‘Hetty!’ she said, opening her eyes at him.
‘I certainly do not forget my cousin, Mama, but in what way my embarrassments can be thought to concern her I have not the remotest conjecture!’ said his lordship. A dreadful thought flashed into his mind; he said quickly: ‘You are not trying to tell me, ma’am, that my cousin’s fortune has been used to—No, no, impossible! She is still under age, and cannot have been allowed—There was another trustee besides my father, after all! Old Ossett could never have countenanced such a thing!’
‘Nothing of the sort!’ said her ladyship. ‘And I must say, Alan, that I wonder at your supposing that I would entertain such a notion, except, of course, under such circumstances as must render it entirely proper! My own niece! I might almost say my daughter,for I am sure she is as dear to me as Trix!’
Mr Thimbleby, who had been unobtrusively engaged in putting up his papers, now judged it to be time to withdraw from a discussion which was not progressing according to hopeful expectation. The Viscount, beyond reminding him rather sharply that he should require his attendance upon the morrow, made no objection to his bowing himself out of the room, but began to pace about the floor, his brow furrowed, and his lips compressed as though to force back unwise speech.
His parent said sympathetically: ‘I was afraid you would be a trifle shocked, dearest. It was hazard, of course. I knew no good would come of it when poor Papa forsook faro, at which he had always been so fortunate!’
The Viscount halted, and said with careful self-control: ‘Mama, have you realized that to win free from this mountain of debt I must sell some—perhaps all!—of the unentailed property? When I learned that my father had left everything to me, making not the least provision for Timothy or for Trix, I own I was astonished! I see now why he did so, but how I am to provide for them I know not! Ma’am, you have been talking ever since my arrival of the ball you are giving in honour of this Grandduchess of yours, of the drawing-room at which you mean to present my sister, but have you realized that there is no money to pay for these things?’
‘Good gracious, Alan, you should realize that if I do not?’ exclaimed her ladyship. ‘I declare I can scarcely recall when I was last able to pay a bill, and the tiresome thing is that there are now so many of them in that drawer in my desk that I can’t open it!’
‘For God’s sake, Mama, how have you contrived to continue living in this style?’ demanded the Viscount.
‘Oh, well, my love, upon credit! Everyone has been most obliging!’
‘Merciful heavens!’ muttered the Viscount ‘What credit, ma’am?’
‘But, Alan, they all guess that you are going to marry dear Hetty, and they know her fortune to be immense!’
‘O my God!’ said the Viscount, and strode over to the window. ‘So that’s it, is it?’
Lady Allerton regarded his straight back in some dismay. ‘It has always been an understood thing!’ she faltered.
‘Nonsense!’
‘But it was my dear brother’s wish!’
‘It can scarcely have been his wish that his daughter should be married to an impoverished—fortune-hunter!’ said the Viscount bitterly. ‘And it must be very far from Sir John Ossett’s wish!’
‘Now there you are out!’ said her ladyship triumphantly. ‘Sir John will raise not the smallest objection to the match, for he has told me so! He knows it is what my brother intended, and, what is more, he has a great regard for you, my love!’
‘I am obliged to him!’
‘Alan!’ ejaculated her ladyship. ‘You—you have not formed an attachment for another?’
‘No!’
‘No, I was persuaded—Dearest, I thought—Of course, she was very young when you went away, but it did seem to me—’
‘Mama,’ he interrupted, “whatever my sentiments, you cannot have supposed it possible that I would offer for my cousin in my present circumstances!’
‘But it seems just the moment!’ protested his mother. ‘Besides, she expects it!’
He wheeled about. ‘Expects it?’
‘Yes, I assure you she does! Dearest Hetty! If she could have done it, she would have bestowed her entire fortune on me! I never knew a better-hearted girl, never!’
‘Oh, good God, then that is why she is now so shy of me!’ said the Viscount ‘My poor little cousin! How could you let her think it was her duty to marry me, Mama? It is infamous! Have you kept her shut away from the world in case she should meet a more eligible suitor than ever I can be?’
