The Nonesuch Page 3

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said, adding simply: ‘He couldn’t be!’

  Miss Chartley protested involuntarily: ‘Oh, Tiffany, how can you? I beg your pardon, but indeed you shouldn’t – !’

  ‘It’s perfectly true!’ argued Miss Wield. ‘I didn’t make my face, so why shouldn’t I say it’s beautiful? Everyone else does!’

  Young Mr Underhill instantly entered a caveat, but Miss Chartley was silenced. Herself a modest girl, she was deeply shocked, but however much she might deprecate such vain-glory honesty compelled her to acknowledge that Tiffany Wield was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen or imagined. Everything about her was perfection. Not the most spiteful critic could say of her that it was a pity she was too tall, or too short, or that her nose spoiled her loveliness, or that she was not so beautiful in profile: she was beautiful from every angle, thought Miss Chartley. Even her dusky locks, springing so prettily from a wide brow, curled naturally; and if attention was first attracted by her deep and intensely blue eyes, fringed by their long black lashes, closer scrutiny revealed that a little, straight nose, enchantingly curved lips, and a complexion like the bloom on a peach were equally worthy of admiration. She was only seventeen years of age, but her figure betrayed neither puppy-fat nor awkward angles; and when she opened her mouth it was seen that her teeth were like matched pearls. Until her return, a short time since, to Staples, where her childhood had been spent, Patience Chartley had been generally held to be the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood, but Tiffany had quite eclipsed her. Patience had been brought up to believe that one’s appearance was a matter of no importance, but when the parent who had inculcated one with this dictum said that it gave him pleasure merely to rest his eyes on Tiffany’s lovely face one might perhaps be pardoned for feeling just a trifle wistful. No one, thought Patience, observing herself in the mirror when she dressed her soft brown hair, was going to look twice at her when Tiffany was present. She accepted her inferiority meekly, so free from jealousy that she wished very much that Tiffany would not say such things as must surely repel her most devout admirers.

  Apparently sharing her views, Mrs Underhill expostulated, saying in a voice which held more of pleading than censure: ‘Now, Tiffany-love! You shouldn’t talk like that! Whatever would people think if they was to hear you? It’s not becoming – and so, I’ll be bound, Miss Trent will tell you!’

  ‘Much I care!’

  ‘Well, that shows what a pea-goose you are!’ struck in Charlotte, firing up in defence of her idol. ‘Because Miss Trent is much more genteel than you are, or any of us, and –’

  ‘Thank you, Charlotte, that will do!’

  ‘Well, it’s true!’ muttered Charlotte rebelliously.

  Ignoring her, Miss Trent smiled at Mrs Underhill, saying: ‘No, ma’am; not at all becoming, and not at all wise either.’

  ‘Why not?’ Tiffany demanded.

  Miss Trent regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Well, it’s an odd circumstance, but I’ve frequently observed that whenever you boast of your beauty you seem to lose some of it. I expect it must be the change in your expression.’

  Startled, Tiffany flew to gaze anxiously into the ornate looking-glass which hung above the fireplace. ‘Do I?’ she asked naïvely. ‘Really do I, Ancilla?’

  ‘Yes, decidedly,’ replied Miss Trent, perjuring her soul without the least hesitation. ‘Besides, when a female is seen to admire herself it sets up people’s backs, and she finds very soon that she is paid fewer compliments than any girl of her acquaintance. And nothing is more agreeable than a prettily turned compliment!’

  ‘That’s true!’ exclaimed Tiffany, much struck. She broke into laughter, flitting across the room to bestow a brief embrace upon Miss Trent. ‘I do love you, you horrid thing, because however odious you may be you are never stuffy ! I won’t admire myself any more: I’ll beg pardon for being an antidote instead! Oh, Patience, are you positively sure Sir Waldo is coming?’

  ‘Yes, for Wedmore told Papa that he had received orders from Mr Calver’s lawyer to have all in readiness for Sir Waldo by next week. And also that he is bringing another gentleman with him, and several servants. The poor Wedmores! Papa said all he might to soothe them, but they have been thrown into such a quake! Mr Smeeth seems to have told them how rich and grand Sir Waldo is, so, of course, they are in dread that he will expect a degree of comfort it is not in their power to provide for him.’

