She was reasonably docile with her aunt, but constant attendance on her, coupled as it was with a certain degree of anxiety, were beginning to take their toll. Selina, bemoaning the fragility of her own constitution, which prevented her from sharing the task of nursing Fanny, told Abby that she was looking positively hagged, and begged her, at all the most unseasonable moments, to lie down on the sofa, if only for an hour.
It might have been supposed that Abby would have had no time or thought to spare for her own troubles, but they seemed always to be at the back of her mind until she retired to bed, when they immediately leaped to the fore, and kept her awake, tossing and turning almost as restlessly as Fanny. She might tell herself that it was a very good thing that Miles Calverleigh had left Bath, but the melancholy truth was that she missed him so much that it was like a physical ache. No word had come from him; he had been absent for longer than she had anticipated; and the fear that perhaps he did not mean to return to Bath at all was a heavy weight on her spirits. She found herself continually wondering where he was, and what he was doing, and wishing that she could at least know that no accident had befallen him.
None had. He was in London, but while Abby would have considered a visit to his aunt, several to the City, and some prolonged conferences with his lawyer unexceptionable it was as well that one at least of his activities was unknown to her.
Lady Lenham greeted him with a tart demand to be told when he meant to furbish himself up.
“I don’t know. Must I?” he replied, lightly kissing her cheek.
“It’s no use expecting me to bring you back into fashion if you don’t adonize yourself a trifle.”
“Then I won’t expect it,” he said amiably. “I never was one of your dapper-dogs, and it’s too late to change my habits, and if you’re thinking I should look well in a wasp-waisted coat, and with the points of my collars reaching half-way up my checks, you are letting your imagination run off with you, Letty—take my word for it!”
“There’s reason in all things,” she retorted. “Where have you been all these weeks? Don’t tell me you’ve been getting into mischief again!”
“No, no, I’ve been behaving very decorously!” he assured her. “You have to, in Bath. A devilish place!”
She stared at him. “You’ve been in Bath?”
“That’s it. I took Leonard Balking’s nephew there, you know.”
“Yes, you told me you were going to do that, but what in the world kept you there?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just circumstances!”
“Oh! Philandering, I collect! Well, what do you mean to do now?”
“Become a tenant-for-life. You told me it was what I ought to do: remember?”
“What!” she exclaimed. “Are you trying to play off your tricks on me? Who is she?”
“Abigail Wendover,” he replied coolly.
She gave a gasp. “You’re not serious? One of the Wendovers? Miles, she’s never accepted an offer from you?”
“No, but she will.”
“Well, either you’ve windmills in the head, or she’s very very different from the rest of her family!”
“Of course she is! You don’t suppose I’d have fallen in love with her if she hadn’t been, do you?”
“No, and I don’t suppose her family would countenance it for an instant!”
“Lord, Letty, what’s that got to say to anything?”
She laughed. “You don’t change much, Miles! You always were a care-for-nobody, and you always will be! I wish you may succeed with your Abigail. She’s the youngest sister, isn’t she? I never met her, but I’m acquainted with Mary Brede, and have been avoiding James Wendover and his odious wife for years.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean to do,” he said.
His next visit was to a slightly portly gentleman, residing in Mount Street, who stared unbelievingly at him for a moment, before ejaculating: “Calverleigh!” and starting forward to wring his hand. “Well, well, well. After all these years! I hardly recognized you, you old devil!”
“No, I had to look twice at you, too. You’re as fat as a flawn, Naffy!”
“Well, at least no one would take me for a dashed blackamoor!” retorted Mr Nafferton.
After this exchange of compliments, the two middle-aged gentlemen settled down, with a bottle between them, to indulge in reminiscences which, had they been privileged to hear them, would have startled Mr Nafferton’s wife, and considerably diminished his credit with his heir.
“Lord how it takes me back, seeing you again!” said Mr Nafferton, a trifle wistfully. “Those were the days!”
“Nights, mostly,” said Mr Calverleigh. “ How many times did you end in a lighthouse? I lost count! What became of the Dasher, by the way?
