fault, poor man, and he is perfectly gentlemanly!”

  “I’m glad to know that at least!” Stacy said ruefully. “I never met him in my life, but I heartily wish him otherwhere, for I fear he may destroy what little credit I may have with you! Alas, the round tale is that he is the black sheep in my family!”

  “Oh, I fancy you have met him!” said Abby, showing hackle. “He has no recollection of having done so, I own, but thinks he might have seen you when you were, as he phrased it, a grubby brat!”

  He shot a quick look at her, but said, smiling again: “Ah, very likely! I can’t be blamed for having forgotten the circumstance, can I ? I wonder what has brought him back to England ?’’

  “But I told you!” Fanny reminded him. “He brought poor Mr Oliver Grayshott home! And such good care did he take of him that Mrs Grayshott feels she cannot be sufficiently obliged to him! As for Ol’—as for Mr Grayshott, he says he is a trump, and won’t listen to a word in his disparagement!”

  “Worse and worse!” he declared, with a comical grimace. “A male attendant, in fact! A faint—a very faint—hope that he might have made his fortune in India withers at the outset!”

  “Much might be forgiven in the prodigal son who returned to the fold with well-lined pockets, might it not?” said Abby, bestowing upon him a smile as false as she believed his own to be.

  “Oh, everything!” he assured her gaily. “That’s the way of the world, ma’am!”

  “Very wrong—most improper!” interpolated Selina, trying, not very successfully, to assemble her inchoate ideas into comprehensible words. “I mean—I mean, money ought not, and cannot re-establish character! And to expect a man who had been cast off in a perfectly inhuman way (for so it seems to me, and I don’t care what anyone says!) to come home to—to shower guineas on his most unnatural relations, is—is monstrous! Or, at any rate,” she temporized, “absurd!”

  “Bravo, Selina!” exclaimed Abby.

  Faintly blushing under this applause, Selina said: “Well, so it seems to me, though it had nothing to do with you, Mr Calverleigh, so you must not be thinking that I mean to censure you,and in any event poor Mr Miles Calverleigh hasn’t made his fortune—at least, he doesn’t look as if he had, because he wears the shabbiest clothes! On the other hand, he is putting up at York House, and that, you know, is by no means dagger-cheap,as some dear friends of ours, who are staying there, tell me.”

  “The reverse!” he said. “You terrify me, ma’am! He had always the reputation of being excessively expensive, and with never a feather to fly with! I only hope he doesn’t tip them the double at York House, leaving me to stand the reckoning!” He saw that this speech had shocked Selina, and had made Fanny look gravely at him, and quickly and smoothly retrieved his position, saying: “The truth is, you know, that he caused my grandfather, and my father too, a great deal of embarrassment, so that I never heard any good of him. I own, however, that I have often wondered if he could be quite as black as he was painted to me. Indeed, if you do not dislike him, Miss Wendover, he cannot be! I shall lose no time in making his acquaintance.” He turned towards Fanny, his smile a caress. “Tell me all the latest Bath-news!” he begged. “Has Lady Weaverham forgiven me for having been obliged to cry off from my engagement to dine with her? Has Miss Ancrum summoned up the courage to have that tooth drawn, or is she still wearing a swollen face? Did—oh, tell me everything! I feel as if I had been absent for a twelvemonth!”

  Since the most interesting event which had lately occurred in Bath was the return of Oliver Grayshott to his mother’s fond care it was not long before Fanny was telling him all about this, and demanding his help with the acrostic she was composing for Oliver’s amusement. “You see, I am doing what I may to entertain him,” she explained. “Poor boy, he is so dreadfully pulled that he can’t
join in any of our expeditions, or attend the assemblies, or anything, so when Lavinia asked me to lend her my aid in keeping up his spirits of course I said I would!” She added, to her younger aunt’s suppressed indignation: “I thought you could not object?”

  He responded suitably, but Abby, who was rapidly taking him in strong dislike, received (and welcomed) the impression that he did not regard the intrusion on the Bath scene of Mr Oliver Grayshott with favour.

  Chapter VII

  Mr Stacy Calverleigh, having partaken of a light nuncheon in Sydney Place, strolled back towards the centre of the town, but instead of turning left at the end of Bridge Street, into High Street, he hesitated at the junction of the roads, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders, walked on, along Borough Wall to Burton Street. Turning northward up this he soon reached Milsom Street, at the top of which, in George Street, the York House Hotel was situated.

  This hostelry was the most exclusive as well as the most expensive to be found in Bath; and it vaguely irritated Stacy that his ne’er-do-well uncle should be staying in it. Not that he had any wish to stay there himself, for however much money he might owe his tailor, and a great many other London tradesmen, he had no intention of damaging his reputation in Bath by going on tick there. In fact, the White Hart suited him very well, situated as it was in Stall Street, with many of its rooms overlooking the Pump Yard. The quiet of York House was not at all to his taste: he liked to be at the hub of things, and had no objection to the noise and bustle of a busy posting-house.

  The weather had been uncertain all day, and by the time he reached York House it had begun to rain again. There was a damp chill in the air which made the sight of a small fire, burning in Mr Miles Calverleigh’s private parlour, not unwelcome. Mr Calverleigh was seated on one side of it, his ankles crossed on a stool, and a cheroot between his fingers. He was glancing through a newspaper when the waiter announced Stacy, but after lowering it, and directing a critical look at his nephew, he threw it aside, saying, in a tone of tolerant amusement: “Good God! Are you my nephew?”