“An irresistible invitation,” said Hawth dryly. “And will you read poetry together in the evenings?”
“I’m sorry.” George Warren flushed fiery red and looked suddenly very young indeed. “Forgive me. It’s outrageously rude of me when you have been so kind as to bring me here.”
“Nonsense.” Hawth recovered his temper. “Brought you here to meet Lord Egremont, din’t I? He’s asked you home to his house of the muses, han’t he? Course you must go. Besides, suits me, to tell truth. I’m closing the house here. Had meant to leave it open for you, but now … The Prince returns to London in a few days. He’s asked me to go too. There’s trouble brewing in the north. Food riots … machine breaking. Well, no wonder, starvation wages and the quartern loaf up again. If only our party were in office, we’d soon have things in better train, but His Highness feels he cannot change his ministers while his father still has a chance of making a recover. To find himself saddled with a Whig government might prove fatal to the old King, the doctors say. Unfortunate. A Whig government would have managed things better with your country, too. I’m afraid the news from there is hardly promising.”
“Well, no wonder,” said George Warren, “when you can do no better than send a young fool like Augustus Foster to negotiate for you. He’s made you an enemy a minute since he reached Washington.”
“He’s kin to the Duke of Devonshire.”
“And what’s that to the purpose? A fool’s a fool, whoever’s his cousin.”
“Not exactly cousin,” said Lord Hawth. “Mistress’s son. Beg pardon! Second wife’s!”
“You British,” said George Warren.
In the end, he stayed over Christmas at Petworth, enjoying the informal hospitality and lively talk at the great house, and the curious native rituals with which the British celebrated the twelve days of Christmas. He met Mr. Turner and admired his paintings of Petworth Park, but did not, in the end, decide either to buy or to commission one. He had a curious fancy to add a portrait by the famous Thomas Lawrence to the family gallery at Warren House. An absurd idea, of course. He certainly did not want a portrait of himself, but it had irked him that Charles Warrender had not added a picture of his pretty young wife to the family gallery. In character, of course, but a pity just the same. What would happen, he wondered, if he were to ask Lawrence to do one of his striking portraits of Mrs. Warrender—or Mrs. Warrender and her formidable daughter? A mad idea, but tempting, just the same. After all, they were his cousins. An only child, he had lost his mother before he was five years old and had never quite managed to cope with the prim Philadelphia girls. One of the great advantages of life on board ship had been the masculine society, but Petworth House had taught him that mixed company could be wonderfully pleasant too, if one only knew how to go on. He was rather tempted to go to Mrs. Warrender for lessons.
Returning home to Warren House just after Twelfth Night, he found a budget of bad news awaiting him from Philadelphia. His friends there wrote anxiously of President Madison’s anti-British message to Congress early in November, and the domination of the war hawks in the country. One and all, they urged him to come home, apparently convinced that if war should, as they gravely feared, break out between the two countries, he might be thrown into prison, as British visitors to France had been in 1803.
It was a very curious thing, considering how unhappy he had been during his first months in England, but he did not want to go home. What, indeed, was home? Surely, it was where one had a job of work to do. In Philadelphia, he had been merely concerned with making money. At Warren House, he seemed willy-nilly to have acquired a host of responsibilities.
Mr. Futherby welcomed him back with enthusiasm and a long list of problems to do with the estate. Told that Warren had ordered two Suffolk ploughs and one of the new thrashing machines, he looked grave. “The ploughs may do well enough,” he said. “But I have doubts about the thrashing machine. There is a curious spirit abroad. I don’t much like it, and am all the more delighted to see you home, Mr. Warren.”
“What kind of a spirit?”
Mr. Futherby looked nervously round the quiet study. “Revolutionary, Mr. Warren. They had a Tree of Liberty in the mill yard down at Tidemills this Christmas. Drank all kinds of toasts. And made speeches. ‘Death to the aristocrats!’ That kind of thing.”
