Black Sheep

Chapter XVIII

Since Miss Butterbank, after a night and the better part of a day enduring the agonies of violent toothache, was closeted with the dentist when Mr Miles Calverleigh returned to Bath, the news of his arrival was not carried to Sydney Place until several hours after he had made an unexpected descent upon Miss Abigail Wendover.

He took her entirely by surprise. Not only did he present himself at an unusually early hour, but when Mitton admitted that he rather thought Miss Abigail was at home he said that there was no need to announce him, and ran up the stairs, leaving Mitton in possession of his hat and malacca cane, and torn between romantic speculation and disapproval of such informal behaviour.

Abby was alone, and engaged on the task of fashioning a collar out of a length of broad lace. The table in the drawing-room was covered with pins, patterns, and sheets of parchment, and Abby had just picked up a pair of shaping scissors when Mr Calverleigh walked into the room. She glanced up; something between a gasp and a shriek escaped her; the scissors fell with a clatter; and she started forward involuntarily, with her hands held out. “You’ve come back! Oh, you have come back!” she cried.

The unwisdom, and, indeed, the impropriety of this unguarded betrayal of her sentiments occurred to her too late, and did not seem to occur to Mr Calverleigh at all. Before she could recover herself she was in his arms, being kissed with considerable violence. “My bright, particular star!” uttered Mr Calverleigh, into her ear.

Mr Calverleigh had very strong arms, and a shoulder most conveniently placed for the use of a tall lady. Abby, gasping for breath, gratefully leaned her cheek against it, feeling, for a fewbrief moments, that she had come safely to harbour after a stormy passage—She said, clinging to him: “Miles! Oh, my dear, I’ve missed you so dreadfully!” But hardly had she uttered these words than all the difficulties of her situation rushed in upon her, with the recollection of the decision she had so painfully reached, and she said, trying to wrench herself free: “No! Oh, I can’t think what made me—! I can’t, Miles, I can’t!”

Mr Calverleigh, that successful man of affairs, was not one to be easily rocked off his balance. “What can’t you, my heart’s dearest?” he enquired.

Abby quivered. “Marry you! Oh, Miles, don’t!”

She broke from him, and turned away, groping blindly for her handkerchief, and trying very hard not to let her emotion get the better of her.

“Well!” said Mr Calverleigh, in stunned accents. “This is beyond everything! After what has just passed between us! I wonder you dare look me in the face!”

Abby, was not, in fact, daring to look him in the face: she was occupied in drying her wet cheeks.

“Has no one ever told you that it is the height of impropriety to kiss any gentleman, unless you have the intention of accompanying him immediately to the altar?” demanded the outraged Mr Calverleigh. “It will not do, ma’am! Such conduct—”

He broke off abruptly, as she looked up, between tears and laughter, and said, in quite another voice: “Now, what’s this? Let me look at you!”

As he took her face between his hands as he spoke, and turned it up, she was obliged to let him. She dared not meet his eyes, however, and very nearly broke down again when he said, after a moment’s scrutiny: “ My loved one, I left you in a high state of preservation! What has been happening here?”

She moved away, saying: “Do I look hagged? I am—I am rather tired. Fanny has been ill. And there have been other things.” She smiled, with an effort, and made a gesture towards a chair—“Won’t you sit down? I must tell you—explain to you—why I can’t marry you.”

“Yes, I think you must do that,” he said, drawing her to the sofa. “I can think of only one reason: that you find you don’t love me enough.”

She allowed him, though reluctantly, to push her gently down on to the sofa, and sat there, primly upright, with her hands tightly folded in her lap. “I meant to tell you that that was it, ” she said, keeping her eyes lowered. “I—thought it would be best to say just that. I never, never meant to—” She stopped, as a thought occurred to her, and looked up, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes. “I should like to know what Mitton was about to let you walk in on me, without coming first to ask me if I was at home to visitors, and not even announcing you!” she said, with a strong suggestion of ill-usage in her voice.

He had taken his place at the other end of the sofa, seated sideways, with one arm lying along the back of it: a position which enabled him to keep his eyes on her profile. He seemed to be quite at his ease; and there was nothing in his demeanour to suggest that he was suffering from any of the chagrin natural to a gentleman whose suit had been rejected. He said: “Oh, you mustn’t blame the poor fellow! I told him I would announce myself.”

“You had no business to do so!” scolded Abby. “If you hadn’t startled me—if I had had a moment’s warning—I shouldn’t have—it wouldn’t have happened!”

“Well, you might not have kissed me, but I had every intention of kissing you, so it’s just as well he didn’t announce me,” said Mr Calverleigh. “Do you always kiss gentlemen who walk in unannounced? I’ll take good care none is allowed to do so when we are married!”