  ‘Now, that,’ suddenly interjected Mrs Underhill, ‘puts me in mind of something I should like to know, my dear! For when my Matlock told me I couldn’t credit it, for all she had it from Mrs Wedmore herself. Is it true that Mr Calver left them nothing but twenty pounds, and his gold watch?’

  Patience nodded sorrowfully. ‘Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it is. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but one can’t help feeling that it was very wrong and ungrateful, after so many years of faithful service!’

  ‘Well, for my part, I never did see, and no more I ever shall, that being dead makes a scrap of difference to what you was like when you were alive!’ said Mrs Underhill, with unwonted energy. ‘A nasty, disagreeable clutchfist he was, and you may depend upon it that’s what he is still! And not in heaven either! If you can tell me who ever said one should speak respectfully of those who have gone to the other place, you’ll have told me something I never heard before, my dear!’

  Patience was obliged to laugh, but she said: ‘No, indeed, but perhaps one ought not to judge, without knowing all the circumstances. Mama, I own, feels as you do, but Papa says we can’t know what may have been at the root of poor Mr Calver’s churlishness, and that we should rather pity him. He must have been very unhappy!’

  ‘Well, your Papa is bound to say something Christian, being a Reverend,’ replied Mrs Underhill, in a reasonable spirit. ‘The ones I pity are the Wedmores – not but what they’d have left that old screw years ago, if they’d had a mite of sense, instead of believing he’d leave them well provided for, which anyone could have guessed he wouldn’t, whatever he may have promised them! How are they going to find another situation at their time of life? Tell me that!’

  But as Miss Chartley was quite unable to tell her she only sighed, and shook her head, thus affording Tiffany an opportunity to turn the conversation into another, and, in her view, far more important channel. She asked her aunt how soon after his arrival she meant to call on Sir Waldo.

  Mrs Underhill’s origins were humble; with the best will in the world to conduct herself like a lady of quality she had never managed to grasp all the intricacies of the social code. But some things she did know. She exclaimed: ‘Good gracious, Tiffany, whatever next? As though I didn’t know better than go calling on a gentleman! If your uncle were alive it would have been for him to do, if he’d thought fit, which I daresay he wouldn’t have, any more than I do myself, because what’s the use of leaving cards on this Sir Waldo if he don’t mean to stay at Broom Hall?’

  ‘Then Courtenay must do so!’ said Tiffany, paying no heed to the latter part of this speech.

  But Courtenay, to her considerable indignation, refused to do anything of the sort. Modesty was not one of his outstanding characteristics, nor were his manners, in his own home, distinguished by propriety; but the suggestion that he, at the age of nineteen, should have the effrontery to thrust himself on Sir Waldo affected him so profoundly that he turned quite pale, and told his cousin that she must be mad to suppose that he would be so impudent.

  The urgency with which Miss Wield conducted the ensuing argument, and the burst of angry tears which ended it made Mrs Underhill feel very uneasy. She confided, later, to Miss Trent that she did hope Sir Waldo wasn’t going to upset them all. ‘I’m sure I don’t know why anyone should be in a fuss over him, but there’s Tiffany as mad as fire, all because Courtenay don’t feel it would be the thing for him to call! Well, my dear, I don’t scruple to own that that’s put me a tr
ifle on the fidgets, for you know what she is!’

  Miss Trent did know. She owed her present position to the knowledge, which had made it possible for her, in the past, to manage the wayward Beauty rather more successfully than had anyone else.