‘No, I have not!’ replied Lady Allerton, affronted. ‘I brought her out two years ago, and she has had a great many suitors, and has refused them all! She is a very well-behaved girl, and would never dream of marrying to disoblige me!’
‘She has been shamefully used!’ he said.
2
The object of the Viscount’s pity, Miss Henrietta Clitheroe, was at the moment seated in a small saloon at the back of the house, studying, with her young cousin, the latest issue of La Belle Assemblée, and endeavouring to convince Miss Allerton that a dress of gauze worn over a damped and transparent petticoat was a toilette scarcely designed to advance her in the good graces of those august members of the ton who were pledged to appear at her mama’s party given in honour of the Grandduchess Catherine of Oldenburg. This was not a circumstance which weighed with Miss Allerton, who, at seventeen, was thought by the censorious to have been born for the express purpose of driving her mother into her grave by the outrageous nature of her pranks; but she knew that she would never be permitted to wear such a dress, and so allowed herself to be distracted by the picture of a damsel arrayed in white satin embellished with rose-buds and love-knots.
She was just saying, though disconsolately, that she supposed it was quite a pretty dress, when the Viscount came into the room, and, still holding the door, said: ‘The latest fashions? Am I very much in the way, or may I have a word with you, cousin?’
The colour flooded Henrietta’s cheeks; she stammered: ‘Oh no! I mean, to be sure you may, Alan!’
Miss Allerton, unwontedly meek, obeyed the command contained in the jerk of his lordship’s head, and tripped out of the room. The Viscount shut the door, and turned to look across the saloon at his cousin. Her colour rose higher still, and she pretended to search for something in the litter of objects on the table.
‘Henry. . .’ the Viscount said.
She looked up at that, a little shy smile on her lips. ‘Oh, Alan, no one has called me that since you went away! How nice it sounds!’
He returned the smile, although with an effort. ‘Does it? You will always be Henry to me, you know.’ He paused; and then said with a good deal of constraint: ‘I have been with my mother and with Thimbleby for the past hour. What I have learnt from them has made me feel that I must speak to you immediately.’
‘Oh—oh, yes?’ said Henrietta.
‘Yes. I think I was never more shocked in my life than when I realized—’ He broke off, conscious of the awkwardness of his situation. His own colour rose; he said with a rueful laugh: ‘The devil! I’m as tongue-tied as a schoolboy! Henry, I only wanted to say—I’m not going to offer for you!’
The flush in Henrietta’s cheeks began to ebb. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘N-not going to offer for me?’
He came towards her, and took her hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. ‘Of course I am not! How could you think I would do so, you foolish Henry? You have been made to believe that you were in some way promised to me, haven’t you? Some absurd talk of what your father desired—of what you owed to my family. Well, you owe us nothing, my dearest cousin! It is rather we who owe you a great debt. You have been our—most beloved sister—ever since you came to live with us. I am ashamed that it should ever have been suggested to you that it is your duty to marry me: it is no such thing! You are free to marry whom you please.’
This did not, at the moment, appear likely to the heiress. She disengaged her hands. ‘Am—am I?’
‘Indeed you a
re!’ With an attempt at lightness, he added: ‘Unless you choose someone quite ineligible! I warn you, I should do what I could to prevent that, Henry!’
She managed to smile. ‘I should be obliged to elope, then, should I not? I—I am glad you have been so frank with me. Now we can be comfortable again!’
‘My poor girl!’ he said quickly. ‘If only you had told me what was in the wind—! There was never a hint in any of your letters. I would have set your mind at rest months ago! No: you could not, of course!’
She turned away, and began to tidy the litter on the table. She said, in a voice that did not sound to her ears quite like her own: ‘I own, I had as lief not be married for my fortune!’ He returned no answer; after a pause, she added: ‘Are your affairs in very bad case, Alan?’
‘Not so bad that I shall not be able, with time and good management, to set them to rights, I hope,’ he replied. ‘I could wish that my mother had not chosen, at this moment, to entertain upon so lavish a scale. I suppose nothing can be done about this party for the Russian woman, but for the rest—the White’s Ball, Trix’s presentation—’
‘Good God, do not tell my aunt she must postpone that! exclaimed Henrietta. ‘If she is obliged to wait another year, Trix will very likely run off with a handsome Ensign!’ She saw the startled look on his face, and added: ‘You don’t yet know her, Alan!’
