by Smith, Joan
“Certainly she will,” Holly assured him. “Dewar is belowstairs at the moment.”
“Don’t want him back up here jawing at me. How was I to know the man is a Bedlamite? Nobody told me not to take the short cut. Least you could do is warn a body if there’s a murderer loose. Mind, if I’d known what ailed old Evans, I’d have spoken to Dewar myself. Not allowed to shoot all these years because Dewar wouldn’t lease him a measly five acres. Enough to drive a man mad, not being able to use your pops. Don’t blame him in the least. Would have done the same thing myself, I daresay.”
“Is there anything you want? A book perhaps, or something to eat?”
“No books! Might manage to put away a leg of chicken and a bit of cake. A few pieces of toast—a dish of preserves wouldn’t go amiss.”
“It is early yet. A long evening to get in before you will be ready for sleep. Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to read?”
“Maybe Miss Proctor would like to read to me,” he said hopefully.
“Perhaps later,” Holly replied, though she had not the least assurance Jane would comply.
A few hints that Miss Proctor might like to have a hand of piquet or a game of jackstraws were all met with the reminder that she was with Dewar. Rex’s pink face took on the expression known by his friends as his ‘wise face,’ which is to say he pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, indicating deep thought. “Tell you what,” he said, “send Dewar up. Want to speak to him. Urgent.”
Holly relayed the message through Roper, who had been given the adjoining room. The simple ruse worked very well. When Dewar entered at the door a moment later, Jane was with him. “What is it you want, Rex?” Dewar asked.
Rex’s eyes and thoughts were all for Jane. He ignored the question, while a simple-minded smile settled on his face. “I see how it is,” Dewar said to Holly, and went to join her.
Jane advanced to the bed and enquired for Homberly’s comfort. The precise nature of any remarks exchanged between them was not overheard, but soon Jane was hopping out of the door to go after jackstraws. “Shall I toss this malade imaginaire into my carriage and relieve you of him?” Dewar asked Holly, but with a tolerant smile at the victim.
“The doctor says he is not to be moved for a few days.”
“What a compliant doctor he is. Entre nous, I think we know the more serious ailment is heart-related.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rex charged, lending an ear. “You ain’t the one with his—body full of shot. Dashed uncomfortable. Especially getting it pried out. Near passed out with the pain.”
“You should have had some laudanum,” Holly told him. “It would have eased the pain of the operation and made sleep easier afterwards. You are too stoical, Mr. Homberly.”
“Ain’t chicken-hearted anyway,” Rex told his cousin. “Be back in the saddle in jig time—week or so,” he altered his diagnosis, as Jane entered with the jackstraws. Dewar drew a chair to the bedside for her, and the two were soon engrossed in a noisy game.
“Do you share my feeling that we are de trop here, Miss McCormack?” Dewar asked.
“Certainly not. I must act the chaperone, but if you would like to join Lady Proctor below....”
“No!” he said, very emphatically.
There was no danger of mistaking this reply for a compliment to herself. It had very much the tone of opting for the lesser of two evils. “No, I would like to hear my lecture now, if you please, and have it done with. You forgot to say I told you so belowstairs. I blame the unusual reticence on your aunt’s presence. You will be able to read me a much more satisfactory scold here. Come now,” he prompted. “If I had done as you suggested this morning Rex would not have this unparalleled opportunity to pester Jane. He is delighted with his misfortune, which must take the wind out of your sail somewhat.”
“It could have been serious,” she answered.
“So it could. Only think if Evans had filled Rex’s sword-wielding arm with buckshot, or happened to hit the horse in error. That is a very fine animal Rex rides.”
“You treat it lightly, which seems to be your customary manner of conducting what one would think should be serious affairs.”
“This is more like it,” Dewar congratulated her, and settled in, quite as comfortably as Rex, for a coze. “I had intended speaking to my steward about the matter tomorrow. Odd he had not attended to it himself, but he misunderstood the situation. I shall ring a resounding peal over him. Meanwhile, I have assured Evans he will be leased the requisite acres, and he is now free to shoot us all quite legally. Foolish Game Laws. They were drawn up centuries ago. Well, I hope Tybalt’s indisposition does not hamper our rehearsals too severely.”
