Frederica Read online

  ‘On the contrary! I shall enjoy it excessively – and in particular the spectacle of my brother being brought round a small and probably grubby thumb!’

  ‘Certainly grubby!’ said Frederica ruefully. ‘Isn’t it odd that you may send a little boy out as neat as wax, and within half-an-hour he will be a perfect shag-rag?’

  ‘Yes, and in that respect they are all exactly alike. I have three sons, you know, Miss Merri – Oh, no, why should we peel eggs? Frederica! We are cousins, are we not?’

  ‘Well, I think we are,’ said Frederica. ‘Only – only rather remote, I’m afraid!’ She hesitated, and then said candidly: ‘It must seem very odd to you that I should have asked Lord Alverstoke to befriend us. The thing was he was the only relation whose name I knew. My father had several times spoken of him, so – so I was so bold-faced as to apply to him. I was very anxious, you see, that my sister should have a London season.’

  ‘I can readily understand that,’ Eliza said, looking towards Charis, who made one of a group of young people on the opposite side of the room. ‘I see she has Endymion Dauntry on a string: if he were not so handsome one would take him for a mooncalf! Is that his sister, Chloë, talking to young Wrenthorpe? How monstrous that he should be so much the better-looking!’ She withdrew her gaze, and smiled at Frederica: ‘Alverstoke tells me that you are under the chaperonage of an aunt, but that she is not here tonight: I should like to make her acquaintance, so I shall pay her a morning visit, if you think she would not dislike it?’

  ‘She could not do so, but I fear you would not be very likely to find her at home,’ said Frederica. Her brow was creased, and she sighed. ‘It is a most unfortunate circumstance – well, a very sad circumstance! – that my uncle, who lives in Harley Street, is dangerously ill, not expected to recover, which, indeed, one would not wish him to do, for he has been a sufferer from a painful and incurable disease for a long time. My Aunt Seraphina feels it to be her duty to support her sister, and spends almost the whole of every day in Harley Street. My Aunt Amelia is in great affliction, which seems to suspend her every faculty. She is – er – all sensibility, and the least thing overpowers her.’ She added hastily: ‘Not that I mean to say this is a little thing!’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ interposed Eliza. ‘Poor soul! I sincerely pity her, but I shall spare you any flowery commonplaces. I fancy we are alike in preferring the word with the bark on it: it is in the highest degree unfortunate that this should have happened just now! You must be most awkwardly placed, without your chaperon. Well, I mean to stay in London for a few weeks, so perhaps I may be able to come to your rescue.’

  ‘Oh no, no! It is most kind of you, but that doesn’t signify! My aunt dislikes ton-parties, and rarely accompanies us to them. Indeed, she only consented to come to Upper Wimpole Street on the understanding that she need not do so. I thought that perhaps it would present a – a more correct appearance if she were known to be with us. But, in point of fact, I’ve always been Charis’s chaperon. You see, by the time she was seventeen I was quite beyond the age of needing a chaperon myself – whatever Cousin Alverstoke may say!’

  ‘What does he say?’ enquired Eliza.

  ‘Everything that is disagreeable!’ replied Frederica, laughing. ‘He thinks me sunk beneath reproach – positively a hurly-burly woman! – because I don’t take my maid with me when I go out! It is too absurd! As though I were a green girl, which anyone can see I am not!’

  ‘No: but not, if I may say so, at your last prayers!’

  Frederica smiled. ‘I daresay no female ever reaches her last prayers. But that doesn’t signify: the thing is that if my uncle were to die now it would be most improper, wouldn’t it? for Charis to attend any such parties as this.’ The laughter sprang into her eyes again; she said comically: ‘Oh, dear! How odious that sounds! But when one has schemed and contrived, as I have, to bring a very beautiful and very dear sister to London for at least one season – it – it does seem hard to be obliged to forgo it all because an uncle, whom we scarcely know, and who is not a blood-relation – though a kind, worthy man! – should die at such an ill-chosen moment!’

  A responsive twinkle came into Lady Elizabeth’s eyes, but she replied quite seriously: ‘Yes, I see. Awkward! But if he is only related to you by marriage I am much inclined to think that you need do no more than go into black gloves.’

  ‘But not dance in black gloves!’ objected Frederica.