“Dear me,” said George Warren. “Am I going to be burned in my bed?”
“Oh, no, not you, sir. You’re popular down there. For one thing, you knocked out Tom Bowles in fair fight. For another, you’re an American. A revolutionary yourself, in their eyes. They almost look on you as one of them. Well, they’re not fools. They know how close the two countries are to war. They feel it, in their pockets and their bellies. Your non-importation act hits them as hard as the French war. And it’s the radicals who oppose the war. You heard, I’ve no doubt, how Sir Francis Burdett contrived to catch the Speaker’s eye when Parliament met the other day, and made a strong anti-government speech. And anti-war. Both wars.”
“Yes.” Warren laughed. “You don’t sound to have much order in your Parliament. But, Futherby, if the hotheads down at Tidemills don’t intend to attack me, you can’t mean—”
“Hawth Hall,” said Futherby. “If you’re in touch with his lordship, sir, I wish you would suggest he come home. There’s something going on down at the Tidemills. I had young John Penfold to see me yesterday. A badly frightened man. He wants Lord Hawth home so he can give up the shop. Get permission to move away, with his mother and sister. He wouldn’t give a reason. Said it was as much as his life was worth.”
“But why you?”
“He don’t trust Hawth’s man Knowles. He wouldn’t explain that either. He knows something that’s fretting him good and proper, that boy. So, if you should be writing Lord Hawth and felt like saying a word. And … Mr, Warren?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve not heard anything of young Kit Warrender since you got back? He seems to fit into it somewhere, John Penfold was asking for him, too. I did make bold to speak of it to the ladies up at the Dower House, but got cold enough looks for my pains.”
“I dare swear you did. No, I’ve not seen Kit Warrender since he saved my life last autumn. Seems to have left the district, and I don’t blame him, treated as he is.”
“Not to say left,” said Futherby. “He’s been seen, here and there, but nobody seems to know where to lay hands on him. So if you should run into him, down at the Bell maybe, I wish you’d give him the word.”
“What word, precisely?”
“Well, that’s a bit of a puzzler, isn’t it? Maybe just to ask him to drop down to Tidemills and see young Penfold? Careful-like?”
“I’ll certainly do that. If I should meet him. And I’ll write Lord Hawth today. I’d meant to anyway. I owe him a thank for my introduction to Lord Egremont. What should I say?”
“Ask him to come home, sir. I don’t much like to think of the ladies at the Dower House, and the children at the hall, and nobody to look out for them but a parcel of johnny-come-lately servants. Not Parsons, of course, but I don’t reckon much to the rest of them.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Warren. “And I must call on the ladies.”
The ladies, at that very moment, were involved in the nearest thing they ever got to an acrimonious argument. It had been raging off and on ever since Futherby had called, asked his question about Kit Warrender and told them about John Penfold.
“I won’t allow it,” said Mrs. Warrender.
“But I think I ought to,” said Kate.
“It’s too dangerous. And, besides, how would you go? I’m not sending James down with Boney this time, to have you risk suffocation in that secret passage and worse down at Tidemills.”
This was unanswerable. Since the gap in the wall had been built in, Kate’s private way out of the park was closed. Without her mother’s help, she could not possibly manage the masquerade, and she was beginning to recognise that her mother really did not mean t
o help. “I know,” she said at last. “Why didn’t I think of it sooner? We must send for John Penfold to come here.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Here to the Dower House. Tell him, if he wants to meet Kit Warrender, he can do so, secretly, here. It’s no affair of his if young Kit manages to spirit himself into the park without going through any of the gates. Anyway, why should he know?”
“True enough,” said her mother. “You really think we should, Kate?”
“I’m sure of it. Since Lord Hawth chooses to stay in London, enjoying himself and doubtless winning other people’s fortunes at Brooks’s, someone had better take a hand before we are all burned in our beds. I didn’t half like the sound of what Futherby had to say.”