A smile trembled on her lips, and she blushed faintly, but also she shook her head, saying: “We are not going to be married.’

“I was forgetting that,” he apologized. “Why are we not going to be married?”

“That is what I feel I must explain to you. I didn’t mean to, but after behaving so very improperly it wouldn’t be any use to tell you that I don’t love you, would it?”

“No, none at all,” he agreed.

“No. Well—you must try to understand, Miles! I know you don’t enter into my feelings on this subject, so it is very difficult to explain it to you. I have thought and thought—argued with myself until my head aches—but in the end I’ve realized that I cannot marry you—ought not to do so!”

“What brought you to this conclusion?” he asked conversationally.

She began carefully to pleat her damp handkerchief. “I suppose you might say it was Mrs Ruscombe. She is Cornelia’s bosom-bow—James’s wife, you know—and she makes it her business to spy on us, and to send a record of all our doings to Cornelia.” She raised her eyes to his for an instant, smiling wryly. “I am afraid we were not very discreet, Miles, for she told Cornelia that I was encouraging your advances, and that brought James down upon us, as you may imagine. Of course we came to points—we always do—but even though I was in the most shocking pelter I couldn’t keep from laughing. You never heard such pompous fustian in your life! I found myself wishing you could have been there to enjoy it!”

“I rather wish that too,” acknowledged Mr Calverleigh. “Did he forbid the banns?”

“Heavens, yes! He said that if I married you I should be cast out of the family, and he would have divulged the Awful Truth about you and Celia if I hadn’t told him that I knew it already, and that shocked him so much that he said he began to think we—you and I—were well matched!”

“You know, he’s not such a bad fellow after all!” remarked Miles.

“He is a toad. It wasn’t anything he said which made me realize how impossible it is. Nothing he said to me. But he said it all over again to Selina, and, I daresay, a great deal more.” She fell silent, deeply troubled. At last, she sighed, and said: “I never knew how much Selina loved me. James told her she would have to choose between me and the family, and, oh, Miles, she said that she would never give me up, whatever I did! Selina! But she was dreadfully upset—she made herself ill, and she is still quite overpowered, and—and can scarcely bear to let me out of her sight. She says over and over again that she doesn’t know what she will do when I’m gone, and that—has made me realize how wrong—how heartless—it would be if I were to marry you. If you had been the sort of dull, respectable man of whom the family would have approved I think she would have grown accustomed—though sometimes I feel I ought not to leave her, no matter who asked me to marry him. You see, we have been together all my life, and for years—ever since my mother died—I’ve managed everything for her, and taken care of her. But if you had been Peter Dunston, whom she has been trying to persuade me to marry these three years, she would have been pleased, and that would have helped her to bear the loneliness she dreads. She would have known I was near at hand, and she wouldn’t have been estranged from the family, or— Oh, I can’t explain it to you! So—so many evils would result from our marriage! If you think it wouldn’t become known that I had married you against the wishes of my family, you cannot know Bath! They might seem insignificant to you; they seem so to me; but not to Selina. And then there is Fanny!”

“I wondered when we were going to come to Fanny,” remarked Miles chattily.

“We must come to her. I can’t desert her, Miles. She is in great affliction, poor child, for she has discovered what is your vile nephew’s true character!”

“Just as you hoped she might,” he interpolated.

“Yes, indeed, and I am thankful for it! But it has quite overset her, and—and she too needs me. It would never do to leave her here with Selina—wholly separated from me! For she would be, you see. James wouldn’t permit me even to write to her. When she knew about Stacy, she told me that she was glad she had me—for always. She won’t want me always, of course, but perhaps for some years to come she will.”

“Would it be of any use for me to suggest that there are answers to all these problems?” he said.

She shook her head. “No. You see, one can argue—one can persuade oneself that none of these things matter, but one knows, all the time, that they do matter. Miles, I could not, deliberately, and selfishly, for the sake of my own happiness, plunge my whole family into so much trouble, and the two I love most into misery as well! I beg of you, don’t try to convince me! I’m worn out with thinking!”

Her voice cracked; she put up her hand to shield her eyes; and felt her other taken into a sustaining clasp.

“No, I won’t try to convince you,” said Miles reassuringly.

Someone must have told Selina that her sister was closeted with Mr Calverleigh. Since James Wendover’s visit she had not left her room until noon, yet here she was, entering the drawing-room with a nervous cough, and looking far less trim than usual, as if she had dressed in a hurry.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, in rehearsed surprise. “Mr Calverleigh! Dear me, I had no notion you were in Bath! So civil of you to call! Such a wretched day too!”

