Black Sheep

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “My good boy, if you imagine that James Wendover could be persuaded by his sister, or by anyone else, to consent to Fanny’s marriage to a basket-scrambler, you’re a lunatic!” said Miles brutally.

  Stacy drained his fourth glass. “What’ll you wager against the chance that he’ll find himself forced to consent?” he demanded, his utterance a little slurred. “Got to force him to—nothing else to be done to bring myself about!”

  “What about Danescourt?”

  Stacy stared at him rather owlishly. “Danescourt?”

  “Why don’t you sell it?” asked Miles coolly.

  “Sell it! I’m going to save it! Before they can foreclose!”

  “As bad as that?”

  “Yes, damn you! Besides—I don’t want to sell it!”

  “Why not? You told me you hated it!”

  “Yes, but it means something. Gives one consequence. Place in the country, you know: Calverleigh of Danescourt! No substance without it—bellows to mend with me!”

  “It appears to be bellows to mend with you already,” said his uncle caustically.

  Chapter IX

  Mr Stacy Calverleigh, having slept off the result of his potations, awoke, far into the following day, with only the haziest recollections of what might have passed between himself and his uncle. So much did he plume himself on his ability to drink all other men under the table that he ascribed the circumstance of his having been put to bed by the boots to the vile quality of the brandy supplied by the White Hart; and when he encountered Mr Miles Calverleigh in Milsom Street, two days later, he laughingly apologized for it, and for its effect upon himself, describing this as having been rendered a trifle above oar. He spoke gaily, but under his insouciance there lurked a fear that he might have been betrayed into indiscretion. He said that he hoped he had not talked a great deal of nonsense, and was reassured by his uncle’s palpable lack of interest He then ventured to express the hope that Miles would not betray him to the ladies in Sydney Place, saying: “I should find myself in the briars if Miss Abigail even suspected that I do, now and then, have a cup too much!”

  “What a good thing you’ve warned me not to do so!” responded Miles sardonically. “Entertaining females with accounts of jug-bitten maunderings is one of my favourite pastimes.”

  He left Stacy with one of his careless nods, and strode on down the street, bound for the Pump Room. Here he found all the Wendovers: Abby listening with an expression of courteous interest to one of General Exford’s anecdotes; Fanny making one of a group of lively young persons; and Selina, with Miss Butter-bank in close attendance, receiving the congratulations of her friends on her emergence from seclusion. After an amused glance in Abby’s direction, Miles made his way towards Selina, greeting her with the ease of long friendship, and saying, with his attractive smile: “I shan’t ask you how you do, ma’am: to enquire after a lady’s health implies that she is not in her best looks. Besides, I can see that you are in high bloom.”

  She had watched his approach rather doubtfully, but she was by no means impervious to flattery, or to his elusive charm, and she returned the smile, even though she deprecated his compliment, saying: “Good gracious, sir, at my age one doesn’t talk of being in high bloom! That is quite a thing of the past—not that I ever was—I mean, no more than passable!”

  “Oh, my dear Miss Wendover, how can you say so?” exclaimed Miss Butterbank, throwing up her hands, “ Such a farradiddle I declare I never heard! But you are always so modest! I must positively beg Mr Calverleigh to turn a deaf ear to you!”

  Since he was at that moment asking Mrs Leavening how she had prospered that morning in her search for lodgings, he had no difficulty in obeying this behest. The only difficulty he experienced was how to extricate himself from a discussion of all the merits, and demerits, of the several sets of apartments Mrs Leavening had inspected. But having agreed with Selina that Axford Buildings were situated in a horrid part of the town, and with Mrs Leavening that Gay Street was too steep for elderly persons, he laughed, and disclosed with disarming candour that he knew nothing of either locality. “But I believe people speak well of Marlborough Buildings,” he offered. “Unless you would perhaps prefer the peace and quiet of Belmont?”

  “Belmont?” said Selina incredulously. “But that would never do! It is uphill all the way! You can’t be serious!”

  “Of course he isn’t, my dear!” said Mrs Leavening, chuckling. “He hasn’t the least notion where it is. Now, have you, sir?”

