She laid a hand on his sleeve. “No, no, Jack, you cannot be so disobliging!” she said pleadingly. “It is vital to Dolph’s happiness!”
He looked down at her, a mocking smile in his eyes. “I am quite unmoved, Kitty. Show me that it is vital to my happiness, and I might oblige you!”
She stared up into his face with puckered brows. “To yours? What can you mean?”
He lifted her hand from his arm, and held it. “My dear Kitty, let us have done! Between us, we might, I fancy, induce my uncle to change his mind.”
An indignant flush rose to her cheeks; she pulled her hand away, saying hotly: “I don’t wish him to change his mind! I hope very much that he will marry Fish!”
His brows snapped together. “A sentiment that no doubt does credit to your heart, but very little to your head, believe me!” He broke off, as Lord Dolphinton, uttering a strangled sound, almost leaped from his chair. “What the devil ails that lunatic?” he demanded irritably.
“Listen!” gasped his lordship, fixing dilating eyes upon the window.
The rest of the company now became aware that some vehicle had drawn up outside the Rectory. Kitty ran to the window, and peered out. It was by this time too dark for her to be able to distinguish any object, but she could perceive the glow of carriage-lamps beyond the hedge, and could distinctly hear the fidgeting and blowing of horses. She said uneasily: “It sounds as though there are more than two horses. But it could not be your Mama, Dolph!”
Lord Dolphinton, feeling no such certainty, made a bolt for the cupboard, but was intercepted by the Rector, who took his arm in a firm grip, and said in a voice of authority: “Foster, I will not suffer you to behave in this nonsensical fashion! Now, calm yourself! In this house, you are perfectly safe, whoever may have come to visit me. For shame! Do you mean to leave Miss—er—Plymstock to face what you imagine to be a danger?”
“Both go into the cupboard!” suggested his lordship imploringly.
“Certainly not! You will protect Miss Plymstock,” said Hugh.
Rather to Kitty’s surprise, these stern words appeared to inspire Dolphinton with courage. He gulped, but he made no further attempt to reach his refuge. The sound of the knocker on the front-door did indeed make him jump, and shudder, but he said resolutely: “Protect Hannah!” and stood his ground.
Mr. Westruther drew his snuff-box from his pocket, and flicked it open. “If someone would have the goodness to inform me whether I am assisting at a tragedy or a farce I should be grateful,” he said sardonically.
The housekeeper’s unmistakeable tread was heard, followed by the sound of a lifting latch. Lord Dolphinton acquired a firm hold on Miss Plymstock’s hand, and swallowed convulsively.
“Affording protection, or seeking it?” drawled Mr. Westruther, taking a pinch of snuff from his box, and expertly shaking all but a grain or two from between his finger and thumb.
The door into the parlour was opened. “Mr. Standen, sir,” announced Mrs. Armathwaite placidly.
Surprise held the company silent for perhaps thirty seconds. Mr. Standen, not a hair out of place, walked into the room, found that five pairs of eyes were staring at him in astonishment, and said apologetically: “Thought you might be needing me! No wish to intrude!”
Kitty found her voice. “Freddy!” she cried thankfully, hurrying towards him. “Oh, how glad I am to see you! We are in such a dreadful fix, and I don’t know what to do!”
“Thought very likely you would be,” said Freddy. “Not sure, mind you, but I’d a strong notion you’d forgot to buy the special licence.”
Kitty caught his hand. “Freddy, you have not brought one?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yes, I have,” he replied. “That’s why I came.”
For the second time in her life, Miss Charing lifted his hand to her cheek. “Oh, Freddy, I might have known you would come to our rescue!” she said, in a choked voice.
Mr. Westruther, who had been watching them with an odd expression on his face, shut his snuff-box with a snap. As though this sharp little sound released him from a spell which kept him standing with his eyes starting from their sockets and his mouth falling open, Lord Dolphinton suddenly released Miss Plymstock, and surged forward, saying, with gratifying delight, if somewhat unnecessarily: “It’s Freddy! Hannah, it’s Freddy! My cousin Freddy!” He then seized Freddy’s hand, and shook it up and down, beaming upon him, and pawing his shoulder with his free hand. “I’m glad you’ve come, Freddy!” he said earnestly, in a burst of confidence: “I like you. Like you better than Hugh. Better—”
“That’s the dandy, old fellow!” said Freddy, stemming the flow. “No need to stroke me, though. Now, stop it, Dolph, for the lord’s sake!”
