Black Sheep Page 4

'I am afraid so. Oh, nothing of a serious nature, or that is generally known, or – or that you will not speedily put an end to! I might not have spoken to you, if that had been all, for it's no bread-and-butter of mine, and I don't relish the office of being your intelligencer, but I have some reason to think that it is not quite all, and am a great deal too fond of Fanny not to tell you that certain things I have learned from what Lavinia – in all innocence! – has let fall, I apprehend that this unfortunate affair may be rather more serious than I had at first supposed. To what extent Lavinia is in Fanny's confidence I don't know, and – I must confess – shrink from enquiring, because perhaps, if she thought I was trying to discover a secret reposed in her, she would fob me off, even prevaricate, and certainly, in the future, guard her tongue when she talked to me. That may seem foolish to you: the thing is she has been so close a companion to me, so open and trusting in her affection –' Her voice became suspended. She shook her head, saying, after a moment's struggle: 'I can't explain it to you!'

  'There is not the least need,' Abby responded. 'I understand you perfectly, ma'am. Don't fear me! I promise you I shan't let Fanny so much as suspect that Lavinia betrayed her confidence. Let me be frank with you! I've every reason to suppose that Calverleigh is a fortune-hunter, and it has been made abundantly clear to me that Fanny believes herself to have formed a lasting passion for him. I don't know if Calverleigh hopes to win my brother's consent to the match, but I should very much doubt it. So in what sort is the wind? Does he hope to enlist my support? Is he indulging himself with a flirtation? Or has he the intention of eloping with Fanny?' Her eyes widened, as she saw the quick look turned towards her, and a laugh trembled in her throat. 'My dear ma'am – ! I was only funning!'

  'Yes, I know, but – Abby, sometimes I wonder if our parents were right when they forbade us to read novels! It is all the fault of the Circulating Libraries!'

  'Putting romantical notions into girls' heads?' said Abby, smiling a little. 'I don't think so: I had a great many myself, and was never permitted to read any but the most improving works. I might be wrong, but I fancy that however much a girl may admire, or envy, the heroine of some romance, who finds herself in the most extraordinary situations; and however much she may picture herself in those situations, she knows it is nothing more than a child's game of make-believe, and that she would not, in fact, behave at all like her heroine. Like my sister's children, when they capture me in the shrubbery, and inform me that they are brigands, and mean to hold me to ransom!'

  Her smile was reflected in Mrs Grayshott's eyes, but she sighed, and said: 'It may be so – I don't know! But when a girl falls in love, and with – oh, with what they call a man of the town! – who is practised in the art of seduction – ?'

  'Well, I don't know either,' said Abby, 'but it occurs to me, ma'am, that your man of the town, assuming him to be in search of a fortune, would scarcely choose a girl four years short of her majority! Indeed, eight years short of it, because Fanny will not come into full possession of her inheritance until she is five-andtwenty. I'm not very well-informed in such matters, but would not that be rather too long to – to live on the expectation?'

  'Is he aware of this?' Mrs Grayshott asked. 'Does Fanny know it?'

  Abby's eyes, swiftly raised, held an arrested expression. She said, after a moment's pause: 'No. That is, the question has never arisen. I don't know, but I should suppose she doesn't. I see that it must be my business to enlighten Calverleigh – if it should be necessary to do so. Meanwhile, –'

  'Meanwhile,' said Mrs Grayshott, with a significant smile, 'Mr Dunston is advancing towards us, determined to wrest you from me, and so I shall take my leave of you! Don't think me impertinent if I say how much I wish I could see you happily established, Abby!'

  She moved away as she spoke, leaving the road open to the gentleman in the blue coat and Angola pantaloons, who came up, saying simply: 'You have come back at last! Bath has been a desert without you.'

  She turned this off with a laughing rejoinder; and, after enquiring politely how his mother did, and exchanging a little trivial conversation with him, said mendaciously that she saw her sister beckoning to her, and left him.

