It contained only one occupant: a lady, writing at a small desk, placed at right-angles to the window. She looked round quickly, directing at Alverstoke a gaze that was at once surprised and appraising. He saw that she was quite young: probably some three- or four-and-twenty years of age: her person well-formed; and her countenance distinguished by a pair of candid gray eyes, a somewhat masterful little nose, and a very firm mouth and chin. Her hair, which was of a light brown, was becomingly braided à la Didon; and her gown, which she wore under a striped dress-spencer, was of fine cambric, made high to the throat, and ornamented round the hem with double trimming. Alverstoke, no stranger to the niceties of feminine apparel, saw at a glance that while this toilette was in the established mode it was neither dashing nor expensive. No one would describe it as up to the nines; but, on the other hand, no one would stigmatise the lady as a dowd. She wore her simple dress with an air; and she was as neat as wax.
She was also perfectly composed: a circumstance which made Alverstoke wonder whether she was older than he had at first supposed. Since young, unmarried ladies did not commonly receive male visitors, it would have been natural for her to have been a trifle flustered by the entrance of a strange gentleman, but she seemed to be as unperturbed by this as by his cool scrutiny. So far from blushing, or lowering her eyes, she betrayed not the smallest sign of maidenly confusion, but looked him over thoughtfully, and (as he realised, with amusement) extremely critically.
He moved forward, in his graceful, unhurried way. ‘Have I the honour of addressing Miss Merriville?’ he enquired.
She got up, and came to meet him, holding out her hand. ‘Yes, I’m Miss Merriville. How do you do? Pray forgive me! – I wasn’t expecting this visit, you see.’
‘Then pray forgive me! I was under the impression that you desired me to visit you.’
‘Yes, but I had quite given up expecting you to call. Which didn’t surprise me, because I daresay you thought it a tiresome imposition, besides being, perhaps, much too coming!’
‘Not at all,’ he murmured, at his most languid.
‘Well, I’m afraid it was. The thing is that from having lived all my life in Herefordshire I am not yet perfectly acquainted with London customs.’ An engaging twinkle lit her eyes; she added confidingly: ‘You can have no notion of how very hard it is to conform to propriety, when one has been – you may say – the mistress of the house for years and years!’
‘On the contrary!’ he responded promptly. ‘I’ve every notion of it!’
She laughed. ‘No, have you? Then perhaps it won’t be so difficult to explain to you why I – why I solicited the favour of your visit!’
‘What an admirable phrase!’ he commented. ‘Did you commit it to memory? I thought that your – solicitation – was, rather, a summons!’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Miss Merriville, stricken. ‘And I took such pains not to appear to be a managing female!’
‘Are you one?’
‘Yes, but how could I help it? I must tell you how it comes about that – But, pray, won’t you be seated?’
He bowed slightly, and moved towards a chair on one side of the fireplace. She sat down opposite him, and, after surveying him for a moment, rather doubtfully, said: ‘I did mean to explain it all to you in my letter, but I made such a bumble-bath of it – as my brother, Harry, would say – that in the end I thought it would be better if I could contrive to meet you, and talk to you! At the outset, I hadn’t any intention of applying to any of Papa’s relations, thinking that my Aunt Scrabster would be able to do all that I wanted. Which just shows how ignorant I was, to be so taken-in! She is the eldest of my mother’s sisters, and she never wrote to us but what she prated of the modish life she led, and how much she wished she could present my sister and me into polite circles.’
‘Secure in the belief that she would never be called upon to make good her words?’
‘Exactly so!’ said Miss Merriville, bestowing a warm smile upon him. ‘Not that I think she could have done so, because my uncle’s fortune derives from Trade. He is an East India merchant, and, although perfectly respectable, not tonnish. That is why, finding myself quite beside the bridge, I was obliged to overcome my scruples, and to cast about in my mind for the one of Papa’s family who would best answer the purpose.’
‘And what was it that led your fancy to alight on me?’ asked his lordship, a cynical curl to his lips.
