The Nonesuch Page 22

  ‘However, she did it for the best, and I’m bound to say she made Charlotte sit down in a chair, telling her that to be rampaging about the room, like she was doing, only served to make the pain worse. So then Nurse set a hot brick under her feet, and we wrapped a shawl round her, and Miss Trent told me she thought it was an abscess, and not a bit of use to put laudanum on her poor tooth, but better, if I would permit it, to give her some drops to swallow in a glass of water, so as to make her drowsy. Which it did, after a while, but such a work as it was to get Charlotte to open her lips, or even take the glass in her hand, you wouldn’t believe!’

  ‘Poor child!’ said Sir Waldo. ‘I expect she was half mad with pain.’

  ‘Yes, and all through her own fault! Well, I hope I’m not unfeeling, but when she owned to Miss Trent that she had had the toothache for close on a sennight, and getting worse all the time, and never a word to a soul, because she was scared to have it drawn, – well, I was so vexed, Sir Waldo, after all that riot and rumpus, that I said to her: “Let it be a lesson to you, Charlotte!” I said.’

  ‘I should think it would be, ma’am. I own I have every sympathy with those who dread having teeth drawn!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Underhill, shuddering. ‘But when it comes to letting things get to such a pass as last night, and still crying, and saying she wouldn’t go to Mr Dishforth, no matter what, it’s downright silly! Well, I don’t mind saying that it put me in a regular quake only to think of taking her to him, for I can’t but cry myself when I see her in such misery, and a nice thing that would have been – the pair of us behaving like watering-pots, and poor Mr Dishforth not knowing what to do, I daresay! Not but what I would have gone with her, only that Miss Trent wouldn’t have it, nor Courtenay neither. Miss Trent took her off first thing, and Courtenay went along with them, like the good brother he is. And just as well he did, for they were obliged to hold her down, such a state as she was in, and how Miss Trent would have managed without him I’m sure I don’t know. So then they brought her home, and Courtenay’s ridden off to fetch Dr Wibsey to her, for she’s quite knocked up, and no wonder!’

  Decidedly it was not the moment for a declaration. Expressing an entirely sincere hope that Charlotte would soon be herself again, Sir Waldo took his leave.

  He was not to see Miss Trent again for five days. Charlotte, instead of making the swift recovery to be expected of such a bouncing girl, returned from Harrogate only to take to her bed. Her feverish condition was ascribed by Dr Wibsey to the poison that had leaked into her system; but Mrs Underhill told Sir Waldo with simple pride that Charlotte was just like she was herself.

  ‘It’s seldom I get a screw loose,’ she said, ‘for, in general, you know, I go on in a capital way. But if there’s the least little thing amiss, such as a colicky disorder, it throws me into such queer stirrups that many’s the time when my late husband thought to see me laid by the wall for no more than an epidemic cold!’

  Sir Waldo called every day at Staples to enquire after Charlotte, but not until the fifth day was he rewarded by the sight of Miss Trent, and even then it was under inauspicious circumstances. The invalid was taking the air on the terrace, seated in a comfortable chair carried out for her accommodation, with her mother on one side; and her governess, holding up a parasol to protect her from the sun, on the other; and with Mrs Mickleby and her two eldest daughters grouped round her. When Sir Waldo was ushered on to the terrace by Totton Mrs Mickleby had already learnt from her hostess that he had been a regular visitor to Staples. She drew her own conclusions, rejecting without hesitation the ostensible reason of his daily visits.

  ‘So kind as he’s been you’d hardly credit!’ Mrs Underhill told her, not without complacency. ‘Never a day passes but what he comes to enquire how Charlotte goes on, and it’s seldom that he don’t bring with him a book, or some trifle to amuse her, isn’t it, love? Well, Charlotte hasn’t any more of a fancy for reading than what I have, but she likes Miss Trent to read aloud to her, which she does beautifully, and as good as a play. Well, as I said to Sir Waldo only yesterday, it isn’t only Charlotte that’s very much obliged to him, for Miss Trent reads it after dinner to us, and I’m sure I couldn’t tell you which of us enjoys it the most, me, or Charlotte, or Tiffany. Well, it’s so lifelike that I couldn’t get to sleep last night for wondering whether that nasty Glossin would get poor Harry Bertram carried off by the smugglers again, or whether the old witch is going to save him – her and the tutor – which Tiffany thinks they’re bound to do, on account of its being near the end of the last volume.’