  Miss Wendover, who had observed with satisfaction the presence of Mr Dunston in the Pump Room, sighed. Like Mrs Grayshott, she wished very much to see Abby happily established, and could think of no one who would make her a better husband than Peter Dunston. He was a very respectable man, the owner of a comfortable property situated not many miles from Bath; his manners were easy and agreeable; and Miss Wendover had it on the authority of his widowed mother, who resided with him, that his amiability was only rivalled by the elegance of his mind, and the superiority of his understanding. Such was the excellence of his character that he had never caused his mother to suffer a moment's anxiety. One might have supposed that Abby, in imminent danger of dwindling into an old maid, would have welcomed the addresses of so eligible a suitor, instead of declaring she had never been able to

  feel the least tendre for men of uniform virtues.

  She certainly felt none for Peter Dunston, but Miss Wendover was mistaken when she suspected, in moods of depression, that her dear but perverse sister had set her face against marriage. Abby was fully alive to the disadvantages of her situation, and she had more than once considered the possibility of accepting an offer from Mr Dunston. He would be a kind, if unexciting husband; he enjoyed all the comfort and consequence of a large house and an easy fortune; and in marrying him she would remain within reach of Selina. On the other hand, no romance would attend such a marriage, and Abby, who, in her salad days had declined the flattering offer made her by Lord Broxbourne, still believed that somewhere there existed the man for whom she would feel much more than mere friendly liking. She had once believed, too, that she was bound, sooner or later, to encounter him. She had never done so, and it had begun to seem unlikely that she ever would; but without indulging morbid repinings she was disinclined to accept a substitute who could only be second-best in her eyes.

  At the moment, however, her mind was not exercised by this question, being fully occupied by the more important problem of how best, and most painlessly, to detach Fanny from the undesirable Mr Calverleigh. Mrs Grayshott was no tattlemonger; and since she had a great deal of reserve Abby knew that only a stringent sense of duty could have forced her to overcome her distaste of talebearing. What she knew, either from her own observation, or from the innocent disclosures of her daughter, she plainly thought to be too serious to be withheld from Fanny's aunt. At the same time, thought Abigail, dis passionately considering her, the well-bred calm of her manners concealed an over-anxious disposition, which led her to magnify possible dangers. The tragic circumstances of her life, coupled as they were with a sickly constitution, had not encouraged her in optimism. Married to an officer of the Line, and the mother of three hopeful children, she had endured years of separation, always looking forward to a blissful reunion, until her dreams were shattered by the news of Captain Grayshott's death, during the Siege of Burgos. This blow was followed, less than a year later, by the illness, and lingering death of her younger son, and the break-down of her own health, so that it was hardly surprising that she should be readier to foresee disaster than a happy outcome.

  Not that she ever betrayed her lowness of spirit. If she could be brought to speak of her trials, which was seldom, and only to a few trusted friends, she said that she was by far more fortunate than many soldiers' widows, because she had been supported throughout by her brother, of whose affection and generosity she could not speak without emotion. He was an East India merchant – but, as the highest and most antiquated sticklers in Bath acknowledged, a most gentlemanly person – and a bachelor, commonly said to be rolling in riches. Not only had he coaxed and bullied his sister into accepting an allowance from him which enabled her to establish herself with modest elegance in Edgar Buildings, but he had claimed the right to maintain his surviving nephew at Rugby, and his only niec
e at Miss Trimble's select seminary in Bath. It was generally supposed that Oliver Grayshott was destined to be his heir, and although there were those who thought it rather too bad of Mr Balking to have sent his poor sister's sole remaining son to India, it was almost universally agreed that she would have been culpably in the wrong had she refused to be parted from him.

  She had not done so, and now, as several persons had foreseen from the outset, he was returning to her, if not at death's door, at the best in a state of total collapse.

  Abby, blessed with a cheerful mind, took a more optimistic view of Oliver's case, but she did realise the anxiety which Mrs Grayshott must be feeling, and was inclined to think that the consequent agitation of her nerves might well have led her to exaggerate the strength of Fanny's infatuation.

