The Nonesuch

by Джорджетт Хейер

  Laurence looked rather appalled, but said: “Oh, Blyth wouldn’t serve me such a trick! As for your Munslow—I wish I may see him abandoning you! When do you dine? Should I change my rig?”

  “Not on my account. We dine at the unfashionable hour of six.”

  “Oh, yes! country hours!” said Laurence, refusing to be daunted. “I’m glad of it, for, to own the truth, I’m feeling a trifle fagged. Been thinking lately that it was time I went on a repairing lease!”

  He maintained this affability until nine o’clock, when, after trying in vain to smother a succession of yawns, he took himself off to bed. Sir Waldo was not in the least deceived. As little as he believed that Laurence had been visiting friends in York did he believe that Laurence either wanted to remain at Broom Hall or was resigned to the frustration of his preposterous scheme. He remembered, with a rueful smile, several previous occasions when, having refused some demand of Laurie’s, he had allowed himself to be won over by just such tactics as Laurie was employing now. Laurie remembered them too; probably he had come prepared to meet with an initial rebuff; certainly he had not accepted it as final: that was betrayed by his meekness. When Laurie knew that he could not bring his cousin round his thumb he very rapidly fell into a rage, jealousy and self-pity overcoming his reason, and leading him to rant and complain until he really did believe in his illusionary grievances.

  I ought to have sent him packing, Sir Waldo thought, knowing that in yielding to a compassionate impulse he was raising false hopes in Laurie’s breast. But he could no more have done it than he could have left him to languish in a debtor’s prison. He had little affection for Laurie, and he was well aware that Laurie had as little for him; but when he had told George Wingham that he had ruined Laurie he had spoken in all sincerity. Laurie’s idleness, his follies, his reckless extravagance he set at his own door. By his easy, unthinking generosity he had sapped whatever independence Laurie might have had, imposing no check upon his volatility, but rather encouraging him in the conviction that he would never be run quite off his legs because his wealthy cousin would infallibly rescue him from utter disaster. “After all, it means nothing to you!” Laurie had once said to him, when he had been in his first year at Oxford. Sir Waldo, remembering, grimaced at his younger self. Laurie had said bitterly that it was easy for anyone rolling in gold to preach economy; and that younger Waldo, rich beyond most men’s dreams, imbued with philanthropic principles imperfectly understood, morbidly anxious never to become clutchfisted, and only too ready to believe, with Laurie, that the difference between their respective circumstances was one of the grosser injustices of fate, had opened wide his purse for that predatory youth to dip into: not once, but so many times that Laurie had come to regard him as one on whom he had a right to depend. Only when he had taken to deep gaming had Sir Waldo put his foot down. He meant to keep it down, strengthened in his resolve by the storm of resentment he had roused in Laurence; but even at the height of exasperation his conscience told him that he was himself much to blame for this. He had often felt sorry for Laurie, but his pity had been mixed with contempt; and because he had never liked him he had given him money, which was an easy thing to do, instead of the very different services he had rendered Julian.

  The cases were not, of course, parallel. Laurence was some years older than Julian, and he had not been left fatherless while still in leading-strings. But his father had been a cold-hearted man, bored by his children, and grudging every penny he was obliged to spend on them, so that Laurie had naturally enough turned to his cousin for help in any predicament.

  It might have been wiser not to have told him that he might remain at Broom Hall, but Sir Waldo had found it impossible to treat him so unkindly. Moreover, Julian was staying at Broom Hall, and that circumstance alone made it imperative that he should also welcome Laurie. Laurie was jealous of his affection for Julian, not because of any fondness for him, but because he was obstinate in the belief that he lavished money on the boy. “If it had been Lindeth who had applied to you, you wouldn’t have refused!” Laurie had flung at him once.

  “Lindeth doesn’t apply to me,” he had answered.

  “No! he ain’t obliged to! Anything he wants he can get from you for the mere lifting of an eyebrow! We all know that!”

  “Then you are all wonderfully mistaken,” he had said.

  But Laurie had not been mistaken in thinking that Julian was his favourite cousin; and just because it was true he would not turn Laurie away from his doors while Julian was at liberty to stay with him for as long as he chose.