  Lady Elizabeth thought this over. ‘Perhaps not. I am not perfectly sure about dancing, but I do know that we were in black gloves for one of my great-aunts when my mother presented Louisa, and I seem to remember that she went to parties every night. I don’t care a rush for proper modes myself, and should have supposed that you do not either.’

  ‘I’m obliged to care, for my sister’s sake. What might be thought eccentricity in Lady Elizabeth Dauntry would be condemned in Miss Merriville as very unbecoming conduct,’ said Frederica dryly.

  Eliza wrinkled up her nose distastefully. ‘I suppose that’s true. How detestable! Well, the only thing to be done is to –’

  But at that moment she was interrupted by Lady Jersey, who came up to her with her hands outstretched, exclaiming: ‘Eliza! Oh, goodness me, I hadn’t the least notion – My dearest wretch, how dared you come to London without one word to me?’

  So Frederica, moving away, did not learn what, in her ladyship’s opinion, was the best thing to be done. She could only hope that Mr Navenby, who had punctiliously asked her leave to address himself to Charis, might succeed in winning that soft heart. Since Charis showed a tendency to burst into tears whenever his name was mentioned, the hope was not strong; but when Frederica compared him to Endymion she found it hard to believe that Charis, ninnyhammer though she was, could really prefer a handsome block to so admirable a young man. Indeed, she had been so much exasperated by the sight of Charis gazing worshipfully up into Endymion’s face, at Almack’s, two days previously, that she had quite tartly requested her not to make such a figure of herself at the Seftons’ party.

  ‘You cast just such sheep’s eyes at young Fraddon, when you fancied yourself in love with him,’ she reminded her wilting sister. ‘But then you were only seventeen. You are past nineteen now, and indeed, my dear, it is time that you showed a little commonsense! Instead, you show less! Will Fraddon had more than his handsome face to recommend him, and, had your tendre for him endured, neither I nor his parents would have raised any objection to the match. It didn’t, however, and now you choose to make a goose of yourself over another, and far less eligible, handsome face! Charis, surely you must know that I am not more opposed to such a match than is Mrs Dauntry – or, I don’t doubt, Lord Alverstoke? No, no, don’t cry! I don’t mean to be unkind, and I promise you I perfectly understand how you came to be dazzled by so magnificent a – a clodpole! Only try to give your thoughts a more rational direction! How could you be happy with a man whom his own relations think a block?’

  The effect of this practical homily was to cast Charis into a fever of apprehension, which she communicated to Endymion at the first opportunity that offered. No sooner had he succeeded, at the Seftons’ assembly, in drawing her apart from the throng of her suitors than the story was poured into his ears, and his beloved was entreating him not to come near her for the rest of the evening. ‘I have the most dreadful feel that Frederica has divulged the secret of our attachment to Alverstoke!’ she said tragically. ‘You cannot have failed to notice the way he watched us, when you first came up to me! I declare, I was ready to sink, when I looked up, and found his piercing gaze upon me!’

  Endymion had not, in fact, noticed this unnerving circumstance, but he agreed that it was sinister. After painful cogitation, he said: ‘There’s only one thing for it: I must sell out!’

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ Charis breathed. ‘Never would I let you do so for my miserable sake!’

  ‘Well, to own the truth, I’ve never cared for military life above half,’ confided Endymion.
‘But the thing is that Cousin Alverstoke will very likely cut off my allowance, if I sell out, and then, you know, we should find ourselves obliged to bite on the bridle. Should you object to being a trifle cucumberish? Though I daresay if I took up farming, or breeding horses, or something of that nature, we should soon find ourselves full of juice.’

  ‘I?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, no, indeed! Why, I’ve been cucumberish, as you call it, all my life! But for you it is a different matter! You must not ruin yourself for my sake.’

  ‘It won’t be as bad as that,’ he assured her. ‘My fortune ain’t handsome, but I wasn’t born without a shirt. And if I was to sell out my cousin couldn’t have me sent abroad.’

  ‘But could he do so now?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Harry says the Life Guards never go abroad, except in time of war.’

  ‘No, but he might contrive to get me sent off on a mission.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘What sort of a mission, dear love?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know precisely, but we’re always sending missions somewhere or other, and very often they have a military man attached to them. Diplomatic stuff,’ explained Endymion vaguely. ‘Like Lord Amherst going to China, a couple of years back, and staying there above a twelvemonth. Something to do with mandarins,’ he added, in further elucidation of the mystery. ‘Wouldn’t suit me at all, but there’s no saying what might happen if I don’t sell out. Got a devilish lot of influence, Alverstoke.’