  The following three days did nothing to promote such a comfortable notion. There could be no doubt that Fanny, dazzled by the attentions of a London beau, had plunged headlong into her first love-affair, and was ripe for any outrageous folly. Wholly unpractised in the art of dissimulation, her spasmodic attempts to appear unconcerned betrayed her youth, and might, under different circumstances, have amused Abby. But it was not long before Abby found much more to dismay than to amuse her. She was herself impulsive, often impatient of convention, and, in her girlhood, rebellious, but she had been reared far more strictly than Fanny, and it came as a disagreeable shock to her when she discovered that Fanny watched for the postman every day, and, at the first glimpse of his scarlet coat and cockaded hat, slipped out of the room to intercept the delivery of letters to the house. Never, at her most rebellious, had Abby dreamed of engaging in clandestine correspondence! Such conduct, if it were known, must sink Fanny below reproach. Every feeling was offended; and had she not been tolerably certain, from Fanny's downcast looks, that no letter from Mr Calverleigh had reached her she thought she must have abandoned caution, and taken the girl roundly to task. At first inclined to give Mr Calverleigh credit for propriety, a little quiet reflection made her realise that if marriage was indeed his object he would scarcely commit an act of such folly as to write letters to Fanny which would be more than likely to fall into the hands of her aunts. His aim must be to propitiate Fanny's guardians; and in his dealings with Selina he had shown that he knew it. Abby thought that he had succeeded all too well. Selina had been very much shocked by the disclosures made to her, but she hoped, in a nebulous way, that perhaps, after all, they would be found to be untrue; and she was moved to what Abby considered an excess of sensibility by the spectacle of her niece running to look eagerly out of the window every time a vehicle drew up outside the house. 'Poor, poor child!' she mourned. 'It is so very affecting! I do not know how you can remain unmoved! I had not thought you so – so unfeeling, Abby!'

  'I'm not unmoved,' responded Abby crossly. 'I am most deeply moved – with a strong desire to give Fanny the finest trimming of her life! I'd do it, too, if I didn't fear that it would encourage her in the belief that she is a persecuted heroine!'

  In this noble resolve to abstain from gratifying her desire she was strengthened by Fanny's reception of the only piece of advice she permitted herself to give that lovelorn damsel: that she should not wear her heart on her sleeve. Chin up, eyes flashing, flying her colours in her cheeks, Fanny said: 'I am not ashamed of loving Stacy! Why should I dissemble?'

  Quite a number of pungent retorts rose to Abby's tongue, and it said much for her self-control that she uttered none of them. Intuition had made Fanny suspect already that her favourite aunt was ranged on the side of Stacy Calverleigh's enemies; she was slightly on the defensive, not yet hostile, but ready to show hackle. No useful purpose would be served by coming to cuffs with her, Abby thought, and therefore held her peace.

  Three

  Mr Calverleigh did not reappear in Bath that week, nor did he write to Fanny. Abby began to entertain the hope that a mountain had indeed been made out of a molehill, and that he had merely been amusing himself with a flirtation; and could have borne with tolerable equanimity Fanny's wilting demeanour had it not been disclosed to her by the amiable Lady Weaverham that her ladyship had received a very proper letter from him, excusing himself from dining with her on the following Wednesday, but stating that he would certainly be in Bath again by the end of the next week, when he would call in Lower Camden Place to proffer his apologies in person.

  This piece of news applied a damper to Abby's optimism. Her spirits were further depressed by the announcement by Selina, in the thread of a voice, that she had contracted a putrid sore throat, accompanied by fever, a severe headache, and a colicky disorder. She had not closed her eyes all night, and could only hope that these distressing symptoms did not presage an illness which, if not immediately fatal, would leave her to drag out the rest of her life between her bed and a sofa. Abby did not share these gloomy apprehensions, but she lost no time in sending for the latest practitioner to enjoy Selina's favour. She begged him not to encourage the sufferer to think herself hovering on the brink of the grave. He promised to reassure Selina, and very nearly lost his most lucrative patient by telling her, in hearty accents, that nothing worse had befallen her than what he was tactless enough to term a touch of influenza. Before he had time to prophesy a speedy recovery he realised that he had fallen into error, and, with a dexterity which (in spite of herself ) Abby was obliged to acknowledge, retrieved his position by saying that, although he would ordinarily consider the illness trifling, when it attacked persons of such frail constitution as Miss Wendover the greatest care must be exercised to ensure that no serious consequences should attend it. He recommended her to remain in bed; promised to send her within the hour a saline draught; approved of such remedies as extract of malt for a possible cough; goat's whey, to guard against consumption; laudanum drops in case of insomnia; and a diet of muttonbroth, tapioca-jelly, and barley-water, all of which she had herself suggested; and left the sickroom tolerably certain that he had restored her wavering faith in his skill. He told Abby, apologetically, that neither these remedies nor the depressing diet would do any harm, and with this she had to be content, resigning herself to the inevitable, and deriving what consolation she could from the reflection that for some days at least there was no danger that while she danced attendance on her sister Mr Calverleigh would be strengthening his hold on Fanny's youthful affections.

