“I wish you won’t be so provoking!” said Abby.
“I wouldn’t provoke you for the world. But what would you have me say? He was with me for less than an hour, and I can’t recall that he said anything that interested me to the point of thinking about him.”
“You are a most unnatural uncle!” she told him, with a severity at variance with the dimple that peeped in her cheek.
“Am I?” He reflected for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. I’d three uncles, and none of ’em took the smallest interest in me. After all, why should they?”
“For no reason at all, I daresay! Are you trying to make me—oh, what is it the hunting men say?—fly from a scent? Yes, that’s it. Well, you won’t do it! I also made the acquaintance of your nephew today, and I don’t scruple to tell you that I like him even less than I had expected I should!”
“No, did you ? Your expectations must have been much higher than you led me to suppose!”
“No, but—oh, I suppose I did expect him to be a man of charm! I don’t find him charming at all, and I can’t conceive how Fanny came to fall in love with him! Now, tell me to my head, can you?”
“Oh, easily!” he replied. “He is a very pretty fellow, you must allow! Turns out in excellent trim, too, and has both air and address.”
“Oh, yes!” she said bitterly. “Playing off his cajolery! He tried to turn me up sweet, but it’s my belief he is one who hides his teeth. And when he smiles there’s no smile in his eyes: only—only a measuring look! Surely you must have seen it?”
“Well, no!” he confessed. “But mat might be because he didn’t smile very often when he was with me. Or perhaps because he saw no need to—er—measure me!”
She said quickly: “You didn’t like him either, did you?”
“Oh, no! But how many people does one like ?”
She frowned over this, momentarily diverted. “Upon first acquaintance? I don’t know: not very many, perhaps. But one need not dislike them, and I do dislike Mr Stacy Calverleigh!”
“Yes, I thought you did,” he said gravely.
“And I don’t believe, for all his protestations and caressing ways, that he truly loves Fanny, or would have made the least push to engage her affections had she not been possessed of a large fortune!”
“Oh, lord, no!”
She turned her head, looking up into his face with pleading eyes, and laying one of her expensively gloved hands on his arm. “If you too think that, won’t you—oh, Mr Calverleigh, won’t you do anything to save my poor Fanny?”
He was regarding her with the smile which, unlike his nephew’s, sprang to life in his eyes, but all he said was: “My dear girl—No, no, don’t poker up! It was a slip of the tongue! My dear Miss Wendover, what do you imagine I could do?”
Never having considered this, she was at a loss for an answer. She said lamely: “Surely you must be able to do something.”
“What leads you to think so?”
“Well—well, you are his uncle, after all!”
“Oh, that’s no reason! You’ve told me already that I am an unnatural uncle, and if that means one who don’t meddle in the affairs of a nephew over whom he has no authority, and who might, for aught he cares, have been any other man’s nephew, you are undoubtedly right!”
“Not authority, no! But whatever you may say the relationship exists, and you must have influence, if you would but exert it?”
He looked down at her in some amusement. “You know, you have some remarkably hubble-bubble notions in that charming head of yours! How the devil should I have influence over a nephew who met me for the first time this afternoon ?”
She perceived the force of this argument, but the conviction that he could drive off Stacy, if he chose to do it, remained with her. It was irrational, to be accounted for only by the strength she believed she had detected in his harsh-featured countenance, and by a certain ruthlessness which underlay his careless manners. She said, with a tiny sigh: “I suppose you can have none. And yet—and yet—I think you could, if you but wanted to!”
“For my part,” he retorted, “I think you are very well able to button it up yourself, without any assistance from me.”
There did not seem to be anything more to be said, nor was she granted the opportunity to pursue the subject, her attention being claimed just then by Mr Dunston, who had been watching her jealously for some minutes, and now came up to beg for the privilege of taking her into the tea-room presently.