She replied readily: ‘Oh, it wasn’t my fancy! It was just commonsense! One reason was that Papa was used to say that you were the best of his relations. Though, from anything I ever heard,’ she added, ‘that wasn’t praising you to the skies! I’ve never met any of the Merriville cousins, or my two Merriville aunts, for Papa, you must know, was cast off by his whole family when he was so disobliging as to marry my mother instead of the great heiress they had found for him. So I sincerely trust I shall never meet them. And as to applying to them for any assistance whatsoever, no!’ She paused, considering the matter with a darkling look, before adding: ‘Besides, they could none of them render me the assistance I need, because they seem to be a very dull, dowdy set of people who almost never come to London, on account of not approving of modern manners. Which was another reason for choosing you.’
He raised his brows. ‘What made you think I don’t disapprove of modern manners?’
‘Nothing. I mean, I didn’t know anything about you, but that wasn’t it! Not but what I can see for myself that you are very fashionable – or so it seems to me?’ she said, on a note of interrogation.
‘Thank you! I – er – contrive to pass myself off with credit, I hope.’
‘Yes, and, what is more important, you move in the first circles. That was my other reason for choosing you,’ she disclosed, with another of her friendly smiles.
‘Was it indeed! To what end? Or can I guess?’
‘Well, I should think you might, for you don’t look to be at all stupid – though I own I had expected you to be older. It’s a great pity that you aren’t. However, it can’t be helped, and I daresay you are old enough to be of use.’
‘I am seven-and-thirty, ma’am,’ said Alverstoke, somewhat acidly, ‘and I should perhaps inform you that I am never of use to anyone!’
She gazed at him in astonishment. ‘Never? But why not?’
He shrugged. ‘Pure selfishness, ma’am, coupled with a dislike of being bored.’
She looked a little anxiously at him. ‘Would it bore you very much to present me to Lady Alverstoke? And to ask her if she would be so obliging as to lend me her aid?’
‘Possibly not, but the question doesn’t arise: my mother died many years ago.’
‘No, no, I meant your wife!’
‘I am not married.’
‘Not?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, how vexatious!’
‘Disobliging of me, isn’t it?’ he said sympathetically.
‘Well, no, not disobliging, precisely, because you couldn’t know that I wished you had been,’ she said, very kindly exonerating him.
He replied sardonically: ‘I collect that if I had known it you would have expected me to rectify the matter?’
She coloured, fixing her eyes anxiously on his face. ‘Oh, pray don’t take an affront into your head!’ she begged. ‘I didn’t mean to be brassy, and I daresay we can contrive well enough without your wife, if we set our minds to it.’
‘We?’
He spoke with quelling hauteur, but his mouth twitched in spite of himself, and under their lazy lids his eyes glinted. These signs were not lost on Miss Merriville. She heaved a sigh of relief, and said disarmingly: ‘Thank goodness! I thought I had put you out of temper! And I must own that I can’t blame you for being provoked, for I am making a shocking mull of it. And I quite thought it would be easy to explain the circumstances to you, if only I could meet you face to face!’
‘Well, what are the circumstances, ma’am?’
She was silent for a moment or two, not, as was evident from her thoughtful
expression, from embarrassment, but from consideration of how best to present her case. ‘You may say, I suppose, that they arose from my father’s death, a year ago.That isn’t to say that I hadn’t thought about the matter before, because I had; but while he was alive there seemed to be nothing I could do.’
‘I am very sorry to learn that your father is dead,’ he interjected, ‘but I must take this opportunity of informing you that my acquaintance with him was of the slightest. As for the relationship between us, I had rather have called it a connection merely. It derives from my grandmother’s family, and is, as far as my memory serves me, so remote as to be almost negligible.’
‘But Papa was used to speak of you as his cousin!’ she objected. He offered no comment; and after a short pause, she said: ‘Yes, and I know we meet somewhere, because I’ve seen your name on the family tree which is in the big Bible at home.’
‘Only through two marriages,’ he answered discouragingly.
‘I see. You don’t wish to recognise us, do you? Then there isn’t the least occasion for me to explain our situation to you. I beg your pardon for having put you to the trouble of visiting me.’