  ‘Oh, a novel!’ said Mrs Mickleby. ‘I must confess I am an enemy to that class of literature, but I daresay that you, Miss Trent, are partial to romances.’

  ‘When they are as well-written as this one, ma’am, most certainly!’ returned Ancilla.

  ‘Oh, and he brought a dissected map!’ Charlotte said. ‘I had never seen one before! It is all made of little pieces which fit into each other, to make a map of Europe!’

  The Misses Mickleby had not seen one either, so Miss Trent, feeling that she had a score to pay, advised their mama, very kindly, to procure one for them. ‘So educational!’ she said. ‘And quite unexceptionable!’

  Then Sir Waldo arrived, and although he did not single Miss Trent out for any particular attention Mrs Mickleby, who was just as quick as Mr Calver to recognize the signs of an affaire, was convinced that if she had not outstayed him he would have found an excuse to take Miss Trent to walk round the gardens, or some such thing.

  ‘And it’s my belief, sorry though I am to think it, that she would have gone with him,’ she told Mrs Banningham later. ‘I was watching her closely, and I assure you, ma’am, she coloured up the instant his name was announced. I never saw anyone look more conscious!’

  ‘It doesn’t astonish me in the least,’ replied Mrs Banningham. ‘There was always something about her which I couldn’t like. You, I know, took quite a fancy to her, but for my part I thought her affected. That excessive reserve, for instance, and her airs of gentility – !’

  ‘Oh, as to that,’ said Mrs Mickleby, a trifle loftily, ‘the Trents are a very good family! That is what makes it so distressing to see her showing such a want of delicacy. All those rides! Of course, she was said to be playing propriety, but I thought at the time it was very odd, very imprudent!’

  ‘Imprudent!’ said Mrs Banningham, with a snort. ‘Very sly, I call it! She has been on the catch for him from the outset. A fine thing it would be for her, without a penny to bless herself with! If he makes her an offer, which I don’t consider a certain thing at all. A carte blanche, possibly; marriage, no!’

  ‘Someone should warn her that he is merely trifling. I should not wish her to be taken in, for however much I may deplore her conduct in luring him on to sit in her pocket, I do not think her fast.’

  ‘If it isn’t fast to dance twice with him – the waltz, too! – besides going in to supper with him, and sending him to fetch her shawl, not to mention the way she looked up at him over her shoulder when he put it round her, which quite put me to the blush – !’

  ‘Most unbecoming!’ agreed Mrs Mickleby. ‘But you must own that before Sir Waldo came to Broom Hall she behaved with all the propriety in the world. I fear that he may have deceived her into believing that he was hanging out for a wife, merely because he paid her attention; and in her situation, you know, it must have seemed to her worth a push to bring him to the point. One can only pity her!’

  Mrs Banningham was easily able to refrain. She said acidly: ‘I dislike ninnyhammers, and that she must certainly be if she imagines for one moment that a man of his consequences would entertain the thought of marriage with her!’

  ‘Very true, but I fancy her experience of the Corinthian set is not large. It would be useless, of course, to suppose that Mrs Underhill would ever give her a hint.’

  ‘That vul
gar female! She does not give her own niece a hint! I should be sorry to see any daughter of mine behave as Tiffany does. Wild to a fault! There is something very disgusting, too, in her determination to attach every man she meets to her apron-strings. First it was Lord Lindeth, now it is Mr Calver: he, if you please, is teaching her to drive! I saw them with my own eyes. No groom, no Miss Trent to chaperon her! Oh, no! Miss Trent only thinks it her duty to chaperon her when Sir Waldo is with her!’

  ‘I shall be thankful when that wretched girl goes back to her uncle in London! As for Miss Trent, I have always said that she was by far too young for her position, but in this instance it must be allowed that her time has been taken up by Charlotte. If Mrs Underhill preferred her to devote herself to Charlotte rather than to Tiffany, the blame is hers. Far be it from me to suggest that Sir Waldo’s daily visits have anything to do with the case! And so Tiffany is playing fast and loose with Lord Lindeth, is she? I daresay Mr Calver is much more in her style. A Macaroni merchant is what Mr Mickleby calls him, but no doubt she thinks him quite up to the nines.’