“Dolly!” uttered Mr Nafferton. “To think I should have forgotten she was used to be your peculiar!” He chuckled. “You’d never recognize her! She set up a fancy-house a dozen more years ago! Drives in the park in a smart barouche, with one or two of her prime articles, and looks like a duchess! Behaves like one, too! No Haymarket ware in her house: all regular Incognitas! Or so I’m told!” he added hastily.
Mr Calverleigh grinned, but merely said: “Became an Abbess, did she? Yes, she always was as shrewd as she could hold together. Where’s this fancy-house of hers?”
Armed with this information, his next visit was to a house in Bloomsbury, where he sent in his card. Miss Abigail Wendover would certainly not have approved of this excursion.
Mr Calverleigh, ushered into a saloon, was still inspecting the elegance of its furnishings with deep appreciation when the lady upon whom he had come to call entered the room, his card in her hand, and exclaimed: “It is you! Good God! I couldn’t believe it!”
Mr Calverleigh, laughter in his eyes, took two long strides towards her, caught her in his arms, and heartily embraced her.
She returned the embrace, but said: “Now, that’s quite enough! I’ll have you know I’m a respectable woman now!”
Mr Calverleigh, most reprehensibly, gave a shout of mirth.
“Well, you know what I mean!” said the lady, bridling a little.
“Yes, to be sure, I do. Who gave you the gingerbread, Dolly?”
“Oh, he was a regular rabshackle!” she disclosed. “You wouldn’t have known him, for he was long after your time. I never liked him above half, but he was full of juice, and I’m bound to say he bled very freely. What I mean is, he was very generous to me,” she amended, suddenly attacked by a fit of alarming primness.
Mr Calverleigh was unimpressed. “No, is that what you mean? Come down from your high ropes! Do you remember the night a party of us went on a spree to Tothill Fields, and you broke a bottle of Stark Naked over the head of the fellow that was trying to gouge my eyes out?”
“No, I don’t!” she said sharply. “And if you hadn’t got into a mill with a bruiser and a couple of draymen because you was as drunk as Davy’s sow I wouldn’t have had to demean myself! If I did do anything of the sort, which I don’t at all remember!”
“I must be thinking of someone else,” said Mr Calverleigh meekly. “What was the name of that towheaded bit of game Tom Plumley brought along with him?”
“That fussock!” she exclaimed, in a voice vibrant with scorn. “Why, she hadn’t enough spunk to hit a blackbeetle on the head! Now, give over, Miles, do! I don’t say I’m not glad to see you again: well, it’s like a breath of old times, but that’s the trouble! Seeing you makes me forget myself, and start talking flash, which is a thing I haven’t done in years! What’s more, you didn’t come here to crack about old revel-routs! And if, Mr Calverleigh,” she added, with another transition into gentility, but with a twinkle in her sharp eyes, “you have come here in search of a bit of game,I must warn you that you will find no cheap molls in this establishment, but only young ladies of refinement.”
“That’s very good, Dolly!” he approved. “Did it take you long to learn to talk like that?”
“Out
with it! What is it you want?” she demanded, ignoring this sally.
“Just what you said, of course,” he replied. “A young lady of refinement!”
Chapter XV
The Leavenings had hired lodgings in Orange Grove. Not an ideal situation, perhaps, admitted Mrs Leavening, when Selina pointed out to her its several disadvantages, but it was a fine, open place, and no need at all to summon up a chair every time she wanted to visit the Pump Room, or do a little shopping. As for the Abbey bells, she didn’t doubt that they would soon grow to be so accustomed to them that they would scarcely notice them. “Well, my dear,” she told Selina placidly, “when you get to be of our age, you must have learnt that you won’t find anything that’s exactly what you want, so, if you’ve a particle of common-sense, you’ll take the best that’s offered you.” She then said, with a chuckle: “Mr Calverleigh will laugh when he hears of it! He would have it, only because I like looking out of the window at what’s passing in the street, that I should never be happy but in the centre of the Town!”