  Miss Wield was the sole surviving child of Mrs Underhill’s brother, and an orphan. The late Mr Wield had been a wool merchant of considerable affluence. He was generally considered to have married above his station; but if he had done so with social advancement as his goal he must have been disappointed, since Mrs Wield’s brothers showed little disposition to treat him with anything more than indifferent civility, and the lady herself was too shy and too sickly to make any attempt to climb the social ladder. She had died during Tiffany’s infancy, and the widower had been glad to accept his sister’s offer to rear the child with her own son. Mr Underhill had already retired from trade with a genteel fortune, and had bought Staples, where his gentlemanly manners and sporting tastes were rapidly making him acceptable to all but the highest sticklers in the neighbourhood. Rejecting his elder brother-in-law’s tepid offer to admit the little girl into his own London household, Mr Wield consigned her to his sister’s care, thinking that if she and Courtenay, two years her senior, were one day to make a match of it he would not be ill-pleased. Contrary to expectation he had not married again; nor did he outlive Mr Underhill by more than a year. He died when Tiffany was fourteen, leaving his fortune, of which she was the sole heiress, in the hands of trustees, and his daughter to the joint guardianship of her two maternal uncles, the younger of these gentlemen having been substituted for the deceased Mr Underhill.

  Mrs Underhill had naturally been much affronted by this arrangement. Like her brother, she had looked forward to a marriage between Tiffany and her son. Mr Underhill had left his family very comfortably provided for; no one could have said she was a mercenary woman; but just as Lady Lindeth coveted Joseph Calver’s supposed fortune for Julian, so did she covet Tiffany’s very real fortune for Courtenay. She said, as soon as she knew the terms of Mr Wield’s Will, that she knew how it would be: mark her words if those Burfords didn’t snatch the child away before the cat had time to lick its ear! She was right. Mr James Burford, a bachelor, certainly made no attempt to take charge of his niece; but Mr Henry Burford, a banker, residing in very good style in Portland Place, lost no time in removing Tiffany from Staples, and installing her in his daughters’ schoolroom. The heiress to a considerable fortune was a very different matter from the motherless child whom Mr Burford had expected to see superseded by a half-brother: besides his two daughters he had three sons.

  Mrs Underhill was an easy-going woman, but she might have roused herself to struggle for possession of the heiress if she had been able to suppress a feeling of relief at the prospect of being rid of a damsel crudely described by the rougher members of her household as a proper varmint. Neither she nor a succession of governesses had ever known how to control Tiffany, who, at fourteen, had been as headstrong as she was fearless. Her exploits had scandalized the county, and given her aunt severe palpitations; she led Courtenay and little Charlotte into hair-raising situations; she drove three of her governesses from the house in a state of nervous prostration; already as pretty as a picture, she could change in the twinkling of an eye from an engagingly affectionate child into a positive termagant. Mrs Underhill surrendered her without protest, saying that Mrs Burford little knew what she had undertaken.

  It did not take Mrs Burford long to find this out. She said (with perfect truth) that Tiffany had been ruined by indulgence; there was nothing for it but to send her to school.

  So Tiffany was packed off to Miss Climping’s Seminary in Bath, to be tamed, and transformed from a tomboy into an accomplished young lady.

  Unfortunately, Miss Climping’s establishment included a number of day-pupils, with whom Tiffany soon struck up friendships. She was permitted to visit them, and once outside the seminary considerably extended her circle of acquaintances. It was not until a billet from a love-lorn youth, addressed to Tiffany, and smuggled into the house by a venial servant, fell into Miss Climping’s hands that the good lady realized that the unexceptionable visits to school friends masked far from desirable excursions; or that a girl not yet sixteen could embark on a clandestine love-affair. Tiffany was a valuable pupil, her trustees paying for every extra on the curriculum without a blink; but had it not been for one circumstance Miss Climping would have requested Mr Burford to remove from her select establishment a firebrand who threatened to ruin its reputation. That was the arrival, to assume the duties of a junior teacher, of Ancilla Trent, herself a one-time pupil at the school. Bored by the reproaches and the homilies of what she called a parcel of old dowdies, Tiffany took an instant fancy to the new teacher, who was only eight years older than herself, and in whose clear gray eyes she was swift to detect a twinkle. It did not take her long to discover that however straitened her circumstances might be Ancilla came of a good family, and had been used to move in unquestionably genteel circles. She recognized, and was a little awed by, a certain elegance which owed nothing to Ancilla’s simple dresses; and bit by bit she began to lend an ear to such scraps of worldly advice as Ancilla let fall at seasonable moments. It was no part of Ancilla’s duty to admonish the older pupils, nor did she do so. She appreciated the humour of certain outrageous pranks, but managed to convey to the heiress that they were perhaps a little childish; and when informed of Tiffany’s determination to marry into the peerage not only accepted this as a praiseworthy ambition, but entered with gratifying enthusiasm into various schemes for furthering it. As these were solely concerned with the preparation of the future peeress for her exalted estate, Tiffany was induced to pay attention to lessons in Deportment, to practise her music, and even, occasionally, to read a book; so that when she left school she had ceased to be a tomboy, and had even acquired a few accomplishments and a smattering of learning.