They met again, two days later, in Edgar Buildings; and however little pleased Abby may have been to find Mr Stacy Calverleigh in Mrs Grayshott’s drawing-room, making himself agreeable to his hostess, and winning Fanny’s favour by the engaging solicitude with which he treated Mr Oliver Grayshott, she was undoubtedly pleased to see his uncle, and betrayed it by the sudden smile which lit her eyes, and the readiness with which she put out her hand.
She discovered that her arrival had interrupted a lively discussion. Mr Grayshott’s medical adviser, visiting him earlier in the day, had professed himself very well satisfied with his progress, and had endorsed a somewhat recalcitrant patient’s belief that it would do him a great deal of good to abandon the sofa, and to get out for a little air and exercise. A drive up to Lansdown, and a gentle walk there, enjoying the view of the Bristol Channel, was what he recommended; but when Mr Grayshott took exception to this programme, saying, very improperly, that he would be damned if he allowed himself to be driven to Lansdown or anywhere else, as though he were dying of a deep decline, the doctor laughed, and said: “Well, well, go for a ride, if you choose! It won’t do you any harm, provided you don’t go too far, or exhaust yourself.”
This was by no means what Mrs Grayshott wanted. She believed Oliver to be a long way from complete recovery, unable to forget how gray and worn he had looked after the journey from London; and she could not like his scheme of riding out of Bath with his sister as his only companion. Lavinia was a nervous horsewoman, requiring constant surveillance: not at all the sort of escort one would choose to send out with an invalid; and Fanny, instantly offering to accompany the Grayshotts, was no more acceptable to the widow. Fanny was not nervous. Mrs Grayshott, herself no horsewoman, had heard her described by one of her admirers as a clipping rider, a regular good ‘un to go, which was an encomium to strike dread into a mother’s anxious heart. And then, to make matters worse, Stacy Calverleigh, who had met the two girls in Queen’s Square, and accompanied them to Edgar Buildings, proffered his services, laughingly assuring Mrs Grayshott that he would engage himself to bring the party back to her in good time, and none the worse for wear.
This question was instantly approved of by the girls, if not by Oliver, which made it difficult for Mrs Grayshott to decline it. She was floundering amongst some rather lame excuses when Abigail was announced.
“In a good hour. Come in, my dear, and lend me your support!” she exclaimed going forward to greet Abby. “Here is my wilful son determined on riding up to Lansdown, and these other young people bent on making up a party to go with him! I am persuaded you cannot like the scheme any more than I do, for although Mr Stacy Calverleigh has very kindly offered to go with them I fear that he would find the task of preventing three such harum-scarum children from going much too far quite beyond his power!”
“No, indeed we wouldn’t!” cried Fanny. “We mean to take the greatest care of Oliver, and I promise you it wouldn’t be at all hard for Stacy to prevent us from going too far, even if we wished to do so, ma’am!” She turned impulsively towards Abby. “You don’t object to it, do you, Abby?”
Misliking the scheme, yet unable to think of any other reason for placing a veto on it but the inclusion of Stacy in the party, Abby hesitated. Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. “Do you ride, Miss Wendover?” asked Mr Miles Calverleigh, smiling across the room at her with such complete understanding in his eyes that an answering smile was won from her.
“Why, yes!” she replied.
“In that
case, you may be easy, ma’am,” said Miles, to Mrs Grayshott. “Between us, Miss Wendover and I should be able to control the activities of the younger members of this hazardous expedition.”
The only objection raised to this unexpected augmentation of the party came from Oliver, who said, with feeling, that he had not yet received notice to quit, and was very well able to take care of himself. He added that if he had had the least apprehension that his wish to hack out of Bath would have caused such a commotion he would never have uttered it
“Silence, halfling!” said Miles, in shocked accents. “You are leading Miss Wendover to suppose that you don’t want her to go with you!”
This intervention naturally cast Oliver into confusion, and he hastened to reassure Abby. She laughed at him, telling him that she had not the smallest intention of enacting the role of dry-nurse; and was herself much heartened by Fanny’s instant approval of the revised scheme.
