April Lady

by Джорджетт Хейер

  She was giving Letty an account of the degrading congratulations which had greeted the news of Fanny’s betrothal when she caught sight of Mr. Allandale approaching the house. She at once put her plan into execution, flying with such swift feet down the stairs that she reached the front door considerably in advance of him, and found herself inviting only the ambient air to come in and fear nothing. However, Mr. Allandale soon arrived; and from having rehearsed (though involuntarily) her speech of welcome she was able to improve on it. “I knew you would not fail!” she uttered. “I will lead you to her immediately. Do not fear that you will interrupted! Not a soul knows of your coming! Hush!”

  Mr. Allandale, already surprised to find the front door being held open by one of the daughters of the house, blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “Do not speak so loud!” she admonished him. “The servants must not suspect your presence.”

  “But how is this?” he demanded. “Is not Mrs. Thorne at home?”

  “No, no, you have nothing to fear!” she assured him. “She and my sister are gone into the City. If they should return, you may depend on me to warn you of their approach!”

  “I should not be here,” he said, looking vexed. “It is quite improper for me to be visiting the house in Mrs. Thorne’s absence.”

  She was somewhat daunted by this prosaic attitude, but she made a gallant recover. “This is no time to be considering the proprieties!” she said earnestly. “Your case is now desperate, and strive though she may to support her spirits under this crushing blow, my cousin is in the greatest affliction! You must come to her immediately!”

  The thought of his Letty’s agony made Mr. Allandale turn pale; but still he hung back. “I had not supposed that the assignation was of a clandestine nature,” he said. “I cannot think it right! I assured Lord Cardross that such conduct was repugnant to me, and to be visiting your cousin behind his back, and in such a way, cannot be thought to be the part of a man of honour!”

  None of Selina’s romantic schemes had included a lover who had to be urged into the presence of his inamorata, and could she but have found a substitute to take his place in the drama she would then and there have thrust Mr. Allandale out of the house. But since she knew of no substitute, and was rather doubtful of Letty’s willingness to accept one, she was obliged to make the best of the unpromising material to her hand. “I am persuaded you will not permit such trifling scruples to keep you from Letty’s side!” she said. “Only consider her agitation! She is quite worn down by despair, and I should not wonder at it if her mind were to become wholly overset!”

  Mr. Allandale was but human. The dreadful picture conjured up by these words took from him all power of resistance, and without further argument he followed Selina up the stairs.

  “I have brought him to you, dearest!” announced Selina, throwing open the door into the drawing-room.

  Mr. Allandale’s afflicted love, who had been trying the effect of a slightly different tilt to her fetching new hat, turned away from the look-glass, and showed him a countenance glowing with health and beauty. “Thank goodness you are come!” she said. “I have been quite in a worry, thinking that perhaps you might not be able to. To be sure, I should have known that you would contrive it by some means or other. Dear Jeremy!”

  Selina could have improved upon this speech, but she had no fault to find with the way in which Letty cast herself upon Mr. Allandale’s broad bosom, and flung both arms about his neck. This was a spectacle which might well have impelled Cardross to have consigned his ward to a strict seminary for young ladies of quality, but it afforded Selina intense, if vicarious, gratification. Lingering for long enough to see that Mr. Allandale, his propriety notwithstanding, was returning this artless embrace with a fervour that made Letty squeak, and protest that he was crushing her ribs, she withdrew reluctantly, to take up a post of vantage on the half-landing.

  Mr. Allandale, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder, was relieved to see that she had left the room. Relaxing his hold on Letty, he said seriously: “You know, my love, this is not at all the thing! That cousin of yours—!”

  “Oh, do not mind her!” Letty said. “She will never betray us!”

  “No, but for a girl of her age—why, she is not yet out, I believe! It is very shocking.”

  “Fiddle!” said Letty, drawing him to the sofa, and sitting down beside him there. “We have so much to discuss, Jeremy! This dreadful news which you sent me! Six weeks! Oh, dearest, pray tell them you won’t go!”

  Mr. Allandale was by this time pretty well acquainted with his love, but this ingenuous plea startled him. “Not go! But, my sweetest life—!”

  “It is too soon!” she urged. “If you are to sail in six weeks’ time, only consider the difficulties that confront us! I have the most melancholy persuasion that I can never, in so short a time, prevail upon Giles to consent to our marriage.”

  He possessed himself of her hands, and sat holding them in a close grasp. “Letty, you will never prevail upon him to do so,” he said heavily.

  She stared at him, her eyes round in astonishment. “‘Never? Oh, how absurd! Of course I shall! It is merely that this comes so suddenly, before he has grown accustomed to the notion, you know!”

  He shook his head. “He will do everything that lies within his power to prevent our marriage. I have been as sure as a man may be of that ever since the day I called in Grosvenor Square. Nor can I blame him. From the worldly standpoint—”

  “Well, I can blame him!” Letty interrupted, her eyes flashing, and her colour considerably heightened. “If I do not care a fig for worldly considerations I am sure he need not! And if my happiness means so little to him I shall think myself perfectly justified in marrying you in despite of anything he may say!”