He managed to disengage himself, but Lord Dolphinton had not reached the end of his disclosures. “When Jack came, I wasn’t glad,” he said. “Sorry. Because I don’t like him. I’ll tell you something, Freddy: Hugh wouldn’t let me get in the cupboard, and I’m glad of that too.”
Mr. Standen, who had long since ceased to feel surprise at anything his eccentric relative might say or do, thrust him gently into a chair, and said amiably: “Of course you are. No need to sit in the cupboard on my account. If it’s your mother you’re worrying about, no need to do that either: she ain’t coming here.”
“You know that, Freddy?” said his lordship.
“Lord, yes! Gone to a party—thinks you’re at Arnside!” said Freddy, improvising cleverly.
Lord Dolphinton, on whom the repeated assurances of Miss Charing and Miss Plymstock had made no impression at all, appeared to accept this. He turned to relay the information to Miss Plymstock; and Freddy was at liberty to turn his attention to his betrothed, who was tugging at his coat in a way which drew a protest from him.
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” Kitty said. “But how in the world did you guess that I had forgot the licence?”
Mr. Standen rubbed his nose reflectively. “Struck me when Meg gave me your letter. What I mean is, told me everything else, but didn’t say a word about the licence. What’s more, knew dashed well you hadn’t enough money to purchase it, and had a strong notion Dolph hadn’t either. Meant to have been here with it sooner, but the thing was I got detained. Had to buy the Broughty girl a toothbrush.”
“Had to do what!” exclaimed Kitty.
“Dash it, Kit, couldn’t let her go to France without one! Must see that!” expostulated Freddy. “Not the thing at all! Bought her a hairbrush and comb as well. Meg saw to the rest, but if ever there was a hen-witted female it’s Meg!”
“Freddy, are you telling me Olivia has gone to France?” demanded Kitty, dazed.
“Gone to Dover,” corrected Freddy. “Boarding the packet tomorrow.”
Mr. Westruther, regarding him out of narrowed eyes, said silkily: “You have been busy, coz, have you not?”
“I should dashed well think I have!” said Freddy, stirred by the memory of his activities.
“You have—you will agree!—a trifle of explaining to do!”
“Not to you, Jack!” said Freddy, meeting his eyes fair and square.
The Rector, a silent and puzzled auditor, at this point moved a pace forward, but it was Kitty who intervened. “Good God! Freddy, she has not eloped with Camille?”
“That’s it,” said Mr. Standen, pleased to find her of such a ready understanding. “Best thing she could do. Saw it in a flash. Thing was, Gosford offered for her—poor girl cast into despair—came to find you—found me instead! Left her with Meg, and went off to your cousin’s lodgings. Silly fellow flew into his high ropes: never met such a gabster in my life! Give you my word, Kit, he enacted me a whole Cheltenham tragedy! However, contrived to settle it all right and tight in the end. Saw ’em off from the Golden Cross, told the hack to take me to Doctors’ Commons, got the licence, and posted down here as soon as I could. Here, Hugh! you’d better take the thing!”
With these words, he handed over a folded document to his cousin. Hugh took
it, but before he could say anything, Kitty exclaimed: “But, Freddy, an elopement! Have you considered—I own, the thought did not occur to me until quite recently!—that Camille must be a Catholic?”
It was plain that Mr. Standen had not considered this possibility. He once more rubbed the tip of his nose, but said philosophically, after a moment’s reflection: “Oh, well, no sense in teasing ourselves over a trifle! If he is, she’ll have to change! Shouldn’t think she’d object: seems a very biddable girl!”
Kitty drew a breath. “Then—then everything is settled! At least, it will be, when Dolph and Hannah are married, and there can be no difficulty about that, now that you have brought them that stupid licence! Oh, Freddy, it is all your doing!”
“No, no!” said Freddy, embarrassed.