Abby had been taking no more than a polite interest in the Leavenings’ plans, but these words affected her powerfully. She said: “If he ever does hear of it! Does he mean to return to Bath, ma’am?”
She spoke with studied nonchalance, but Mrs Leavening was not deceived. The quizzical gleam in her eye brought the blood into Abby’s cheeks, but all she said was: “Well, my dear, as his rooms are being kept for him at the York House, it’s to be supposed he does!”
That was the only ray of sunlight permitted for many days to break through the clouds surrounding Miss Abigail Wendover. She was enduring a time of trial, for which not Miles Calverleigh alone was responsible, but also her dear sister, and her cherished niece.
Influenza had left Fanny irritable and depressed. It was quite unnecessary for Dr Rowton to say that this uncharacteristic mood was attributable to her illness, and only what was to be expected. Abby knew that, but neither her own good sense nor the doctor’s reassurance made it easier for her to bear patiently the extremely wearing demands made upon her spirits by a convalescent who, when not sunk in gloom which affected everyone in her vicinity, peevishly found fault with everything, from the strength of the tea carried up to her room on her breakfast-tray, to the intolerable dullness of the books so hope-fully chosen by Abby at Meyler’s Library; or stared resentfully out of a rain-spotted window at a leaden sky, and sighed: “If only it would stop raining! If only I could go out!”
Poor little Fanny, said Selina, was quite unlike her merry self: an understatement which kindled a spark of amusement in Abby’s shadowed eyes. Dr Rowton told Abby, in his blunt way, that the sooner she stopped indulging Fanny the better it would be for herself, and Fanny too; but Dr Rowton did not know that there was another and deeper cause of Fanny’s crotchets than influenza. Abby did know, and even when she most wanted to slap her tiresome darling her heart went out to her. She was herself suffering from much the same malady, and if she had been seventeen, instead of eight-and-twenty, no doubt she would have abandoned herself to despair, just as Fanny was doing.
Fanny’s megrims might impose a severe strain upon Abby’s nerves, but it was Selina who rasped them raw, and broke down her command over herself.
Selina had seen Mrs Clapham, and she knew that it was all Too True. She had seen her in the Pump Room, whither a twinge of rheumatism had sent her (braving the elements in her carriage, with the hood drawn up) that morning. She had not at first known who she was, for how should she? She had merely been thinking that the bonnet she was wearing was in excellent style (though she had realized rather later that it bore too many plumes, and was of a disagreeable shade of purple, besides being a most unsuitable hat for a widow), when dear Laura Butterbank had whispered that she was Mrs Clapham.
“Which was a most unpleasant shock, as you may suppose, and almost brought on one of my distressing spasms. Fortunately, I had my vinaigrette in my reticule, for just when I was thinking that I did not at all like the look of her (not that I saw her face, for had her back turned to me, but one can always tell), whom should I see but young Calverleigh, making his way towards her, with that hoaxing smile on his face, all delight and cordiality as though he hadn’t been dangling after Fanny for weeks! And, Abby, he had the impudence to cut me! It’s of no use to say that he didn’t see me, because I am persuaded he did, for he took very good care not to look in my way again, besides going off with that vulgar creature almost immediately. When I recall the way he has been running tame in this house, inching himself in—at least, he did so until you came home and snubbed him and although I thought it a little unkind in you at the time, you were perfectly right, which 1 freely own—well, dearest, I was almost overpowered, and I trembled so much that I don’t know how I was able to reach the carriage, and if it hadn’t been for Mr Ancrum, who gave me his arm, very likely I never should have done so.”
She was obviously much upset. Abbey did what she could to soothe her agitation, but there was worse to come. That Woman (under which title Abby had no difficulty in recognizing the odious Mrs Ruscombe) had had the effrontery to come up to her to commiserate her, with her false, honeyed smile, on poor little Fanny’s humiliating disappointment. And not one word had she been able, in the desperation of the moment, to utter in crushing retort. Nothing had occurred to her!