‘My dear Henry, at seventeen she can hardly be thinking of marriage, surely!’
‘The last man she fell in love with was young Stillington,’ said Henrietta thoughtfully. ‘To be sure, he was better than that actor she saw in Cheltenham, but still quite ineligible of course. Fortunately, her mind was diverted by the plans for her first season.’
‘It is time Trix was broke to bridle!’ said his lordship roundly. He then favoured his cousin with a few animadversions upon the conduct of his lively young sister, and left her to her reflections.
These were not for many moments concerned with the almost inevitable clash between brother and sister. They led Henrietta to the mirror, and caused her to stare long at her own image.
It should have comforted her. Dark ringlets framed a charming countenance in which two speaking eyes of blue became gradually filled with tears that obscured her vision of a short, straight nose, a provocative upper lip, and an elusive dimple. These attributes had apparently failed to captivate the Viscount. The heiress uttered a strangled sob, and dabbed resolutely at her eyes, realizing that she would shortly be obliged to confront Miss Allerton, agog to know whether the date of her wedding had been fixed.
Nor was she mistaken. In a very few minutes, Trix peeped into the room, and, finding her cousin alone, at once demanded to be told what Alan had said to her.
Henrietta replied in the most cheerful of accents: ‘I am so much relieved! He does not wish to marry me at all!’
Trix, shocked by these tidings, could only stare at her.
‘You may imagine how happy he has made me!’ continued Henrietta glibly. ‘Had he desired it, I must have thought it my duty to marry him, but he has set my mind at rest on this head, and now I can be easy again!’
‘But you have loved him for years!’ Trix blurted out.
‘Indeed I have!’ said Henrietta cordially. ‘I am sure I always shall!’
‘Hetty! When you have been writing to him for ever!’
‘Pray, what has that to say to anything? To me, he is the elder brother I never had.’
‘Hetty, what a hum! He is my brother, and I never wrote to him above twice in my life!’
Before Henrietta could reply suitably to this, they were joined by a willowy young gentleman in whom only the very stupid could have failed to recognize a Pink of the Ton. From the tip of his pomaded head to the soles of his dazzling Hessians, the Honourable Timothy Allerton was beautiful to behold. He was generally supposed to care for nothing but the fashion of his neckcloth, but he showed unmistakable signs of caring for the news which his sister broke to him. ‘Not going to offer for Hetty?’ he repeated, aghast. ‘Well, upon my soul! Well, what I mean is, might think what’s due to the rest of us! Mind, I don’t say I’m surprised he don’t like it above half, but the thing is he’s the head of the family, and he dashed well ought to do it! What’s more,’ he said, his amiable countenance darkening, ‘if he thinks he can make me offer for her he’ll find he’s devilish mistaken! It ain’t that I don’t like you, Hetty,’ he added kindly, ‘because I do, but that’s coming it a trifle too strong!’
3
If the Viscount had harboured doubts of his mother’s veracity, these were speedily dispelled. His cousin, far from having been kept in seclusion, seemed to him to be acquainted with all the eligible bachelors upon the town, and with far too many of those whom he did not hesitate to stigmatize as gazetted fortune-hunters. She dispensed her favours impartially amongst these gentlemen, whirled about town under the chaperonage of various not wholly disinterested matrons, and in general conducted herself with such frivolity that her perturbed aunt said that she had never known her to be in such, a flow of spirits. She raised hopes in a dozen breasts, but the only suitor for whom she betrayed the smallest partiality was Sir Matthew Kirkham; and it was absurd to suppose (as Lady Allerton assured Alan) that a girl with as much good sense as Hetty would for an instant entertain the pretensions of a penniless roué, past his first youth, and with at least two unsavoury scandals attached to his name.
Alan could place no such dependence on his cousin’s good sense. It was rarely that he took a dislike to anyone, but he took a quite violent dislike to Sir Matthew, and warned Henrietta to give the fellow no encouragement: an exercise of cousinly privilege which had no other effect than to cause her to wear Sir Matthew’s flowers at the Opera House that very evening.