“Yes, indeed it is! For although it was I who wanted Olivia to marry Camille, I should never have thought of telling him to carry her off to France; and you see what sad work I made of poor Dolph’s elopement! I am so very grateful to you! Oh, and Jack says that Uncle Matthew is going to marry Fish, and that is a very good thing too, though, to be sure, it was none of our doing!”
“Is he, though?” said Freddy, mildly interested. “Well, I daresay it don’t matter, because he’s a deuced rum ’un himself, but that Fish of yours is queer in her attic.”
“Freddy, she is not!”
“Must be. Dash it, wouldn’t write to you about Henry VIII if she wasn’t! Stands to reason.”
“You are mistaken, coz,” interrupted Mr. Westruther, in a brittle voice. “The Fish is cleverer than we knew. I have not the slightest desire to dwell upon all she saw fit to pour into my ears not an hour since, for I found it nauseating, but if the matter teases you, you may as well know that she believes herself to be comparable to Katherine Parr—tending the aged and irascible monarch!” he added sarcastically.
“So that was it!” exclaimed Kitty. “Of course! He had a bad leg too! Though I fancy it was not precisely gout that afflicted him, was it? Now I see it all! How very like Fish to be so absurd! If only Uncle Matthew has not bullied her into saying she will marry him, I must say I think it an excellent thing for them both, don’t you, Freddy?”
“Well, Freddy?” said Mr. Westruther. “Do you think it excellent, or does some grain of common-sense exist in your mind?”
“Not my affair,” said Freddy. “At least—come to think of it, not sure it isn’t, in which case I do think it’s an excellent thing. What I mean is, I don’t want that woman living with us, and if she marries my great-uncle she dashed well can’t!”
Miss Charing’s cheeks became flooded with colour. “But, F-Freddy—!” she faltered.
Mr. Westmther laughed. “Just so, my love! You have been so busily employed in making what I can only call infelicitous matches that you have left your own future out of account, have you not? Oh, don’t look so conscious! I imagine Hugh cannot be so wood-headed that he does not know very well what game you have been playing! Dolphinton, I am sure, we need not regard; and as for Miss Plymstock, I look upon her as quite one of the family! It has been an amusing game, my little one, and you must not think that I blame you for having played it. It was very unhandsome of me not to have come to Arnside that day, was it not?”
He moved towards her as he spoke; his eyes were laughing again; and he held out his hands. The Rector cast a glance at Mr. Standen, but Mr. Standen had discovered an infinitesimal speck of fluff adhering to his coat sleeve, and was engaged in removing it. It was a task that appeared to absorb his whole attention.
Miss Charing took a step backward. “If you please, Jack,” she said, rather breathlessly, “no more!”
“Oh, nonsense, Kitty, nonsense!” Mr. Westruther said impatiently. “This folly has gone far enough!”
Miss Charing swallowed, and managed to say: “I collect that you mean to ask me to marry you, but—but I beg you will not! If you had come—that day—I should have accepted your offer, which would have been a very great mistake, and makes me so deeply thankful now that you did not come! Pray, Jack, say no more!”
He paid no heed to this, but said: “The fair Olivia admitted you a little too deeply into her confidence, did she? I was afraid she would. Don’t trouble your pretty head for such a trifle as that, Kitty! You will own that I have borne with tolerable equanimity the news that she has fled to France with your enterprising cousin.”
“No, no, it is not that! I can’t tell what it is, only that perhaps I have changed, or—or something of that nature!” said Kitty. “And, indeed, Jack, I am excessively fond of you, and I daresay I shall always be, in spite of knowing that you are quite odiously selfish, but, if you will not be very much offended, I would much prefer not to be married to you!”
He stood staring down into her perturbed face. The laugh had quite vanished from his eyes, and there was a white look round his mouth. Miss Charing had never before had experience of the temper Mr. Westruther’s cousins knew well, and she was a little frightened.
“So that’s it, is it?” he said, quite softly. “George was right after all! Dolphinton was a little too much for you to swallow, but you had indeed set your heart on a title and a great position, and so you laid the cleverest trap for Freddy that I have ever been privileged to see! You cunning little jade!”
It was at this point that Mr. Standen, that most exquisite of Pinks, astounded the assembled company, himself included, by knocking him down.