At these words, the Marquis, who had had every intention of bringing the interview to a summary end, irrationally chose to prolong it. Whether he relented because Miss Merriville amused him, or because the novelty of having one of his rebuffs accepted without demur intrigued him remained undecided, even in his own mind. But however it may have been he laughed suddenly, and said, quizzing her: ‘Oh, so high! No, no, don’t hold up your nose at me: it don’t become you! I’ve no objection to recognising you, as you put it: I won’t even repudiate cousinship – though I hold out no promise of lending you my aid in whatever project it is that you have in mind. What, by the way, do you hope I’ll do for you?’
She relaxed, and smiled gratefully at him. ‘I am very much obliged to you! It is quite a small thing: to introduce my sister into the ton!’
‘To introduce your sister into the ton?’ he repeated blankly.
‘Yes, if you please. And perhaps I should warn you that you might have to introduce me too, unless I can persuade my sister that I truly don’t desire it. In general she is the most biddable girl alive, but in this instance she declares she won’t go to parties unless I do, which is excessively tiresome of her, but comes from her having such a loving disposition that –’
He interrupted her without ceremony. ‘My good girl, are you seriously suggesting that you should make your come-out under my aegis? What you need is a matron to chaperon you, not a bachelor!’
‘I know I do,’ she agreed. ‘That was why it came as a severe disappointment to me to learn that you are a bachelor. But I’ve already thought how we might overcome that difficulty! Would you object to it if we pretended that Papa had left us to your guardianship? Not all of us, of course, because Harry has just come of age, and I am four-and-twenty, but the three younger ones?’
‘I should – most emphatically!’
‘But why?’ she argued. ‘You wouldn’t be obliged to do any more for us than to sponsor Charis – and me, perhaps – into society! Naturally I shouldn’t expect you to interest yourself in anything else concerning us! In fact, I shouldn’t relish it above half if you did,’ she added frankly.
‘You need be under no apprehension! What you don’t appear to realise, ma’am, is that you wouldn’t find my sponsorship a passport to the Polite World!’
‘How is this?’ she demanded. ‘I had thought a Marquis must always be acceptable!’
‘That, Miss Merriville, depends on the Marquis!’
‘Oh!’ she said, digesting this, ‘Papa said you were a – an out-and-out cock of the game. Does that mean that you are an improper person?’
‘Sunk below reproach!’ he responded promptly.
She broke into a chuckle. ‘Oh, humbug! I don’t believe it! Even poor Papa wasn’t as bad as that!’
‘Even poor Papa … !’ he said. He found his quizzing-glass, and raised it to one eye, studying her through it with the air of a man who had encountered a rare specimen.
Quite impervious to this scrutiny, she said: ‘No, though I believe he was shockingly wild before he met Mama – and I must own that to have run off with her, as he did, was not at all the thing! It has always seemed very odd to me that Mama should have consented, for she was of the first respectability, you know, and so very – so very good! However, I believe that people who are passionately in love frequently do the oddest things – and I have sometimes thought that she was very persuadable. Not that I knew her very well, because she died soon after Felix was born, but Charis is her image, and she is persuadable! And, of course, they were both so young! Only fancy! – Papa came of age just a week before I was born! I can’t imagine how he contrived to support a family, for his father cut him off without a groat, and I shouldn’t think he pursued any gainful occupation. But he abandoned all his rackety ways after he married Mama; and considering that they had caused my grandparents to feel the greatest anxiety and embarrassment I must say that I think it was wickedly unjust of them not to have welcomed Mama into the family!’
The Marquis preserved a tactful silence. His recollections of the late Mr Merriville, whom he had met not so very many years previously, hardly tallied with the picture conjured up of a reformed character.