He was brought to realize that however obnoxious Kirkham might appear in the eyes of his fellow-men he possessed considerable charm for the ladies: Trix told him so. Trix listened with interest to his trenchantly expressed opinion of Sir Matthew, and then disgusted him by talking of the fellow’s polished manners, and of the distinguishing attentions he had for so long bestowed upon Hetty.
Sir Matthew was not one of the two hundred guests invited to have the honour of being presented to the Tsar’s sister. This lady had arrived in England some time before the various Kings, Princes, Generals, and Diplomats who were coming to take part in the grand Peace celebrations, and was putting up at the Pulteney Hotel. She was neither beautiful nor particularly amiable, but she was being much courted, and had already created a mild sensation by being rude to the Prince Regent, and by parading the town in enormous coal-scuttle bonnets, which instantly became the rage. Trix, giggling over the story of her having abruptly left the party at Carlton House just as soon as the expensive orchestra provided for her entertainment had struck up, because (she said) music made her want to vomit, prophesied that her departure from Lady Allerton’s ball would be equally speedy; but Lady Allerton, well-acquainted with the Grandduchess, said, No: she only behaved like that when she wished to be disagreeable.
Trix was not to appear at the ball either. The Viscount had told her that with all the will in the world to do so he was unable at present to find the funds which would enable his mama to launch her into society; and Lady Allerton’s sense of propriety was too nice to allow of her consenting to let her daughter attend a ball of such importance before she was out.
Trix bore her disappointment surprisingly well, neither arguing with Alan nor reproaching him. Touched by her restraint, he promised her a magnificent début the following spring, if he had to sell every available acre to achieve it. She thanked him, and said that she had made up her mind to help him in his difficulties.
Such unprecedented docility ought to have alarmed Henrietta, but Henrietta was too much occupied with her own affairs to notice it. It was not until the very evening of the ball, when Trix helped her, in the most selfless way, to array herself in all the elegance of primrose satin and pale green gauze, that it occurred to her that t
his saintly conduct was as suspicious as it was unusual. But Trix, looking the picture of hurt innocence, assured her that she had no intention of perpetrating some shocking practical joke, and she was obliged to be satisfied. Trix embraced her with great fondness, and she went away to join Lady Allerton feeling that she had misjudged her wayward cousin.
In this belief she continued until midnight, when she suffered a rude disillusionment.
4
Mr Allerton, seizing a respite from his conscientious labours on the floor, stood in the doorway of the ballroom, and delicately wiped his brow. The May night was very warm, and although the long windows stood open scarcely a breath of wind stirred the curtains which masked them, and the heat from the hundreds of wax candles burning in the wall-sconces and in the huge crystal chandelier which hung from the ceiling was making not only the flowers wilt, but every gentleman’s starched shirt-points as well. But this was a small matter. Mr Allerton, a captious critic, was well-satisfied with the success of the ball. Every domestic detail had been perfectly arranged; his mother did him the greatest credit in a robe of sapphire satin lavishly trimmed with broad lace; his cousin was in quite her best looks; and even his brother, although dressed by a military tailor, did not disgrace him. The Grandduchess was in high good humour; besides the flower of the ton, two of the Royal Dukes were lending lustre to the evening; and, to set the final cachet upon a brilliant function, the great Mr Brummell himself was present.
These agreeable reflections were interrupted. A hand grasped Mr Allerton’s wrist, and his cousin’s voice said urgently in his ear: ‘Timothy, come quickly to my aunt’s dressing-room! I must speak to you alone!’
A horrible premonition that the champagne had run out and the ice melted away seized Mr Allerton. But the news which Henrietta had to impart to him had nothing to do with domestic arrangements. She was clutching in one hand a sheet of writing-paper, with part of the wafer that had sealed it still sticking to its edge, and this she dumbly proffered. Mr Allerton took it, and mechanically lifted his quizzing-glass to his eye. ‘What the deuce—?’ he demanded. ‘Lord, I can’t read this scrawl! What is it?’
Pistols For Two and Other Stories Page 11