  Since it never entered her head that nothing short of Royal influence could avail to obtain a place for Endymion on any diplomatic mission, Charis was instantly assailed by a hideous vision of death and disaster. If the ship which bore so precious a burden escaped wreck, he would either perish at the hands of unknown, but probably murderous mandarins, or succumb to one of the deadly fevers peculiar to Eastern countries. Her face perfectly white, she said, in a low, passionate voice, that to avert such a fate she would be prepared to renounce him. Endymion was much moved, but, not having visualised any of the disasters which had sprung so immediately to her mind, he did not feel that the situation, even at its worst, called for so great a sacrifice. But when Charis suddenly begged him to leave her, because Lady Elizabeth was looking at them, he did feel, and forcibly, that they could not go on, he said, in this devilish havey-cavey way.

  ‘Oh no! It is the greatest misery to me!’ Charis agreed.

  ‘Ay, and so it is to me, seeing you by scraps, and not getting on in the least,’ said Endymion gloomily. ‘I’ll tell you what, Charis: we must talk about it – decide what’s to be done, you know. Dashed if I won’t bring Chloë and Diana to see the balloon tomorrow! Ay, that’s the barber! You can tell your sister you wish to speak to Chloë: no harm in that! I’ll play least-in-sight, and while everyone’s watching the balloon we’ll slip off together. Shouldn’t think it will be difficult: bound to be a devilish crowd in the park.’

  ‘No, no!’ she said distressfully. ‘If you bring your sisters to see the ascent, you must promise not to come near me! Felix has persuaded Lord Alverstoke to take him there, and you may depend upon it that he will bring his carriage as close to ours as he may!’

  ‘Alverstoke going to watch a balloon go up?’ exclaimed Endymion incredulously. ‘You’re bamming!’

  ‘No, indeed I’m not! He is taking Lady Elizabeth too, so you see – !’

  ‘He must be getting queer in his attic! Well, I mean to say – ! Alverstoke! Why the deuce must he take it into his head to come and play boots with everything? What a dam – what a dashed thing! Seems to me the end of it will be that we shall have to take a bolt to the Border!’

  ‘Endymion!’ she uttered, in shocked dismay. ‘You couldn’t ask me to do anything so dreadful! You’re joking me! It would be beyond everything!’

  ‘Yes, I know it would. My Colonel wouldn’t like it, either. But we can’t stand on points for ever, love! Got to bring ourselves about somehow!’

  ‘We will – oh, I know we shall succeed in the end! Hush, here comes Lord Wrenthorpe!’

  Nineteen

  When Knapp drew back the blinds in his master’s bedroom upon the following morning, the Marquis was first revolted by the sight of brilliant sunshine, and then by his valet’s announcement that it was a beautiful day. He had hoped for rain, gales, or even snow: anything, in fact, which would make a balloon ascension impossible. But a cloudless sky met his gaze; and when, hope dying hard, he asked Knapp if it was not very still and windless, Knapp replied, with all the air of one bearing good tidings: ‘Just a nice, light breeze, my lord: what you might call a perfect June day!’

  ‘You are mistaken!’ responded his lordship. ‘At what time does this damned balloon make its ascension?’

  ‘At two o’clock, my lord – according to what Master Felix told Wicken,’ said Knapp demurely.

  ‘And you may depend upon it,’ said his lordship, ‘that that brat will be upon the doorstep on the stroke of noon!’

  But when he himself emerged from his dressing-room at noon he found that young Mr Merriville had arrived some little time earlier, and was discussing a hearty nuncheon under the aegis of Lady Elizabeth. Owing to the exertions of his sisters, he was impeccably attired in spotless nankeens, his best jacket, and a freshly laundered shirt; with his nails scrubbed, and his curly locks brushed till they glowed. Between mouthfuls of mutton-pie, he was initiating his hostess into the mysteries of aeronautics. He greeted Alverstoke with acclaim, explaining that he had come to the house perhaps a little early because he knew that he and Cousin Elizabeth wouldn’t wish to reach the park too late to obtain a good place for the phaeton. Upon receiving a somewhat embittered rejoinder, he at once subjugated his lordship by saying anxiously: ‘You do wish to go, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Yes – but you are a vile and an abominable young thatchgallows!’ said his lordship.