‘And, for my part,’ continued Miss Merriville, ‘I think they were very well served for their unkindness when both my grandfather, and my Uncle James, who was the heir, were carried off by typhus within a day of each other! That was how Papa came into the property – and just in time for Harry to be born at Graynard! And after him, of course, Charis, and Jessamy, and Felix.’ She broke off, seeing the Marquis blink, and smiled. ‘I know what you are thinking, and you are perfectly right! All of us but Harry have the most ridiculous names! I assure you, they are a great trial to us. Nothing would do for Mama, when I was born, but to saddle me with Frederica – after Papa, you know. Then there was Harry, because Mama was Harriet. And Papa chose my sister’s name, because he said she was the most graceful baby he had ever seen. Jessamy was named after his godfather; and Felix was a fancy of Mama’s – because we were such a happy family! Which, indeed, we were – until Mama died.’ She paused again, but almost immediately resumed, giving her head a tiny shake, as though to cast off a bad memory, and saying, in a lighter tone: ‘So we had to make the best of our absurd names! And Jessamy and I exchanged vows never to call each other Jessie, and Freddy, and never to permit the others to do so either.’
‘And don’t they?’
‘No – well, almost never! I must own that Felix does sometimes say Jessie, but only when Jessamy is on his high ropes; and in private Harry occasionally calls me Freddy – but not to torment me! And he never calls Jessamy Jessie, no matter how much Jessamy may have provoked him, because he is four years older, besides being the head of the family, and he would think it very shabby conduct to nettle Jessamy into a fight, when he knows he could drop him in a trice. Not but what Jessamy is full of pluck, Harry says, but – Oh, dear, how I am running on, and without saying anything to the purpose! Where was I?’
‘I rather think you had reached the point of your mother’s death.’
‘Oh, yes! Well – the effect of that was very dreadful. I believe – indeed, I know – that Papa was so shattered that they feared for his reason. I was too young to understand, but I remember that he was ill for a long time – or so it seemed to me – and when he recovered he wasn’t the same. In fact, he became quite a stranger, because he was hardly ever at home. He couldn’t bear it, without Mama. I daresay we shouldn’t have liked it at the time, but I have frequently thought that it would have been a very good thing if he had married again. I know it is improper in me to say so, but he was sadly unsteady, you know.’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Alverstoke. ‘I do know. But did he leave you to fend for yourselves? I find that hard to believe!’
‘No, no, of course he didn’t! My Au
nt Seraphina came to live with us – she is Mama’s unmarried sister – and she has been with us ever since Mama died!’
‘And is she still with you?’
‘Indeed she is! Good gracious, how could we have come to London without her to lend us countenance?’
‘You must forgive me: not having seen – or, until this moment, heard – anything of your aunt, I had formed the impression that you had decided to dispense with a chaperon.’
‘I’m not so ramshackle! Why should you suppose – Oh! Your propriety is offended by my receiving you without a chaperon! My Aunt Scrabster warned me how it would be, but I’m not a girl just escaped from the schoolroom, you know. What’s more, although we are quite accustomed to her ways, I cannot believe that you would like my aunt! For one thing she’s extremely deaf; and for another, she – she is a trifle eccentric! If she comes in, pray don’t get into a quarrel with her!’
‘I can safely promise you I won’t!’ he said. ‘Is she so quarrelsome?’
‘No, but she hates men,’ explained Frederica. ‘We fancy she must have suffered a disappointment in youth, or some such thing. I daresay she will go away immediately, if she finds you here.’
‘Scarcely an ideal chaperon!’ he observed.
‘No, and, what is worse, she is beginning not to like Harry as much as she was used to. She positively hated Papa – but that was understandable, because, besides being uncivil to her, he behaved very badly, and wasted the estate quite shockingly. Fortunately, before he had contrived to bring us all to pieces, he had a stroke.’
‘That was fortunate,’ he agreed, preserving his gravity.
‘Yes, wasn’t it? For, although he recovered, in a great measure, the use of his limbs, his brain was a little impaired. I don’t mean to say that he lost his reason, but he became forgetful, and – and different! He wasn’t wild, or resty any more, and not in the least unhappy. Indeed, I never liked him half as well before! He let me manage the estate, and all his affairs, so I was able, with a great deal of help from Mr Salcombe, who is our lawyer, to stop everything going to rack and ruin. That was five years ago, and I do think that if Harry will only hold household for a few years he will find himself quite comfortably circumstanced, and even able to provide for Jessamy and Felix, which he is determined to do, thinking it so unjust that everything should come to him, through Papa’s not having made a Will.’
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