  “Not the least! I shall make it my business to find out, however, and I’ll tell you this evening, ma’am,” he promised.

  He then bowed slightly, and walked away. Selina, taking umbrage at the suggestion that there was any part of Bath with which she was not fully acquainted, exclaimed: “Well, I must say I think him a very odd creature! One might have supposed—not that I know him at all well, and one shouldn’t judge anyone on a angle morning-visit, even in his riding-dress, which I cannot like—though Abby assures me he won’t dine with us in it—but his manners are very strange and abrupt!”

  “Oh, he is certainly an original, but so droll!” said Mrs Leavening. “We like him very much, you know, and find nothing in his manners to disgust us.”

  “Exactly what I have been saying to dear Miss Wendover!” interpolated Miss Butterbank. “Anyone of whom Miss Abby approves cannot be other than gentlemanlike!”

  “Yes, but it is not at all the thing for her to be going to the play in his company. At least, it doesn’t suit my sense of propriety, though no doubt my notions are antiquated, and, of course, Abby is not a girl, precisely, but to talk as if she was on the shell is a great piece of nonsense!”

  Mrs Leavening agreed to this, but as her husband came up at that moment Selina did not tell her old friend that Abby, not content with accompanying Mr Calverleigh to the theatre, had actually invited him to dine in Sydney Place.

  This bold stroke had quite overset Selina. The news that Mr Calverleigh had been so kind as to invite Abby to go to the play she had received placidly enough, if with a little surprise: it seemed very odd that a single gentleman should get up a party, but no doubt he wished to return the hospitality of such ladies as Mrs Grayshott, and Lady Weaverham. Were the Ancrums going as well?

  Abby was tempted, for a craven moment, to return a noncommittal answer, but she overcame the impulse, and replied in an airy tone: “Oh, it is not a party! Do you think I ought not to have accepted ? I did hesitate, but at my age it is surely not improper? Besides, the play is The Venetian Outlaw, which I particularly want to see! From some cause or another I never have seen it, you know: once I was ill, when it was put on here, and once I was away from home; but you went to see it twice, didn’t you ? And were in raptures!”

  “Yes, but not with a gentleman!”Selina said, scandalized. “Once,I went with dear Mama, only you were too young then; and the second time Lady Trevisian invited me—or was that the third time? Yes, because the second time was when George and Mary were with us, and you had a putrid sore throat, and so could not go with us!”

  “This time I am determined not to have a putrid sore throat!”

  “No, indeed! I hope you will not! But Mr Calverleigh must invite some others as well! I wonder he shouldn’t have done so. It argues a want of conduct in him, for it is not at all the thing, and India cannot be held to excuse it, because there are no theatres there—at least, I shouldn’t think there would be, should you?

  “No, dear. So naturally Mr Calverleigh couldn’t know that he was doing anything at all out of the way, poor man! As for telling him that he must invite others as well as me, I hope you don’t expect me to do so! That would indeed be improper! And, really, Selina, what possible objection can there be to my going to the play under the escort of a middle-aged man? Here, too, where I am well known, and shall no doubt meet many of our friends in the theatre!”

  “It will make you look so—so particular, dearest! You would never do so in London! Of course, Bath is a
different matter, but worse! Only think how disagreeable it would be if people said you were encouraging Mr Calverleigh to dangle after you!”

  This thought had already occurred to Abby, causing her to hover on the brink of excusing herself from the engagement; and had Selina said no more she might possibly have done so. But Selina’s evil genius prompted her to utter fatal words. “I am persuaded that James would tell you to cry off, Abby!”

  “Are you indeed?” retorted Abby, instantly showing hackle. “Well, that settles the matter! I shall do no such thing! Oh, Selina, pray don’t fly into a great fuss! If you are afraid of what the quizzes may say, you have only to tell them that since you don’t yet venture out in the evening Mr Calverleigh very kindly offered to act as your deputy. And once it becomes known that he dined with us here, before escorting me to the theatre—”

  “Nothing—nothing!—would prevail upon me to do anything so unbecoming as to invite a single gentleman to dine with us!” declared Selina, with unwonted vigour.