Mr. Homberly’s merry laughing and flirting had soon dried his throat. Roper was requested to bring the company wine. “My own,” he mentioned to the ladies, lest they thought it overweaning of him to offer them their own wine. “Roper brought a couple of bottles in my cases.”
“I wonder where he got it,” Dewar asked innocently, as he examined the bottles from his own cellars.
After chewing it up, Homberly proclaimed it to be “A thoroughbred. Not a saucy bone in its body. Yessir, a very well-behaved wine indeed.”
“What does that mean?” Jane asked.
“It is better not to enquire too minutely,” Dewar told her.
Holly asked Roper to fetch her sewing, as she wished to finish the shirts before the costumes made their demands on her. Seeing was difficult in the lamplight, but she hesitated to put on her spectacles with Dewar at her side, watching every stitch.
For an hour the invalid was entertained, then it was time for Dewar to take his leave. “Don’t cosset him,” he warned the ladies, “or you’ll have a tenant for life.”
“We shan’t pay him a bit of heed,” Holly assured Rex. “I’ll have some food sent up for you now, before you retire, Mr. Homberly. A leg of chicken and some cake, I think you mentioned.”
“Very nice of you. Little toast and preserves too—peaches for choice.”
“We wouldn’t want him to fade away to a cartload,” Dewar mentioned, as the ladies bade him farewell.
* * *
Chapter 11
It was not necessary for the minor players to appear at every rehearsal. With only a small part, Holly decided to remain home the next morning and finish Sir Egbert’s bookkeeping. She had some premonition Dewar would return that evening, and wished to be free to join the party in the invalid’s room. She did not examine her reasons for this very closely. It was unusual to have interesting guests at Stonecroft, or even in the village. When they were present it was natural to want to be with them, was the rather vague way she considered it. She had finished the books by noon and, after luncheon, she took her shirts to Mr. Homberly’s room to lighten the tedium of a long day in bed for him. She did not think, as she set the spectacles on her nose, that she had desisted from this act when Dewar was present. Her eyes were tired from the books, she said, when Homberly mentioned her wearing them.
“Didn’t know you needed specs, Miss McCormack,” he said, with a sympathetic glance. “Pity. Ruin a girl’s looks. 'Course you ain’t a young girl any longer.”
“I’m not so old. I’m only twenty-six,” she said, threading her needle.
“Eh? Said you was thirty-nine.”
“I was joking, of course! Don’t tell me you believed it!” she exclaimed, in real chagrin.
“ ‘Course not,” he answered readily. “Certainly didn’t look a day over thirty anyway, till you put them specs on.”
“Thank you. Did you pass a comfortable night?”
“Very. The chicken was dandy. Could have handled two legs. Bowl of smash wouldn’t have gone amiss either. Cake was nice—a good big piece.”
“What exactly is smash?” she asked him.
“Why, turnips boiled and smashed up.”
“I’ll see if Cook has any turnips,” she promised. For an hour they talked the greatest foolishness. Then she went to get
wine for them, and was introduced into the intricacies of chewing and finding descriptive phrases to indicate her expertise. Mr. Homberly had long since run out of materials and people to compare the wine to, and had switched to his own area of interest, horses.
“Don’t like to run down your uncle’s cellars, Miss McCormack, but this brew is a very commoner,” he said sadly. “Next thing to a job horse.”
“A very jade,” she agreed. She induced him to practice his few play lines by lavishing praise on his execution. This done, he sent Roper off for cards, and introduced her to the fine art of spotting a Captain Sharp, bent on cheating her at cards. As this diversion had all the charm of novelty, she promised she would return for another lesson. “Meanwhile I shall just finish up these few shirts.”
“What is that you’re always working at?” he asked, and she explained her chore.
“Feel dashed sorry for orphans. Tell you what, Miss Holly, I mean to help you.” She had become Holly during the visit, and occasionally Miss Holly.