Unfortunately, all too many retorts occurred to her during the succeeding days, and whenever she was alone with Abby she recalled exactly what Mrs Ruscombe had said, adding to the episode the various annihilating things she herself might have said, and reminding Abby of the numerous occasions when Mrs Ruscombe had behaved abominably. She could think of nothing else; and when, for the third time in one evening, she broke a brooding silence by saying, as though they had been in the middle of a discussion: “And another thing ...!”
Abby’s patience deserted her, and she exclaimed: “For heaven’s sake Selina, don’t start again! As though it wasn’t bad enough to have Fanny saying: ‘ If only it would stop raining!’ a dozen times a day! If you don’t wish to drive me into hysterics, stop talking about Mrs Ruscombe! What she said to you I have by heart, and as for what you might have said to her, you know very well you would never say any such things.”
She repented immediately, of course: indeed, she was horrified by her loss of temper. Begging Selina’s pardon, she said that she thought she was perhaps overtired.
“Yes, dear, no doubt you must be,” said Selina, “It is a pity you wouldn’t rest, as I repeatedly recommended you to do.”
Selina was not offended, oh, dear me, no! Just a little hurt, but she did not intend to say any more about that. She was sure Abby had not meant to wound her: it was merely that she was a trifle lacking in sensibility, but she did not intend to say any more about that either.
Nor did she, but her silence on that and every other topic was eloquent enough, and soon provided Abby with all that was needed to make her long passionately for Miles Calverleigh to come back, and to snatch her out of the stricken household without any more ado.
But it was not Miles Calverleigh who made an unexpected appearance in Sydney Place shortly before noon one morning. It was Mr James Wendover, carrying a small cloak-bag, and wearing the resentful expression of one forced, by the inconsiderate behaviour of his relations, to endure the discomforts of a night-journey to Bath on the Mail Coach.
It was Fanny, seated disconsolately by the window in the drawing-room, who saw him first. When the hack drew up, the hope that it had brought Stacy Calverleigh to her at last soared in her breast for one ecstatic moment, before it sank like a plummet at the sight of Mr Wendover’s spare, soberly clad figure. She exclaimed, startling Abby: “It is my uncle! No, no, I won’t—I can’t! Don’t let him come near me!”
With these distraught words, she rushed from the room, leaving Abby to make her excuses as best she might.
Forewarned, Abby betrayed neither perturbation nor astonishment when Mr Wendover presently entered the room, though she did
say, as she got up from her chair: “Well, this is a surprise, “! What brings you to Bath, I wonder?”
Bestowing a perfunctory salute upon her cheek, he replied, in acrid accents: “ I must suppose that you know very well what has brought me, Abby! I may add that it has been most inconvenient—most inconvenient!—but since you have apparently run mad I felt myself compelled to undertake the journey! Where is Selina?”
“Probably drinking the waters, in the Pump Room,” replied Abby calmly. “She will be here directly, I daresay. Did you come by the Mail? What made it so late?”
“It was not late. I arrived in Bath punctually at ten o’clock and have already accomplished part of my mission. Why it should have been necessary for me to do so I shall leave it to your conscience to answer, Abby! If,” he added bitterly, “you have a conscience, which sometimes I am compelled to doubt!”
“It certainly seems as though I can’t have. However, I console myself with the reflection that at least I’m not as buffle-headed as the rest of my family!” said Abby brightly. “I collect that you came to try whether you could put an end to Fanny’s rather unfortunate flirtation with young Calverleigh. Now, if only you had warned me of your intention you would have been spared the journey! You have wasted your time, my dear James!”
His eyes snapped; he said, with a dry, triumphant laugh: “Have I? Have I indeed? I have already seen the young coxcomb, and I made it very plain to him that if he attempted to persuade my foolish niece into a clandestine marriage he would find himself taken very much at fault—very much at fault! I informed him that I should have no hesitation—none whatsoever!—in taking steps to have such a marriage annulled, and that under no circumstances should I disburse one penny of her fortune if she contracted an alliance without my sanction! I further informed him that he would have eight years to wait before deriving any benefit from that fortune!”
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