  But she was harder than ever to manage, and nothing was farther from her intention than to submit to her Aunt Burford’s plans for her. Mrs Burford, launching her eldest daughter into society, said that Tiffany was too young to be brought out. She might sometimes be allowed to join a small, informal party, or be included in an expedition of pleasure, but she was to consider herself still a schoolroom miss. She would attend concerts and dancing-lessons under the chaperonage of her cousins’ governess; and she must spend a part of her time trying to improve her French, and learning to play the harp.

  Mrs Burford had reckoned without her host. Tiffany did none of these things; and at the end of three months Mrs Burford informed her lord that unless he wished to be plunged into some shocking scandal, and to see the wife of his bosom dwindle into the grave, he would be so obliging as to send his niece back to Yorkshire. Not only was she so lost to all sense of propriety as to escape from the house when she was believed to be in bed and asleep, and to attend a masquerade at Vauxhall Gardens, escorted by a besotted youth she had met heaven only knew where or how: she was utterly destroying her cousin Bella’s chances of forming an eligible connection. No sooner did a possible suitor catch sight of Bella’s abominable cousin, said Mrs Burford bitterly, than he had eyes for no one else. As for a marriage between her and Jack, or William, even had she shown herself willing (which she most certainly had not), Mrs Burford would prefer to see any of her sons beggared than married to such a dreadful girl.

  Mr Burford was ready enough to be rid of his tiresome ward, but he was a man of scruples, and he could not think it right to consign Tiffany to the care of Mrs Underhill, who had already shown herself to be incapable of controlling her. It was Mrs Burford who had the happy notion of writing to beg Miss Climping to give them the benefit of her advice. And Miss Climping, perceiving an opportunity to advance the interests of Ancilla Trent, of whom she was extremely fond, suggested that Mrs Burford should try to persuade Miss Trent to accept the post of governess-companion in Mrs Underhill’s household. Miss Trent, bes
ides being a most superior female (no doubt Mrs Burford was acquainted with her uncle, General Sir Mordaunt Trent), had also the distinction of being the only person who had ever been known to exercise the smallest influence over Miss Wield.

  Thus it was that Ancilla became an inmate of Staples, and, within a surprisingly short time, Mrs Underhill’s principal confidante.

  Mrs Underhill had not previously confided in any of the governesses she had employed, for although she was a good-natured woman, she was quite understandably jealous of her dignity; and in her anxiety not to betray her origins she was prone to adopt towards her dependants a manner so stiff as to border on the top-lofty. She had been too much delighted to regain possession of her niece to raise any objection to the proviso that Miss Trent must accompany Tiffany; but she had deeply resented it, and had privately resolved to make it plain to Miss Trent that however many Generals might be members of her family any attempt on her part to come the lady of Quality over them at Staples would be severely snubbed. But as Miss Trent, far from doing any such thing, treated her with a civil deference not usually accorded to her by her children Mrs Underhill’s repressive haughtiness was abandoned within a week; and it was not long before she was telling her acquaintance that they wouldn’t believe what a comfort to her was the despised governess.

  She said now, developing her theme: ‘She’s no more than a child, when all’s said, but with that face, and the things one hears about these smart town-beaux – Well, it does put me quite in a worry, my dear, and I don’t deny it!’

  ‘But I don’t think it need, ma’am: indeed I don’t!’ Miss Trent responded. ‘She may set her cap at him – in fact, I’m tolerably certain that she will, just to show us all that she can bring any man to his knees! – and he might flirt with her, perhaps. But as for doing her any harm – no, no, there can’t be the least cause for you to be in a worry! Only consider, dear ma’am! She’s not a little serving-maid with no one at her back to protect her!’