“No more did I,” said her mother. “I’ll tell Futherby when next he calls.”
“That may be too late,” said her daughter gloomily. And then, seeing her mother’s blanched face: “I’m a fool, dearest! They’ll never do anything while the weather’s so bad, and the nights so dark. I’m just—blue-devilled, I suppose.”
“And no wonder,” said her mother. “It’s been a dull Christmas, I’m afraid.”
“Dull! If it weren’t for the children, I’d go hang myself. And mother—”
“Yes?”
“I’m worried about Sue. She’d always been difficult, but there’s no understanding her these days. One day over the moon, the next, glummer even than I am. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
“Anyone would think she was in love,” said Mrs. Warrender.
“In love? But it’s not possible? Who does she see, poor child? Who do any of us see?”
“One of the men?”
“Never! She’s too much pride. Besides, I would have noticed.”
“Of course you would. Oh, well, I expect she is just suffering the pangs of growing up. And into not too easy a situation, poor child.”
“I wish Lord Hawth would come home,” said Kate.
But when a carriage drove up to the Dower House through pouring rain later that afternoon it was George Warren, not Lord Hawth, who jumped out and hurried up the steps to the house. “I shall send a message to Penfold by him,” said Kate.
“He’ll be surprised.”
“I can’t help that. It’s too good a chance to be missed.” What she had not given herself time to think about was George Warren’s inevitable reaction.
“You can get Kit Warrender here?” he said. “Splendid. May I come and give him the meeting. I’ve owed that young man a thank since last autumn, but he’s as elusive as Jack-o’-lantern. Or that General Ludd who’s giving such trouble in the north. When shall I tell young Penfold to come?”
“Tomorrow night,” said Kate. “I’ll need time to get word to Mr. Warrender. And I’m sorry, Mr. Warren, but you must see your being here would only increase the risk to John Penfold. I’ll give your message to Mr. Warrender”
“Very well.” Reluctantly. “If you think so. Then, if you would ask him to call on me on one of those night rides of his. Or, better still, give me his direction and I will call on him.”
“I’ve told you before: I don’t know that,” said Kate. “I shall just send a message.”
“A very mysterious young man.”
“No doubt he knows his own business.”
“Do tell us how you enjoyed yourself at Petworth House.” Mrs. Warrender plunged boldly into the ensuing silence. “Lord Egremont is quite a modern Mycenas they say.”
“Yes. An admirable host, even when he’s not at home. It’s wonderfully civilised, your English country-house life. The mixture of regime and freedom, of conversation and exercise, is done to a marvel. I wish I thought I could achieve something like it at Warren House.”
“It would certainly make a change,” said Kate.
And, “You are not taking these war rumours too seriously then?” said her mother hastily to fill another conversational gap.
“You mean, I am not thinking of going back to America? No, ma’am. It’s true, my friends all urge it. They think war between our countries as good as certain—or as bad. But I seem to be fixed here. There are so many things to do. Futherby and I have all kinds of agricultural plans for the spring. Besides, I have invited a couple of poets to stay.”
“Poets?” asked Kate.
“Yes. I don’t imagine you know their work. Nothing like Sir Walter Scott. A plain Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge. And their wives, of course. I don’t suppose they’ll come, but I met their friend Mr. Hayden at Petworth House, and he said he did not think they would be affronted at being invited.”
“I don’t suppose they would,” said Kate. “But do you read their poetry, Mr. Warren?”
He laughed, struck an attitude, and began to recite:
“It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?’
Do you wish me to go on, Miss Warrender?”
“You mean you could?”
“Not the whole poem, as yet, but I’m perfect, I think, in the first three parts. There was plenty of reading time, sailing to China.” He laughed. “Don’t look so frightened, I’ll spare you.”
“I do hope your poets come,” said Kate. “But of the two, I think I would really rather meet Mr. Wordsworth. Shall I recite his ‘Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey’ to you, Mr. Warren?”