  The eldest Miss Wendover showed every sign of enjoying a protracted illness, for although the fever soon abated she maintained a ticklish cough, and, after an attack of heart-burn, threw out so many dark hints to her entourage about cardiac nerves that Fanny became quite alarmed, and asked Abby if poor Aunt Selina's heart had indeed been affected.

  'No, dear: not at all!' responded Abby cheerfully.

  'But – Abby, I have sometimes wondered if – Abby, does my aunt like to be ill?'

  'Yes, certainly she does. Why not? She has very little to divert her, after all! It makes her the centre of attention, too, and how unkind it would be to grudge it to her! The melancholy truth is, my love, that single females of her age are almost compelled to adopt dangerous diseases, if they wish to be objects of interest. Not only spinsters, either! You must surely have observed how many matrons, whose children are all married, and who are so comfortably situated that they have really nothing very much to do, develop the most interesting disorders!'

  Her eyes as round as saucers, Fanny asked: 'Do you mean that my aunt will lie on a sofa for the rest of her life?'

  'No, no!' said Abby. 'Sooner or later something will happen to give her thoughts a new direction, and you will be surprised to see how quickly she will recover!'

  In the event, this happened rather sooner than could have been expected. Shortly after noon one day, Abby entered her room to find her seated bolt upright on the day-bed, to which, supported by her maid, she had tottered an hour before, eagerly perusing the crossed sheet of a letter just delivered by the post.

  'Oh, dearest, whatever do you think?' she exclaimed, in accents startlingly
unlike those with which she had greeted her sister earlier in the day. 'The Leavenings are coming to spend the winter in Bath! Good God, they may have arrived already! Mrs Leavening writes that they mean to put up at the York House while they look about them for lodgings, and depend upon us to advise them, for they were never in Bath before, you know! I wonder if the lodgings the Thursleys hired in Westgate Building – but they are in the lower part of the town, of course, and though it is a broad street – and anything here, or in Pulteney Street, or Laura Place, might be above their price – not that Mrs Leavening tells what is the figure they have in mind, but I shouldn't suppose Mr Leavening's fortune to be more than genteel, would you?'

  'My dear, since I haven't the least guess who the Leavenings may be, I can't answer you!' replied Abby, her eyes alight with laughter.

  Miss Wendover was shocked. 'Abby! How can you have forgotten? From Bedfordshire – our own county! Almost our neighbours! He had a wart on his left cheek – such a pity! – but in all other respects quite unexceptionable! Or am I thinking of Mr Tarvin? Yes, I fancy it was he who had the wart, which makes it even more delightful, for there is something about warts, isn't there? Dearest, I wish you will go to York House this afternoon! So unfriendly not to welcome them immediately, and I wouldn't for the world have Mrs Leavening suspect that we had forgotten her! You will tell her how happy I am to hear of her arrival, and explain how it comes about that I am unable to visit her myself – not but what I am a great deal stronger today, and I daresay I may be able to come downstairs tomorrow. And if you were to walk up Milsom Street, Abby, you could pop into Godwin's, to discover if they haven't yet received that book Mrs Grayshott told me I should enjoy. It is called the Knight of something or other – not, of course, that I am an advocate for novel-reading. Perhaps Mrs. Leavening would come and sit with me for a little while tomorrow. What a lot she will have to tell us about our old friends, which James and Cornelia never do! I declare, it has put me in spirits only to think of it! We must hold one of our evening-parties, dearest! I shall occupy myself in making out a list of the people to be invited while you are in the town.' She added kindly: 'Such a fine afternoon as it is! It will do you good to take a walk, dearest. You have been cooped up with me for too long.'