  Accepting this as a compliment, Felix bestowed a seraphic smile upon him, and applied himself again to the pie.

  ‘Also,’ said his lordship, levelling his glass at the loaded plate, and slightly shuddering, ‘a bacon-picker!’

  ‘I know. Sir, do you know how they were used to fill balloons, and how they now do it?’

  ‘No,’ said Alverstoke. ‘I’ve no doubt, however, that I soon shall.’

  He was right. From then on Felix, who had acquired a tattered copy of the History and Practice of Aerostation, maintained a flow of conversation, largely informative, but interspersed with eager questions. He sat wedged between Alverstoke and Eliza in the phaeton; but since he addressed himself exclusively to Alverstoke, Eliza was able to sit back at her ease, listening with amusement and some surprise to her brother’s very creditable answers to the posers set him by his youthful admirer. Felix, though much indebted to Cavallo’s History, had discovered that it was deplorably out-of-date, which, as he ingenuously told Alverstoke, was disappointing, since he felt that there was a great deal he did not yet know about aeronautics. And what was the peculiar virtue of silk, which made it a better covering for balloons than linen?

  From the properties of silk to the intricacies of valves was a short step, but it was one which seemed to Eliza to sweep her companions into a foreign language. Abandoning all attempt to grasp the subject, she withdrew her attention, until it was reclaimed by Felix, who startled her by expressing a wistful desire to float through the air attached to a parachute. She exclaimed: ‘What an appalling thought! I should be frightened out of my life!’

  ‘No, why, ma’am?’ he said. ‘Only fancy what it must be like! Cousin Alverstoke says he once saw a man giving displays: I wish I had!’

  They had by this time entered the park; and when they reached the site of the ascension Felix was delighted to see that, although the balloon was already tethered, the casks of hydrogen, from which the bag would presently be inflated by means of a hose-pipe, were still being assembled within the roped-off enclosure. He drew a deep breath of gratification, demanded of Alverstoke if he wasn’t now glad they had started early, jumped down from the ph
aeton, and made all haste towards the scene of activity.

  ‘I do hope he won’t meet with a repulse!’ remarked Eliza. ‘It would quite ruin his day!’

  ‘From what I know of him he is more likely to meet with quite unnecessary encouragement,’ replied Alverstoke. ‘They took him to their bosoms at the foundry, to which it was my fate to escort him; and he appears to have had a similar success on the steam-boat he once boarded. He has a thirst for information on all forms of mechanical invention, and, for his age, a remarkable grasp of the subject.’

  ‘You too seem to know more about such things than I had suspected!’

  ‘No more than any other man of moderate understanding. I am now going to withdraw into the shade of the trees – no matter how anxious you may be to remain as close as possible to the enclosure!’

  She laughed. ‘I shall be thankful – though I fear Felix will think it very poor-spirited of us!’

  Early though it was, they had not been the first of the spectators to arrive. A number of persons had gathered round the enclosure already; and several carriages had taken up positions under the shade of the trees. Amongst these was Lady Buxted’s landaulet: a circumstance which made Eliza ejaculate: ‘Good God, isn’t that Louisa’s carriage? I wonder how she was induced to lend it? She detests the Merrivilles, you know.’

  ‘I should suppose that she had little choice in the matter. I find Carlton intolerably boring, but I’ll say this for him: he’s not afraid of Louisa’s tongue, and he doesn’t knuckle down to her. Or so I collect, from the complaints she has from time to time poured into my unwilling ears.’

  ‘I had not credited him with so much spirit. Do draw up beside the carriage! I should like to pursue my acquaintance with Frederica.’

  He complied with this request, backing the phaeton into place on the right of the landaulet, so that although the high perch of the phaeton made it impossible for his sister to shake hands with Frederica she was able to exchange greetings with her, and might have maintained a conversation had she not decided that to be obliged to talk to anyone sitting so far above her would soon give Frederica a stiff neck. Jessamy had descended from the landaulet, and, with an awkward gallantry, helped her to climb down from her seat, when she expressed her intention to enjoy a comfortable cose with his sisters. She smiled upon him, saying: ‘Thank you! You, I believe, are Jessamy – the one who handles the reins in form! How do you do?’