  He got up, and began to pace about the room, kneading one fist into the palm of his other hand. “If it were only possible! I do not know but what, with this appointment and my prospects, which I do not scruple to say are excellent, I too should think myself justified—But it is to no purpose! Circumstances have placed us wholly in his power.”

  “What?” cried Letty. “No such thing! I am not in anyone’s power, and I hope you are not either!”

  “You are under age,” he said gloomily.

  “Oh, well, yes!” she conceded. “But if we were to be married he would be obliged to countenance it, because he would dislike excessively to make a scandal.”

  He was silent for a moment. When he did speak it was in a voice of deep mortification, and as though the words were forced from him. “In his power—because I am unable to support a wife. That is what renders my position so hopeless!”

  “I would try not to be expensive,” offered Letty.

  He threw her a warm look, but said: “You are used to enjoy the elegancies of life. As my affairs now stand I cannot even offer you its comforts. To remove you from the protection of your brother only to place you in a situation where you would be obliged to practise the most stringent economy would be the action of a scoundrel! I must not—indeed, I will not do it!”

  “No, for I don’t think I could practise stringent economies,” agreed Letty, considering the matter in an impartial spirit. “But we could live upon my expectations, couldn’t we?”

  “Borrow on your expectations? No!—a thousand times no!” declared Mr. Allandale, with every evidence of repulsion.

  “Well, it is what Nell’s brother does,” argued Letty. “I don’t know precisely how he contrives to do it, but if he can I am persuaded I could too, for mine are much better than his, you know.”

  “Put it out of your mind!” begged Mr. Allandale, blanching visibly at the appalling vision of debt conjured up by her artless suggestion. “Nothing shall prevail upon me to take Lord Dysart for my model!”

  “No, very true!!” she replied, recalling his lordship’s unamiable behaviour. “I am sure he is the most ramshackle person—besides being excessively disagreeable! Only what is to be d
one, if you don’t think my allowance sufficient? I have five hundred pounds a year, you know, and I need spend very little of it on my dresses, because I have a great many already.” She stopped, and her eyes brightened. “Yes, and besides that I have suddenly had an excellent notion! I can very well buy hundreds of ells of silk, and muslin, and cambric—enough to set me up for years, I daresay—and tell all the mercers to send their bills to Giles!”

  “Good God!” ejaculated Mr. Allandale, pausing in his perambulations to gaze upon her with starting eyes.

  She perceived that her suggestion had not found favour. “You don’t think that is what I should do? But consider, Jeremy! Even if he refused to pay—and I don’t think that in the least likely—they couldn’t dun me, because I should be in South America, and so all would be well.”

  It spoke volumes for the depth of Mr. Allandale’s love that after the first stunned moment he recovered from an involuntary recoil, and realized that this ingenious solution to their difficulties arose not from depravity but from a vast and touching innocence. “That,” he said gently, “would be dishonest, my dearest.”

  “Oh!” said Letty.

  It was plain that she was unconvinced. Mr. Allandale was aware that it behoved him to bring her to a more proper frame of mind, but he felt, at this present, unequal to the task, and merely said: “Besides, if I were to marry you out of hand there can be little doubt that Cardross would discontinue your allowance.”

  She was quite incredulous. “No! He would not be so shabby!”

  “He warned me that your fortune remains in his hands until you attain the age of twenty-five. How much of its income you may enjoy is at his discretion. I could not mistake his meaning.”

  “Twenty-five?” gasped Letty. “Oh, of all the infamous things! Why, I shall be quite old! I declare I am excessively thankful that I can’t remember my papa, for if he served me such a trick as that he must have been a most detestable man! You would think he meant Giles to chouse me out of my inheritance!”

  “No, there is no question of such a thing as that,” said Mr. Allandale painstakingly. “It is only—”

  “Well, I don’t mean to be worsted by either of them, and so I promise you!” Letty said briskly. “Depend upon it, I shall hit upon a way of bringing Giles about. But I must own, love, that it makes it very hard if you must sail so soon. Jeremy, pray do not!”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “I could not refuse such an adventitious appointment! You would not have me do so.”

  “Oh, no! Not refuse it, but could you not tell them that it is not perfectly convenient to you to go to Brazil so soon? Tell them that you will go in three months! I am persuaded we shall have come about by then.”

  This drew a slight, melancholy smile from him, but he shook his head. “No, indeed I could not do such a thing! Consider, dearest, how unwise in me it would be to offend my kind patron! I owe this advancement to Lord Roxwell, you know, and to give the least appearance of ingratitude—”

  “I have been thinking about that,” she interrupted. “I daresay he was anxious to oblige you, only the thing is that he has quite mistaken the matter.”

  “How so?” he demanded, looking bewildered. “He was good enough to say that he had my advancement very much to heart, certainly. I believe I told you that he held my father in great affection.”