  “No, dear, but you are not obliged to do so,” said Abby mischievously. “I’ve done it for you!”

  “Abby!” gasped Selina, turning pale with dismay. “Asked a man to dine with us alone? You can’t be serious! Never have we done such a thing! Except, of course, James, which is a very different matter!”

  “Very different!” agreed Abby. “Mr Calverleigh may be an oddity, but he’s not a dreadful bore!”

  “I was never so mortified!” moaned Selina. “So brass-faced of you, as though you knew no better, and exactly what dear Papa deplored, and what he would say to it, if he were alive, which I am devoutly thankful he is not, I shudder to think!”

  It had taken time, patience, and much tact to reconcile Selina but in the end she consented to entertain Mr Miles Calverleigh, persuaded by the horrid suspicion that if she refused to do so her highty-tighty young sister was quite capable of setting the town in an uproar by dining with him at York House. She had then devoted the better part of the afternoon to the composition of a formal invitation, written in her beautiful copper-plate, and combining to a nicety condescension with gracious civility. Mr Miles Calverleigh responded to this missive with commendable promptness, in a brief but well-expressed note, which conveyed to Selina’s mind the impression that he had invited her sister to go with him to the play in a spirit of avuncular philanthropy. She was thus able to meet him in the Pump Room with a modicum of complaisance; and although, when he left her side, he joined the group round Abby, she had no apprehension of danger. It was not at all remarkable that he should show a preference for her: a great many gentlemen did so; but if it had been suggested to Selina that Abby was quite as strongly attracted to him as he to her she would have thought it not so much remarkable as absurd. Abby enjoyed light flirtations, but Selina had almost ceased to hope that she would ever discover amongst her suitors one who was endowed with all the perfections she apparently demanded.

  They were certainly not to be found in Mr Miles Calverleigh, with his swarthy countenance, his casual manners, and his deplorable want of address.

  Nor was Abby apprehensive that in pursuing her acquaintance with him she might be running into danger. She was by no means sure that she liked him. He was amusing, and she enjoyed his company; but he frequently put her quite out of temper, besides shocking her by his unconcerned repudiation of any of the virtues indispensable in a man of principle. He was undoubtedly what her brother-in-law succinctly described as a loose screw, and so hopelessly ineligible that it never so much as crossed her mind that in him she had met her fate. Nor did it occur to her that in encouraging his advances she was influenced by anything other than the hope that she might be able to persuade him to send his nephew to the rightabout. He had refused unequivocally to meddle, but the hope persisted, and, with it, the growing conviction that if he wished to bring Stacy’s schemes to fiddlestick’s end he would know just how it could be done. To inspire him with such a wish was clearly her duty; if it had been suggested to her that her duty, in this instance, had assumed an unusually agreeable aspect, she would have acknowledged readily that it was fortunate that she did not find Mr Calverleigh repellent; but she would have been much amused by a further suggestion that she was rapidly losing her heart to a black sheep.

  So she was able to greet him, when he descended upon her in the Pump Room, with calm friendliness; and when he presently detached her from her circle, inviting her, with his customary lack of finesse, to take a stroll about the Room, in the accepted manner of those who made the Promenade their daily business, she was perfectly willing to walk off with him.

  “I’ve received an invitation from your sister,” he told her. “She hopes that I will give you both the pleasure of dining in Sydney Place on Saturday, but I’m not deceived: her hope is that I may break a leg, or be laid low of a severe colic, before I can expose you to the censure of all your acquaintance. Shall I be doing so?”

  She laughed. “Good God, no! I hope my credit is good enough to survive a visit to the theatre in your company! Much I should care if it proved otherwise! I’ve a great desire to see this particular play, and have never yet done so. It has always been popular in Bath, you know.” Her eyes danced. “If only you had had the good sense to have been a widower, I daresay Selina wouldn’t have raised the least objection! She saw no harm in my attending the races with General Exford: there is something very respectable about widowers! Single gentlemen, in her view, are surrounded by an aura of impropriety.”