  In this she was right: Tiffany was greatly impressed by Laurence, whom she had recognized instantly as belonging to the dandy-set. During her brief sojourn in London she had seen several of these exquisites on the Grand Strut in Hyde Park, and she was well aware that to win the admiration of an out-and-out Pink of the Ton added enormously to a lady’s consequence. It was not an easy thing to do, because in general the dandies were extremely critical, more likely to survey with boredom, through an insolently lifted quizzing-glass, an accredited beauty than to acclaim her. She was impressed also by his conversation; and flattered by his assumption that she was as familiar with the personalities and the on-dits of the ton as he was himself. Had it been he, and not Lindeth, who was a Peer, she would have preferred him, because he was so much more fashionable, and because he never bored her by talking about his home in the country, as Lindeth too often did. She would, in any event, have tried to attach him to her apron-strings, because it was torment to her if any young man, even so negligible a one as Humphrey Colebatch, either showed himself to be impervious to her charms, or betrayed a preference for some other girl. In Laurence’s case there was an added reason for encouraging his advances: Lindeth, in whom she had detected, since the Leeds adventure, a certain reserve, probably discounted such rivals as Mr Ash, Mr Jack Banningham, and Mr Arthur Mickleby, but she could not believe that he would be indifferent to the rivalry of his fashionable cousin. She had realized almost immediately that he did not like Laurence: not because he uttered a word in his disparagement, but because, when questioned, he spoke of him in a temperate manner far removed from the eager enthusiasm which any mention of his other cousin kindled in him. Since Tiffany much admired Laurence she had no hesitation in ascribing Lindeth’s dislike of him to jealousy; it did not so much as cross her mind that Lindeth might be contemptuous of Laurence; and had anyone suggested such a solution to her she would have been utterly incredulous.

  When Lindeth called at Staples to leave compliment cards, she told him, with a provocative look under her lashes, that his cousin, learning that although she was an accomplished horse-woman in the saddle she had never found anyone capable of teaching her how to handle the reins in form, had begged to be allowed to offer his services.

  He stared at her blankly. ‘Mr Calver says he will teach me to drive to an inch,’ she added, with one of her sauciest smiles.

  ‘Laurence? ’ he demanded, the oddest expression on his face.

  ‘Why not?’ she countered, lifting an eyebrow at him.

  He opened his mouth, shut it again, and turned away to pick up his hat and gloves.

  ‘Well?’ persisted Tiffany, pleased with the success of her gambit. ‘Pray, have you any objection?’

  ‘No, no, not the least in the world!’ he said hastily. ‘How should I? I only – but never mind that!’

  That was quite enough to confirm Tiffany in her belief that she had roused a demon of jealousy in his breast. She never knew that his lordship, whom Laurence stigmatized as a bagpipe, snatched the first opportunity that presented itself of admitting his cousin Waldo into a joke which was much too rich to be kept to himself. ‘I don’t know how I contrived to keep my countenance! Laurie! Driving to an inch! Oh, lord, I shall be sick if I laugh any more!’

  But Tiffany, with no suspicion that she had afforded Lindeth food for laughter, was very well satisfied. Her former suitors, who had gloomily but unresentfully watched Lindeth’s star rise, were roused to violent jealousy by Laurence; and she saw no reason to suppose that Lindeth would not be similarly stirred. For several days she was intoxicated by success, believing herself to be irresistible, and queening it over her court with ever-increasing capriciousness. And since, like Mrs Mickleby, she discarded without hesitation the ostensible reason for the Nonesuch’s daily visits, and had never for an instant suspected that he might prefer her companion to her peerless self, she was sure that he too was unable to stay away from her. This seemed so obvious that she did not pause to consider that his behaviour, when he came to Staples, was not in the least that of a man dazzled by her charms. She had always found him incalculable, and if she had thought about it at all she would have supposed that he was content merely to look at her.

  Courtenay, revolted by her self-satisfaction and indignant with his friends for making such fools of themselves, told her that she was no better than a vulgar lightskirt, and prophesied that she was riding for a fall; and when she laughed said that Lord Lindeth was only the first man to become disgusted: there would be others soon enough.

  ‘Pooh!’