  He was thinking of Laurie’s jealousy, and wondering how many days would pass before he and Julian came to cuffs, when he heard the sound of carriage-wheels, and Julian’s voice calling good-night to someone. A few minutes later he came into the room, saying: “Waldo? Oh, there you are! Had you given me up for lost? I beg your pardon, but I knew you wouldn’t be in a worry!”

  “Not in a worry! When I have been pacing the floor for hours, in the greatest agitation—!”

  Julian chuckled. “You look pretty comfortable to me!”

  “Merely exhausted. Have you dined?”

  “Yes, at the Rectory. They were just sitting down to dinner when we arrived, and Mrs Chartley would have me stay. Miss Trent declined it, but the Rector said I need not think I should be obliged to walk home, if I stayed, because his man should drive me here. So I did. I hadn’t meant to remain for so long, but we got to talking about everything under the sun—you know how it is!—and I never noticed the time. You didn’t wait for me, did you?”

  “No, not for a second. Did you restore your young Hemp to his parents?”

  “Yes, but as for calling the poor little devil a young Hemp—Good God, he’s only six years old, and all he stole was one apple! Miss Trent told you what happened, didn’t she? It was the most frightful moment!”

  “It must have been. I collect that Miss Chartley showed the greatest presence of mind.”

  “Yes, and such courage! She made nothing of it: her only concern was for the boy. I could only wonder at her, for she is so quiet and shy that one would never have supposed that she could behave with such intrepidity, or remain so composed! If the danger she had been in had not been enough to overset her you’d have thought that the people who crowded round would have done it! She paid no heed to them—didn’t even shrink from the fellow who ranted at her that he was going to hand the boy over to the Law. Lord, Waldo, I never wanted you more in my life!”

  “Why? Couldn’t you deal with the bloodthirsty citizen without my assistance?”

  “That! Of course I could! But I didn’t know what the devil ought to be done with the brat. However, Miss Chartley knew—yes, and just what to say to the mother and father, too! The only thing that did overset her—for a few minutes—” He broke off abruptly.

  “I can guess,” said Sir Waldo helpfully.

  Julian shot him a quick, defensive look; but after a slight pause he said, with a forced smile and a mounting colour: “I suppose so—since you drove her back to Staples! I’m very much obliged to you, by the way. Did she—did she rip up to you about it?”

  “Oh, yes, but no more than I expected! Accredited beauties, you know, can rarely bear to be eclipsed. It was clearly incumbent upon me to remove her from the scene, but I own I shall always regret that I was denied the privilege of meeting the low, vulgar, and disgustingly ill-mannered young gentleman in the tilbury!”

  That drew an involuntary laugh from Julian. “Baldock! First he said he didn’t see why she should faint, and then he called her a shrew! I don’t know why I should laugh, for the lord knows I didn’t feel like laughing at the time! But what a clunch!” He was silent again for a minute, and then said, with a little difficulty: “You think I’m a clunch too, don’t you? But I’ve known, ever since that ill-fated expedition to Knaresborough ... I thought, at first, that it was just—just because she was so young, and had been so much indulged, but—but, there’s no heart behind that lovely
face, Waldo! Nothing but—oh, well! What a fellow I am to be saying such things! Even to you! But I daresay you may have suspected that she—she did bowl me out, when I first saw her!”

  “I should have been astonished if she hadn’t,” replied Sir Waldo, in an indifferent tone. “I don’t recall when I’ve seen a more beautiful girl. It’s a pity she has neither the wits nor the disposition to match her beauty, but I’ve no doubt she’ll do very well without them. If her fortune is sufficiently substantial she may even catch her Marquis!”

  “Catch her Marquis?” exclaimed Julian blankly. “Which Marquis?”

  “Whichever offers for her. Yes, I know it may seem absurd, but she seems to have set her heart on becoming—at the least!—a Marchioness. It won’t surprise me at all if she achieves her ambition. What, by the way, did the Chartleys think of this stirring adventure?”