“Oh, capital!” Fanny exclaimed. “You will come, won’t you, Best of my aunts?”
Chapter VIII
Since Oliver showed no signs of exhaustion, and Stacy, behaving with great circumspection, made no attempt to monopolize Fanny’s attention, nothing occurred to spoil Abby’s enjoyment of this mild form of exhilaration. Miles Calverleigh rode beside her for most of the time, and made himself so agreeable that she forgot her anxieties in listening to what he had to tell her of India, and the customs of its people. He had to be coaxed to talk, saying at first that persons who gabbed about their foreign experiences were dead bores, but the questions she put to him were intelligent, and her interest in his replies so real that he soon dropped his reserve, painting a vivid picture for her, and even recounting some of his experiences. These ranged from the adventurous to the comical, but it was not long before he brought them to an end, saying: “And that is enough about me! Now tell me of yourself!”
“Alas, there’s nothing to tell! I’ve done nothing, and have been nowhere. You don’t know how much I envy you—how often I have wished I were a man!”
“Have you, indeed? You must be alone in that wish!”
“Thank you! But you are wrong: my father wished it too! He wanted another son.”
“What, with Rowland and James as grim examples? Or because he hoped that a third son might be less of a slow-top?”
“Certainly not! And although I didn’t like him I must in common justice say that Rowland, at least, was not a slow-top. He was hunting-mad, you know, and a very hard goer.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. Intellectually a slow-top!”
“Oh, yes, but so was my father! Naturally he didn’t count his stupidity a fault in Rowland. In fact, he had the greatest dislike of clever people.”
He chuckled appreciatively, which made her say, in a conscience-stricken voice: “I ought not to have said that. My wretched tongue! I do try to mind it!”
“Then don’t! I like the way you have of saying just what comes into your head.”
She smiled, but shook her head. “No, it is my besetting sin, and I ought long since to have overcome it.”
“From what I recall of your father, I should suppose that he made every effort to help you to do so. Did he dislike you as much as you disliked him?”
“Yes, he—Oh, how dare you? You are quite abominable! You know very well that it would be the height of impropriety for me to say that I disliked my father! Every feeling must be offended!”
“Well, none of mine are,” he responded imperturbably. “You did, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it is one of the things which must never be said. And if he disliked me I am bound to own that it was quite my own fault. I was a sad trial to him, I fear.”
“Yes, of course: too clever by half!”
“I’m not clever—or only if you compare me with the rest of my family,” she said reflectively. “I love them dearly, but Selina and Mary are perfect widgeons, and although my sister Jane has a good deal of commonsense she never thinks of anything but her children, and the failings of her servants. My father merely thought I was bookish, which was the worst he could say of anyone! He ascribed all my undutiful conduct to it.”
“Now, I should have said that you had an all too lively sense of your duty,” he remarked.
“Not when I was a girl. I was for ever rebelling against the restrictions imposed upon me, and oh, how much I detested that hateful word, propriety ! That’s why I was used to wish I were a man: so that I could have escaped from it! Girls can’t, you know. We are always shackled—hedged about—”
“Cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,” he supplied, adding grandiloquently: “I’m bookish too.”
A ripple of laughter broke from her. “So I perceive! And that is just how it was in my family.”
“Was? Still is!” She turned her head, startled. “No! Why, what can you mean?”
He nodded towards the four younger members of the party, riding ahead. “Fanny, of course. Don’t you cabin, crib, and confine her?”
“Indeed I don’t!” she said warmly. “She enjoys far, far more liberty than ever I did!” A quizzically raised eyebrow brought the blood rushing to her cheeks. She stammered: “It’s true! You—you are thinking that I don’t permit her to go anywhere without me, but that is not true! I have never, until your odious nephew came to Bath, accompanied her on such expeditions as this—and if he had not been in question, and young Grayshott had invited her to go with him, she might have done so with my goodwill!” She paused, and, after considering for a moment, said frankly: “No. Not alone. I should have no qualms, but where she is concerned I must take care that she does nothing to provide all the Bath quizzes with food for gossip! You see, my brother entrusted her to my guardianship, and however nonsensical I may think many of the conventions which hedge us about I must, for her own sake, compel her to abide by them. Pray try to understand! What I, at my age, might choose to disregard, she, on the verge of her come-out, must not!”