“Do you know how to sew?” she asked, only a little surprised, for nothing about this bizarre gentleman could shock her.
“Sew? Not in the least. Don’t know one end of a needle from t’other. That is to say—know one’s sharp—well, know t’other has a hole in it if it comes to that. Know quite a bit about needles, really, but don’t know how to use them. No, I’d like to help the little orphans out. Give them a treat. Some sugarplums, or what have you. Plumcake would be nice, or ices. Except the ices would go down better in the summer.”
“If you want to help, Mr. Homberly...”
“Call me Rex. My friends do.”
“Yes, Rex—there is a better way to help.”
“Anything you say. Up to a pony. Can spare twenty-five pounds very easily.”
“That is generous of you!”
“Ain’t poor. Own an abbey. Don’t have a title of course, but own an abbey, with lots of lands and cows and all that. Worth a good penny.” This was said in hopes of her relaying it to Jane.
“If you are speaking of such a large sum I would like your permission to spend it all on one child.”
“That so? That’s a lot of sugarplums,” he pointed out. “For one fella, I mean. Make him sick as a dog.”
“I didn’t mean to buy treats. There is one boy who is crippled. He was born with a deformed foot. Our local doctor is trying to help him. He has put a contraption on the boy—screwed his leg into a wooden frame, which is very painful for Billie. Bill McAuley is his name. It doesn’t seem to be doing a bit of good. I would like to have a London surgeon come down and examine Billie. May I use your money for that?”
Rex surreptitiously wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He was too overcome to speak for a moment. “You’re a very nice girl,” he said, and sniffled. “’Pon my word, a very kind-hearted girl. I’ll arrange the money as soon as I’m up and about. For that matter, might as well get up, if Miss Proctor is going to be at the play practices all the time.”
“She’ll soon be home.”
“She ever say anything about me?”
It was hard to tell him she never said anything complimentary or romantic, but at least Jane was not mean. She had never spoken ill of him. It was wrong, on the other hand, to encourage him in what was surely a hopeless passion. “Jane is to go to London in the spring, Rex. I don’t think she would be allowed by her parents to make any connection before that time.”
“Know they want a title for her. Lady Dewar said as much. Don’t think she’ll get Dewar, but then he certainly does admire her. Always saying she’s a perfect Juliet, very sweet—all that. Forever singing her praises.”
“She is very sweet.”
“You’re nice too,” Rex said, and smiled wanly.
When Jane was too busy to drop in on him later that afternoon, but went instead into the village to visit a cousin, Holly began to seem even nicer. She was certainly a remarkably good-natured, generous girl, and had a sense of humour too. Without the spectacles, she was seen to be not a bad-looking girl. Every glass of wine or ale, sporting magazine, bowl of nuts, or plate of toast brought increased her beauty.
A solicitous enquiry for his ‘wounds’ lent her an appealing aura. Till Jane popped in for two minutes before dinner, Holly was fast becoming an incomparable, but the two minutes reversed the decision.
By the time Dewar arrived that evening at eight-thirty, Rex was back in love with Juliet. She had got him a bag of sweets in the village, which was about as strong a declaration as he needed to feel she was his. She had offered voluntarily to fetch the jackstraws too, obviously smitten with him.
He could not quite deduce the reason that she deserted him shortly after Dewar entered the room, unless she was trying to make him jealous. Just got up and walked away, with her sticks scattered all over the counterpane. And he had been letting her win too. Dashed hard to lie stock-still, so as not to disturb them. He lay with his ears stretched to overhear her speech to Dewar. It was hardly of a nature to incite him to blind jealousy.
“We got home from the Abbey in half an hour, now that we are allowed to take the short cut,” was all she said. “Evans was at the window, and actually smiled at us. It’s the first time I have ever seen him smile.”
“I have seen him dance,” Dewar replied. “He leapt from the floor and clicked his heels in the air when I took the new lease for him to sign. He sat in the middle of enough guns to stock an army, oiling and priming them up for action.”