  “She was very much shocked, of course,” Julian replied, “but the Rector said that Patience—Miss Chartley, I mean!—had done just as she ought! Naturally Mrs Chartley couldn’t but wish it hadn’t happened: she didn’t blame anyone! In fact, neither she nor the Rector made much more of it than Miss Chartley did herself! You may depend upon it that I took care to assure them that she had not entered that dreadful hovel which was the boy’s home!—Miss Chartley told me there were many worse to be seen, but I swear to you, Waldo, my pigs are better housed!—but Mrs Chartley only said that a clergyman’s daughter was used to go amongst the poor. I had thought she would be very much vexed, but not a bit of it! We spent such a comfortable evening! Yes, and only imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was a Yateley! Somehow or other we had got to talking about Timperley, and Mrs Chartley told me that she had been born not so very far from it! Well, in the next county, at all events: Warwick! When she mentioned her previous name, you may guess how I stared!”

  “Forgive me!” apologized Sir Waldo. “I’m either very dull, or very forgetful, but I haven’t the least guess! Who are the Yateleys?”

  “Oh, a Warwickshire family! I don’t know much about ’em, but you must have heard Mama talk of her great friend, Maria Yateley! She’s Lady Stone—a regular fusty mug!—but Mama has known her for ever, and she always speaks of her as Maria Yateley. Well, would you believe it? Mrs Chartley is her first cousin!”

  There did not seem to Sir Waldo to be much cause for satisfaction in this discovery, but he responded suitably; and Julian chatted away happily, his sad disillusionment forgotten in telling his cousin all about the very pleasant evening he had spent, and in trying to persuade him that Miss Chartley’s protégé, at present domiciled with both his parents and one of his grandmothers, was an eligible candidate for entrance to the Broom Hall Orphanage. Failing in this, he said that he must discuss the matter with the Rector: perhaps the boy could be admitted to the Charity School. “For I feel one ought to do something,”he said, frowning over the problem. “After Miss Chartley saved him from being trampled on it seems a pity that he should be put to work in one of the manufactories, poor little rat! I daresay if you were to speak to the Governors, or the Warden, or whatever they call themselves—”

  “No, you talk it over with the Rector!” said Sir Waldo.

  “Well, I will.” He yawned. “Lord, I am sleepy! I think I’ll go to bed, if you’ve no objection.”

  “None at all. Oh, by the bye! Laurie is here. He went to bed early too.’”

  Julian had walked over to the door, but he wheeled round at that, exclaiming: “Laurie?What the devil brings him here?”

  “He told me he had been visiting friends in York, and drove over to see how we go on here.”

  “Gammon!” said Julian scornfully. “What a damned thing! What does he want?”

  Sir Waldo raised his brows. “You had better ask him,” he replied, a faint chill in his voice.

  Julian reddened. “I didn’t mean—I know it’s your house, and no concern of mine whom you invite to stay in it, but—oh, lord, Waldo, what a dead bore! You didn’t invite him, either, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” admitted Sir Waldo, with a smile that was a trifle twisted. “I’m sorry, Julian, but I couldn’t turn him away, you know!”

  “No, I suppose not. Oh, well! As long as he don’t start abusing you—!”

  “I don’t think he will. But if he should happen to pick out a grievance, oblige me by keeping two circumstances in mind! That he will not be doing so under any roof of yours, and that I am really quite capable of fighting my own battles!”

  “Don’t I know it!” Julian retorted. “And of giving nasty set-downs! Very well! I’ll behave with all the propriety in the world—if I can!” He opened the door, but looked over his shoulder, grinning, as a sudden thought assailed him. “Oh, by Jupiter! Won’t our Bond Street beau stagger the neighbourhood?”

  Chapter 11

  If Julian’s demeanour, when he met his cousin Laurence on the following morning, put Sir Waldo forcibly in mind of a stiff-legged terrier, not aggressively inclined but giving warning by his slightly raised bristles that he was prepared to repel any attack, this wary hostility soon vanished. Laurence greeted him in the friendliest manner, with apparently no memory of their last stormy encounter; so Julian, naturally sunny-tempered, immediately responded in kind. Laurence was very full of liveliness and wit, giving a droll account of his valet’s horror at the privations of life at Broom Hall, and describing the various hazards he had himself encountered. “Not that I mean to complain, coz!” he assured Sir Waldo. “After all, I know where the rotten floorboard is now, and even if the ceiling does come down I daresay I may not be lying helpless in bed at the time. I don’t regard a few scraps of plaster descending on me as anything to make a dust about! To think that I should have been as cross as crabs because old Joseph left the place to you! You’re very welcome to it, Waldo!”