  “Yes, you did, and it has given me a very good notion. You must go to him instantly, and tell him that you would prefer to be made ambassador!”

  “Tell him that I would prefer to be made ambassador?” repeated Mr. Allandale, in a bemused voice.

  “In a very civil way, of course,” she urged, seeing that her notion was not having that success with him which it deserved. “You could say that now you have had time to consider the matter you feel that it would be better if you became an ambassador; or—But you will know just how to say it in an unexceptionable way!”

  “No!” said Mr. Allandale, with a good deal of conviction. “I do not know! My dearest life, you don’t know—you have not the least conception—! It will be many years before I can hope to be so elevated. As for asking Lord Roxwell—Good God!”

  “Should you prefer it if I were to ask him?” enquired Letty. “I am not particularly acquainted with him, but Giles knows him, and we meet him for ever at parties.”

  Mr. Allandale sat down again beside her, and grasped both her hands. “Letty, promise me you will do no such thing!” he begged. “It is not to be thought of! Believe me, it would be quite disastrous!”

  “Would it? Then I won’t, of course, and I expect it will answer best for you to approach him, after all,” said Letty sunnily. “The only thing is that perhaps you might not like to tell him that you would make an excellent ambassador, while for me there could be nothing easier.”

  Much moved, Mr. Allandale pressed several kisses on to her hands, ejaculating in a thickened voice: “So sweet! so innocent! Alas, no, my love! it cannot be! I must be content with what is offered to me—and, indeed, it is more than ever I expected!”

  “Well, I am sure it is not more than you deserve,” said Letty warmly. “However, if you believe it would be useless to apply to Lord Roxwell, I won’t tease you. We must think of some other scheme.”

  She spoke with optimism, but Mr. Allandale sighed. “I wish we might! But my thoughts lead me only to the melancholy necessity of waiting. If your present allowance were secured to you I should be tempted indeed, though I trust I should find the strength to withstand the impulse of my heart. Situated as we both are—you dependent upon your brother’s caprice, I with such charges upon my purse as I cannot but consider sacred—our case is hopeless. One of my sisters is on the point (I hope) of contracting an eligible marriage; my uncle has always promised to present Philip to a living, as soon as he shall have been inducted into Holy Orders, which, I trust, will be this year; but Edward is still at school, and Tom must be sent to join him in September. I could not reconcile it with my conscience, love, to leave my widowed parent to bear, without assistance, these heavy charges.”

  Letty agreed to this, but without enthusiasm. She ventured to say: “You don’t feel that perhaps Tom would as lief not go to school?”

  Mr. Allandale dismissed unhesitatingly a tentative suggestion which would have won for Letty her future brother-in-law’s esteem and approval.

  “Perhaps your uncle would pay for Tom?”

  He shook his head. “I fear—You must know that he has himself a numerous progeny, and has, besides, been responsible for a part of Philip’s education. Philip is his godson, but it would not be right to expect him to provide for Edward or Tom.”

  A depressed silence fell. Mr. Allandale broke it, saying with a praiseworthy attempt to speak cheerfully: “We must be patient. It will be very hard, but we shall have the future to look forward to. Cardross has said that if we are of the same two minds when I return from Brazil he will not then withhold his consent. I believe him to be a man of his word; and that thought, that hope, will help us to bear with fortitude our separation. I do not consider him unfeeling, and I trust he will not forbid us to correspond with each other.”

  “He may forbid it if he chooses, but I shall pay not the least heed!” declared Letty, her voice trembling. “Only I am not a good hand at letter-writing, and I don’t wish to correspond with you! I wish to be with you! Oh, don’t talk of our being separated, Jeremy! I can’t bear it, and I won’t bear it! Cardross must and shall continue to pay my allowance!”

  He could not feel hopeful; nor did he think well of a scheme for Cardross’s subjection which depended for its success on her ability to bring herself to the brink of a decline by refusing to let a morsel of food pass her lips. Letty then broke into a passion of weeping, and by the time he had soothed and petted her into a calmer state he was obliged to tear himself from her side. His haggard countenance, when he emerged from the drawing-room, did much to restore Selina’s good opinion of him; and when she found her cousin still hiccupping on convulsive
sobs she felt that matters were progressing just as they should. It now only remained for Letty to suffer abominable persecution at the hands of her cruel guardian.

  “Well, I had as lief not be persecuted, I thank you!” said Letty crossly. “Besides, he is persecuting me!”

  “Not enough!” declared Selina positively. “Do you think, if you threatened to run away, that he would lock you in an attic at the top of the house?”

  “No, of course he wouldn’t, you silly creature!”

  “They do in general,” argued Selina. “If only you could prevail upon him to, you could throw a note down from the window to me, and I would instantly deliver it to Mr. Allandale. He would feel himself bound to rescue you, and then you could fly to the border.”

  “That only happens in novels,” said Letty scornfully. “I should like to know how Jeremy could possibly rescue me! Why, he could not even enter the house without knocking on the door, and what, pray, would you have him say to the porter?”