Juliet laughed, while Dewar smiled at her fondly, admiring her young beauty. Holly’s first thought was for Rex. Regarding him, she noticed his jealous distress. The other two began discussing some new interpretation of the play.
“Let me take Jane’s hand and finish the game with you,” Holly offered, going to the bedside. Her fingers had been made dexterous by long stitchery. She neatly extricated a stick that had been wedged at a precarious angle under a whole pile of sticks.
“How’d you do that!” Rex challenged. “That’s impossible!”
“Like this,” she answered, repeating her coup with another jackstraw.
“By Jove, Holly, you’re a witch!” he shouted, startled out of his pique by her accomplishment.
Dewar looked up, startled at such plain speaking.
“Holly is a very dab at spillikins, Mr. Homberly,” Jane warned him.
“Only fair,” Holly asserted. “Rex beat me all hollow at piquet this afternoon, now I shall get my own back from him. I think we must place a wager on this game, and let me win a monkey I owe you from cards this afternoon. Is it a monkey I owe you, Rex, or a pony?”
“Only a pony. Told you, Holly, a pony’s twenty-five pounds, a monkey is five hundred. That is, unless you’re playing with a Hun. To them, it’s five pounds, or sometimes fifty, depending on.... Anyway, it’s five hundred pounds here, and you don’t want to be betting a monkey if it’s a pony you mean.”
“Holly, you were surely not gambling for such stakes!” Jane asked.
“Only in fun. We don’t actually pay, but it is more fun if you bet, Rex says.”
“Tell you what, Holly, I’ll give the blunt to your orphans if I lose. But we’ll be playing for shillings, not pounds.”
“I cannot afford even shillings.”
“You won’t have to. You’re beating the trousers off me.”
“Agreed!” she declared, lifting yet another impossible straw free.
“That moved!” Rex charged, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward.
“It only moved because you jiggled your leg. If you would lie still I could get every stick out. I’ve got the hard ones already.”
“By the living jingo, I didn’t move my leg. Not a muscle.”
“You twitched.”
“Did not.”
“You did so.”
“You calling me a liar?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“ ‘Fraid I must call you out then. Challenge you to a duel.”
“Afraid I must
refuse.”
“Well, you ain’t no gentleman, Holly.”
“And you, sir, are no lady. Oh, go on then, take a turn.”
An inadvertent twitch sent every straw on the counterpane flying, making extrication so easy for his adversary that the game was over.
Dewar and Jane, hovering at their shoulders, hinted they would not refuse an offer to join the game. “Get your own straws,” Rex said bluntly. “Know what you’re up to, Dew. You want to take on Holly. She’s playing with me.”
“We are clearly not wanted,” Jane said, with a little laugh.
This reminded Rex that the lady, at least, was wanted very much indeed but, unfortunately, she came with the gentleman, so that no headway was made in his romance before Roper shoo’d the ladies out the door prior to preparing his master for bed.
“You have billeted yourself on the Proctors long enough,” Dewar decreed. “I’ll send a carriage for you tomorrow morning.”
Rex looked at him long and hard, with his blue eyes protruding from his face. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“I am. Jane will be at the Abbey. You can do nothing to further your suit here all day, and we can both come over in the evening if you wish.”
“No need for you to put yourself out, Dew. Can manage as well without you. Better, in fact.”
“I can relieve you of Miss McCormack’s attention a little—make it easier for you in that way.”
“Not sure I want to be relieved of it. Fact is, half in love with both the ladies. Jane’s prettier; Holly’s nicer. A very nice girl, Holly. I know she likes me, Dew. That’s why I’m in a bit of a pickle, wondering if I should leave. Mean to say, shouldn’t lead her on if I don’t mean to have her and, when Jane is here, I don’t think I do. She’s very sweet on me, Holly. It pains to let me know she’s only twenty-six. Lying actually, I believe. Admitted before she was older, but today she lowered it, after she found out I was twenty-seven myself. And she rushed Jane up older than herself—all a hum. Must be. Not a wrinkle or a crease anywhere on her phiz.”