  “What, even the turnip-sucker who pays you extravagant compliments?”

  “If,” said Abby, a trifle unsteadily, but with severity, “you are speaking of Mr Dunston, Selina knows him to be a very worthy man who has far too much conduct to transgress the bounds of propriety by as much as an inch!”

  “He is a slow-top, isn’t he? Poor fellow!”

  “He may be a slow-top, but that’s better than being ramshackle!” retorted Abby, with spirit.

  “No, do you think so indeed? Was that a cut at me, by the way, or at Stacy?”

  “Well, it was at you,” said Abby frankly. “I don’t think Stacy ramshackle: I think him a shuffling rogue! Mr Calverleigh, if you had heard him trying to cut a wheedle, when we rode back from Lansdown, you must have been disgusted!”

  “Very likely. The wonder is that Fanny seems to be not at all disgusted.”

  “She is very young, and had never, until that wretch came here, known any men but those who reside here: Selina’s and my friends, or the schoolboy brothers of her own friends! You must know that she has only lately begun to go out into society a little; and although, during the winter, a number of London-visitors come to Bath, she has met none of them. I saw to that!”

  “Why let yourself be blue-devilled?” he asked. “She’ll recover!”

  “I don’t doubt she would do so, if he were removed from her sight!”

  “Or even if she were to be removed from his,” he suggested.

  She frowned over that for a moment, and then said, with a sigh: “I’ve thought of it, of course, but I believe it wouldn’t answer. Tames talked of removing her to Amberfield, and that would be fatal: she would run away! And if my sister Brede were to invite her to stay with her in London she would know that it was at my instigation, and to separate her from your nephew. What is more, he would follow her, and you may depend upon it that it would be easier for them to meet in London than it is here, where everyone knows her. I think, too, that if it were possible to prevent this she wouldn’t recover—or, at any hand, not for a long time. Towards me she would be bound to feel resentment: oh, she’s resentful already!” She hesitated, before saying, with a faint smile: “I was used to think, you know, that we stood upon such terms as would make it a simple matter for me to guide her—even to check her! That my influence was strong enough to—But I seem to have none at all. I suppose I’ve gone the wrong way to work with her: nothing I could urge would carry the least weight with her! I wish—oh, how much I wish—that her eyes might be o
pened to what I am persuaded is his true character! That would be the best thing that could happen! It would be painful for her, poor child, but she wouldn’t wear the willow for long: she has too much pride! And above all she wouldn’t fancy herself a martyr! That’s very important, because if one thinks oneself the victim of tyranny there is every inducement to fall into a lethargy.”

  “I should imagine that that would make life very uncomfortable for you. But hasn’t it occurred to you that my nephew has a rival?”

  “Oliver Grayshott?” She shook her head. “I don’t think it. She says he is like a brother to her! And although I fancy he has a strong tendre for her he has done nothing to attach her.”

  “Well, if you think it nothing to send her laudatory verses masquerading as acrostics, and to ransack all the libraries for the works of her favourite poets, you must be as green as she is!” he said caustically.

  She could not help laughing. “Does he do so? I thought they were his favourites too: he is certainly very well read in them.”

  “Pea-goose! So would you be, if you made it your business to study them!”

  “Poor young man! But even if Fanny did prefer him to your nephew it wouldn’t do, I’m afraid.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—as you very well know!—James would consider him to be almost as ineligible as Stacy!”

  “I know nothing of the sort. Your brother James whistle a fortune down the wind ? Gammon!”

  “But he has no fortune!” she protested. “He is connected with trade, too, which James would very much dislike.”

  “Oh, would he? My sweet simpleton, let James get but one whiff of an East India merchant’s heir in Bath, and he won’t lose a moment in setting snares to catch such a prize!”

  She disregarded this, exclaiming: “You must be mistaken! Oliver has no such expectations! Indeed, he feels that he has miserably disappointed his uncle.”

  “Not he! Balking thinks the world of him, and means to take him into partnership as soon as he’s in good point again.”