  This was clearly so well-intentioned that Julian instantly regaled him with a highly-coloured account of his own first night in the house, when he had put his foot through the sheet; and before very long they were both of them roasting Sir Waldo in lighthearted, if temporary, alliance.

  “Jackstraws!” he remarked. “A little more, and you’ll find yourselves cast upon the world! Laurie, if you want to ride I can mount you, but if you prefer to drive the matter becomes more complicated. There’s my phaeton, and there’s a gig, and there’s a tub of a coach which I imagine old Joseph must have inherited from his grandfather. We rumble to balls and rout-parties in that: Julian thinks it’s just the thing. You won’t—and nor, for that matter, do I. You can have the phaeton when I’m not using it myself, but—”

  “Oh, lord, no!” Laurence interrupted. “I shouldn’t think of taking your horses out! The gig will do well enough, if I should want to drive myself anywhere.”

  “No, I’ll tell you what, Waldo!” said Julian. “The buffer at the Crown has a whisky, which he lets out on hire: that’s the thing for Laurie! He won’t like the look of the gig.”

  “What you mean is that you’re afraid he will want it when you do,” said Sir Waldo. “Take him into the village, and hire the whisky!”

  “I will. I mean to call at the Rectory, too, to see how Miss Chartley does after yesterday’s adventure. Are you using the phaeton this morning,” Julian asked hopefully.

  “No, you may have it.”

  “Much obliged! Have you driven Waldo’s bays, Laurie?”

  “Oh, I shall leave driving them to you! I’m not a pupil of the great Nonesuch!” said Laurence, with a titter.

  “I daresay you are a better fiddler than I am, however,” replied Julian, with determined civility.

  “Waldo would not say so!”

  “Fudge! What do you think, Waldo?”

  Sir Waldo was reading one of his letters, and said, without looking up from it: “Think about what?”

  “Our handling of the reins. Which of us is the better whip? You are to decide!”

  “Impossible! Two halfpennies in a purse!”

  “Of all the knaggy things to
say!” Julian exclaimed indignantly. “If that’s what you think us I wonder at your letting either of us drive your precious bays!”

  “Yes, so do I,” agreed Sir Waldo, getting up from the breakfast-table. “Have you a fancy to attend a ball, Laurie?”

  “Good God, coz, do you have balls in these rural parts? What do they dance? Minuets?”

  “Country-dances and reels—but this one is to be a waltzing-ball, isn’t it, Julian?”

  Julian laughed. “Some waltzing, at all events. You’d be surprised if you knew how gay we’ve been, Laurie!”

  “I think you had better take him to visit Lady Colebatch,” said Sir Waldo.

  “Puffing him off to the neighbourhood? Very well!”

  Laurence was by no means sure that he wished to become acquainted with his cousins’ new friends. He was much addicted to ton parties, where all the guests were of high fashion, but country entertainments he thought abominably dull. However, when he learned that his cousins were engaged for almost every evening for some time to come he realized that unless he joined them in these rural festivities he would be condemned to solitude, so he yielded, and went away to change the frogged and braided dressing-gown in which he had chosen to breakfast for raiment more suited to paying country morning-visits.

  Julian, who had been mischievously looking forward to the effect his dandified cousin’s usual costume was likely to have on the neighbourhood, was disappointed to see, when Laurence came strolling into the stableyard, that he was not wearing the town-dress of a Bond Street beau, but had exchanged his delicately hued pantaloons and his mirror-bright Hessian boots for breeches of pale yellow and white-topped riding-boots; and his exaggeratedly long-tailed coat of superfine for a redingote. However, this garment was raised above the ordinary by its stiffly wadded shoulders and its enormous breast flaps; and both the Mathematical Tie which Laurence wore, and the height of his shirt-points, left nothing to be desired. Furthermore, the driving-coat which he tossed negligently into the phaeton bore upwards of a dozen capes. Julian advised him earnestly to put it on, warning him that the roads were very dusty. “You’ll be smothered in it!” he prophesied. “It would be too bad, for you look very dapper-dog!”