“I wish you would call me Cousin George,” he said. And then: “And what do you think of Sir Walter Scott, Cousin Kate?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Warrender, when he left at last three quarters of an hour later, “Who would have thought it?”
“Yes.” Kate laughed. “I am ashamed to say I did not realise they had books in America. And I’ll never get over those trips of his to China. What a surprise he is. But how awkward about his wanting to meet Kit Warrender!”
“He took your refusal very well, I thought,” said her mother.
“Yes,” said Kate. “Which gave me the most lowering feeling that he meant to surprise us with a visit tomorrow night Or meet Kit Warrender on the way!”
“But he wouldn’t,” said her mother.
“No, he wouldn’t, would he,” said Kate. “So what, precisely, do we do about that?”
Chapter Ten
George Warren had promised to let them know if John Penfold was not able to come, so no news, next morning, was good news in a way. “At least it means we will get it over with before Lord Hawth returns,” said Kate.
“You think he will be back soon?”
“He’s bound to learn there’s trouble down here. That man hears everything.”
“Well, being a magistrate, I suppose he would.”
“Being a magistrate, you would think he would stay home a bit more.”
“Dull for him, with only the children, after his life in Brighton and at the London clubs.”
“Nothing to stop him keeping open house like Lord Egremont. After all, he’s got a gem of a housekeeper, and all things handsome about him.”
“I sometimes wonder whether that’s not the difficulty,” said her mother on a faint note of apology.
“What do you mean, dearest?”
“Why, I have thought he was afraid it would be too much trouble. Or that it would be—embarrassing for us.”
“Lord Hawth! Afraid of making work? Or embarrassing us! Mother, you must have windmills in your head! He never thought about anyone but himself in his life. Look at the way he treats those poor children! For a while, after that kidnapping scare, you would have thought they were his dearest possession, and then off he goes, with hardly a ‘good-bye,’ and sends you word to buy them their Twelfth Night presents. It’s no wonder poor Sue looks so peaked. She set a good deal of store by his notice.”
“I hope it’s only that,” said her mother.
Lessons stopped early these late January days when night fell about four o’clock and even a full moon was lost beh
ind storm clouds. Since the kidnapping, Kate always had a qualm of conscience when she left the children behind at Hawth Hall with no company but Lord Hawth’s elderly, dreary, superannuated cousin, who bored the children, as Giles shamelessly put it, “quite beyond permission” with her endless lamentations for her snug lost life in Bath.
Hurrying home to the Dower House and changing into a coat and breeches of olive drab whose jacket had been cut a little large for her brother and therefore never worn, Kate congratulated herself that, as a caller, Kit Warrender would not be expected to wear evening dress. She would never manage to carry off her impersonation in knee breeches and silk stockings. As it was, she went quickly round the drawing room blowing out all but one candle in each of the holders on the walls. “We are economising,” she told her mother. “Patriotically.”
“Did you get down without any of the servants seeing you?”
“Yes. And have told Betty to say I’ve a migraine headache and must not be disturbed on any account.” She moved over to disarrange the curtain that concealed a long French window. “I’m an unorthodox young man.” She turned to smile across the room at her mother. “I think I must have come on foot across the park and in at that window. A good thing it’s stopped raining.” She looked down at one of the shining boots her brother had outgrown.
“Scandalous,” said Mrs. Warrender. “What in the world would Lord Hawth think if he knew I was entertaining a young man by myself?”
“A cousin, remember. No need to refine too much upon it. And you, a highly respectable widow. Now if it was me! I collect I must have invented my migraine headache to avoid this shocking meeting: Unhandsome of me, was it not, to abandon you to it?”
“Oh, Kate, you’ll be the death of me. You are actually enjoying yourself!”
“One might as well,” said Kate, and froze quickly into a masculine posture, foot on the fender, half-turned from the door. The servants, she knew, were her greatest hazard.
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