For this, two circumstances were largely responsible. He took Mr. Westruther entirely unawares; and Mr. Westruther, recoiling from the blow, tripped over a small footstool, lost his balance, and fell heavily.
“Good God!” said the Rector, forgetting his cloth. “Well done, Freddy! A nice, flush hit!”
Lord Dolphinton, who had found the interchange between Kitty and his cousin rather beyond his power of comprehension and had allowed his attention to wander, now realized that a mill was in progress, which he was perfectly well able to understand. In high glee he called upon Miss Plymstock to observe that Freddy had floored Jack, and begged Freddy to do it again.
Freddy himself, rather pale, stood waiting with his fists clenched while his cousin picked himself up. There was a very ugly look in Mr. Westruther’s eyes, which caused Hugh, who had helped him to his feet, to maintain a grip upon his arm, and Kitty to say hurriedly: “Oh, Freddy, it was splendid of you, and I am so very much obliged to you, but pray do not do it again!”
“No, no!” said Freddy, conscience-stricken.
The ugly look faded. “At least admit you could not!” said Mr.Westruther.
“No, I know I could not,” replied Freddy, “but I dashed well don’t mind trying to!”
Mr. Westruther began to laugh. “Freddy, you dog, you took me off guard and off balance, and I have a good mind to knock you through that window! Oh, take your hand off my arm, Hugh! You can’t be fool enough to suppose I mean to have a turn-up with Freddy!” He shook the Rector off as he spoke, and straightened his neckcloth. That done, he held out his hand imperatively to Kitty. “Come, cry friends with me!” he said. “I will apologize for the whole, confess that I entirely misread a situation that is now perfectly plain to me, and remove myself immediately from your presence.” He held her hand for a moment, grinning rather ruefully at her; then he lightly kissed her cheek, and said: “Accept my best wishes for your happiness, my dear, and believe that I shall do my utmost to cut you out with Uncle Matthew! My felicitations, Freddy. I’ll serve you trick-and-tie for that leveller one of these days. Oh, no, pray don’t accompany me, Hugh! Really, I have had more than enough of my family for one day!”
A bow to Miss Plymstock, a wave of the hand, and he was gone. The front-door slammed behind him; they heard his tread going down the garden-path, the click of the gatelatch, and, in another moment or two, the sound of his horses’ hooves. Miss Plymstock rose, and shook out her skirt. “I’m bound to say I ain’t at all sorry to see the last of him,” she remarked. “Nor I haven’t told you yet, Mr. Standen, h
ow very much obliged to you I am for bringing that licence,”
But Mr. Standen was not attending. He addressed himself to the Rector. “Oughtn’t to have done it, Hugh. Not the thing! He wasn’t expecting it.”
“Very true,” agreed the Rector. “It was, in a sense, improper, but since you could not, I fear, have landed him the smallest punch under any other circumstances, I cannot regret it. He came by his just deserts. The most deplorable feature of the business is that such a scene should have been enacted in this room, under the eyes of two ladies.”
“Better have gone into the garden,” nodded Lord Dolphinton. “Like watching a good mill.”
“What you would have watched, my dear Foster, would not have been a mill, but a murder!” said the Rector tartly.
“Why, Hugh!” exclaimed Kitty. “I do believe you are quite cross because it was Freddy who knocked him down, and not you!”
“I would remind you, Kitty, that I am in Holy Orders,” said the Rector austerely. “And let me tell you that if I had chosen to come to fisticuffs with Jack—However, we have said enough on this subject! The licence which Freddy has handed to me does indeed enable me to marry you to Miss Plymstock, Foster, but it in no way alters my reluctance to do so. Pray do not misunderstand me, ma’am! I do not wish to oppose the marriage. From what I have observed, I am inclined to think that Foster would derive considerable benefit from it.”
“Well, for the lord’s sake, Hugh, stop prosing!” recommended Freddy. “Dashed if you aren’t as bad as Kit’s French cousin!”
The Rector cast him a withering look. “Have the goodness not to interrupt me, Freddy! While I am prepared to support Foster in his determination to marry Miss Plymstock, I cannot approve of his clandestine way of going about the business.”
“What you mean, old fellow,” said the irrepressible Mr. Standen, “is that you don’t want to be mixed up in it. Scared of Aunt Dolphinton.”
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