  ‘Mighty pot-sure, aren’t you? But it seems to me that we don’t see so much of Lindeth these days!’

  ‘When I want him,’ boasted Tiffany, smiling in a way which made him want to slap her, ‘I shall just lift a finger! Then you’ll see!’

  That sent him off in a rage to represent to his mother the absolute necessity of curbing Tiffany’s flirtatious antics. ‘I tell you, Mama, she’s insufferable!’ he declared.

  ‘Now, Courtenay, for goodness’ sake don’t go upsetting her!’ begged Mrs Underhill, alarmed. ‘I own I wouldn’t wish to see Charlotte being so bold as she is, but she always was caper-witted, and it ain’t as though she was carrying on with strange gentlemen that mightn’t keep the line. If I was to interfere, she wouldn’t pay a bit of heed to me – and you know what she is when she’s crossed! There’s enough trouble in the house, with Charlotte being so poorly, without us having to bear one of Tiffany’s tantrums!’

  He turned appealingly to Miss Trent, but she shook her head. ‘I’m afraid the only remedy is for her admirers to grow cool,’ she said, smiling. ‘She is too headstrong, and has been allowed to have her own way for too long to submit to restraint. What would you have me do? Lock her in her room? She would climb out of the window, and very likely break her neck. I think, with you, that her behaviour is unbecoming, but she has done nothing scandalous, you know, and I fancy she won’t – unless she is goaded to it.’

  ‘How Greg, and Jack, and Arthur can make such cakes of themselves – ! Lord, it puts me in such a pelter to think they should be such gudgeons that there’s no bearing it!’

  ‘I shouldn’t let it tease you,’ she said. ‘It’s the fashion amongst them to worship Tiffany, and fashions don’t endure for long.’

  ‘Well, I only hope she has a rattling fall!’ he said savagely. ‘And what have you to say to this Calver-fellow? Teaching her to drive indeed! How do we know he ain’t a loose screw?’

  ‘We don’t, of course, but although I should prefer her not to drive out alone with him every day I have very little apprehension of his taking advantage of her childishness.’

  ‘No, indeed!’ said Mrs Underhill. ‘When he asked my per-mission, and told me I could trust him to take good care of her! He’s a very civil young man, and I’m sure I don’t know why you sho
uld have taken him in dislike!’

  ‘Civil young man! A Bartholomew baby! It’s my belief he’s a dashed fortune-hunter!’

  ‘Very possibly,’ agreed Miss Trent, quite unmoved. ‘But since she’s under age we needn’t tease ourselves over that. If you imagine that Tiffany would fling her cap over the windmill for a mere commoner you can’t know her!’

  Oddly enough, at that very moment, Sir Waldo, lifting an eyebrow at Laurence, was saying: ‘Having a touch at the heiress, Laurie?’

  ‘No, I ain’t. If you mean the Wield chit!’

  ‘I do. Just started in the petticoat line, I collect!’

  ‘Well, I haven’t. Is she an heiress?’

  ‘So I’m given to understand. I rather think she told me so herself.’

  ‘Sort of thing she would do,’ said Laurie. He thought it over for a moment, and then added, ‘I don’t want to be leg-shackled: wouldn’t suit me at all! Not but what I may be forced into it.’

  ‘I’m reluctant to blight your hopes, Laurie, but I think it only right to warn you that I have reason to suppose that your suit won’t prosper. Miss Wield is determined to marry into the Peerage.’

  ‘Exactly so!’ exclaimed Laurence. ‘I saw at a glance! She means to catch Lindeth, of course. I imagine you wouldn’t like that above half !’

  ‘Not as much,’ said Sir Waldo, in a voice of affable agreement.

  ‘No, and my aunt wouldn’t like it either!’ said Laurence. ‘What’s more, I wouldn’t blame her! No reason why he should make a cream-pot marriage: he ain’t under the hatches!’

  ‘I don’t think he has any such intention.’

  ‘I know that ! The silly chub was bowled out by her face. Well, you won’t cozen me into thinking that young Julian is not your cosset-lamb! You’d give something to see him come safe off, wouldn’t you?’

  Sir Waldo, who had drawn his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it with an expert flick of one finger, and took a pinch. He looked meditatively at Laurence, amused understanding in his eyes. ‘Alas, you’ve missed your tip!’ he said.