“Poor girl!” he said lightly. “How many nonsensical conventions are you ready to flout?”
“Oh, a great many, if I had only myself to consider!”
“We’ll put that to the test. Will you go with me to the play on Saturday?”
She hesitated, in equal surprise and doubt. After a moment, she said: “Are you inviting me to form one of your party, sir?”
“Good God, no! I haven’t a party.”
“Oh!” She relapsed again into silence. “I collect you mean to invite Fanny as well?” she hazarded at last.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he retorted. “You know very well that Fanny is engaged to go with the Grayshotts to Mrs Faversham’s waltzing-party! I wonder you will let her!”
“Do you, indeed? Well, if you think me so—so stuffy, I wonder that you should suppose I would go to the theatre with you alone! The waltz is not danced in the Rooms, but Bath is a very old-fashioned place, and, in London, waltzes, and quadrilles too, are extensively danced. I am very happy that Fanny should be given the opportunity of—of getting into the way of it, before her come-out in the spring! But when it comes to going to the theatre—” She paused, frowning over it.
He waited, regarding her profile with a derisive smile, until she said, struck by a sudden inspiration: “If you were to invite my sister as well! That would make it perfectly unexceptionable!”
“No doubt!”
She could not help laughing. “Yes, I know, but—Well, it is quite absurd, but there is a difference—or there is thought to be—between escorting a lady to—oh, to a concert, in the Assembly Rooms, and to the theatre! I think it is because the concerts, being held by subscription, are more private. Then, too, one doesn’t sit apart, and one mingles with—”
“Oh, if that’s all, we can sit in the pit!”
“—with one’s friends!” finished Abby severely.
“And at the end of the first act, when your escort hopes to enjoy your company, some impudent fellow snabbles you from under his nose, and takes you off to tea—just as I did
, when that mooncalf who paid you slip-slop compliments thought you were his own!”
“Well! At least you have the grace to own your impudence!” she retaliated. “However gracelessly you may do so! But Mr Dunston is not a mooncalf, and the compliments he paid me were very pretty.”
“Any man who could tell you that you shone down every other woman present, and said you were as fair as a rose in May can’t help but be a mooncalf. Trying it on much too rare and thick!”
Piqued, she said: “I am not a beauty, and I never was, but I am not an antidote, I hope!”
He smiled. “No, you are neither the one nor the other. What that dunderheaded admirer of yours hasn’t the wit to perceive is that you’ve something of more worth than mere beauty.”
Miss Wendover was well aware that it behoved her to give the audacious Mr Calverleigh a cold set-down, or, at the very least, to ignore this remark; but instead of doing either of these things she directed a look of shy enquiry at him. “Have I? Pray tell me what it may be!”
He looked her over critically, the amusement lingering in his eyes. “Well, you have a great deal of countenance, and an elegant figure. I like your eyes too, particularly when they laugh. But that’s not it. What you have in abundance is charm!”
She blushed rosily, and stammered: “I am afraid, sir, that it is now you who are offering me Spanish coin!”
“Oh, no! Your nose is indifferent, and your mouth a trifle too large, and your hair, though it grows prettily, is an unremarkable brown.”
She broke into laughter. “I acquit you!”
“So I should hope! I might have added that you had also courage, but I doubt it”
She fired up at that. “Then you are mistaken! I collect that’s a jibe, because I hesitated to accept your invitation! Very well, I will go to the play with you!”
“Good girl!” he said approvingly. “Pluck to the backbone! But I won’t take you if you really feel that it would damage your reputation.”
“No,” she said, in a resolute tone. “Not at my age!”
“Just what I was thinking myself,” he agreed.
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