Abby sprang up and walked over to the window; Mr Calverleigh, rising more leisurely, showed no sign of discomfiture, but shook hands with Selina, and in the calmest way enquired after her health. He remained only for a few minutes longer, and when he took his leave it was with unruffled composure.

Hardly was the door shut behind him than Selina said in an agitated voice: “He was holding your hand! Oh, Abby, why did he come? Do not keep me in suspense! I can’t bear it!”

“I imagine you must know why he came,” said Abby, in a level voice.

“I guessed it!” moaned Selina, pressing a hand to her heart “What was your answer ? Tell me, Abby!”

“Don’t distress yourself!” Abby said wearily. “I have refused his offer.”

“Oh!” cried Selina, suddenly radiant. “Oh, how glad I am! Dear, dear Abby, now we can be happy again!”

Feeling quite unable to respond to this, Abby left the room without a word, and sought the seclusion of her bedchamber. She remained there for some considerable time, and was thus spared the account of Mr Calverleigh’s arrival in Bath, which Miss Butterbank, with a scarf still wrapped round her face, brought to Sydney Place. Selina said nothing about this when she later told Abby the rest of the news Miss Butterbank had poured into her ears. This was of a startling and an intriguing nature: Mrs Clapham, accompanied by her retinue, had left Bath on the previous evening; and Mr Stacy Calverleigh had undoubtedly followed her, for he had boarded one of the post coaches that very morning, and without, said Miss Butterbank, a word of warning to anyone.

Abby was relieved to know that he had removed himself from Bath, but although she made an effort to enter into Selina’s speculations on the various possible causes of these separate departures, she felt no flicker of interest. The next piece of Bath news came from Mrs Leavening, and interested her too much.

Mrs Leavening, now established in Orange Grove, had called at York House for any letters which might have been sent there, and she had learnt of Mr Calverleigh’s return. She had also learnt that he had remained for only one night before disappearing again, like a perfect will-o’-the-wisp.

“There’s no knowing what freakish thing he’ll do next!” chuckled Mrs Leavening. “What in the world made him come all the way from London only for one night? It seems he’s set up his own chaise, too, but where it has taken him off to goodness knows! He is quite in my black books, as I shall tell him, for he promised to give us a look-in when he came back to Bath, and never a glimpse of him did we get. However, they say he means to return, so I daresay I shall have an opportunity to give him a scold.”

Abby, knowing that it would be better for her not to see Mr Calverleigh again, tried to school herself into hoping that he would not call in Sydney Place, but failed. Their parting had been too abrupt; there had been so much left unsaid; and to have been obliged to say goodbye to him as to the merest acquaintance was too painful to be borne.

Nothing more was heard of him for three interminable days.

Selina, miraculously restored to health and spirits, wrote a surreptitious letter to James, informing him, in the strictest confidence, that all was at an end between Abby and Mr Miles Calverleigh, and that she had known from the start that the affair had been grossly exaggerated by Mrs Ruscombe. She added that she hoped dear Cornelia would not, in future, allow herself to pay so much heed to That Woman’s malicious gossip.

Her expression of dismay, when, upon the fourth day, Mitton announced the arrival of Mr Calverleigh was almost ludicrous. It caught Fanny’s attention, and made her look quickly at Abby, a sudden suspicion entering her mind.

Mr Calverleigh, with his customary disregard for the conventions governing polite circles, had chosen a most unseasonable hour for his visit. The ladies had only ten minutes earlier left the breakfast-parlour. He seemed to be quite unaware that he was committing a social solecism, but entered the room as though sure that he must be welcome, and cheerfully greeted its occupants. He said that he was glad to have found them at home, congratulated Fanny on her recovery from her illness, and, turning to Abby, said, smiling at her: “I’ve come to take you for a drive.”

Selina seethed with indignation. What Abby found to like in this abrupt, mannerless creature was a matter passing her comprehension! She hurried into speech. “So obliging of you, sir, but it would be most unwise for my sister to venture out in an open carriage! The weather is so unsettled—it will come on to pour in another hour, I daresay, for at this season there is no depending on it! Besides, I wish her to go with me to the Pump Room!”

Forgetting her own troubles in the liveliest curiosity, Fanny said brightly: “I’ll go with you, Aunt Selina. A drive is just what will do Abby good, after being cooped up in the house for so long!”

Mr Calverleigh, smiling at her, said: “Good girl!” which made her giggle, and told Abby to go and put on her bonnet. He added a recommendation to bring a tippet, or a shawl, with her.

“So that you may be easy!” he said, addressing himself to Selina “I don’t think she will take cold, if she wraps herself up well, and if it should come on to rain we can always find shelter, you know.”

He then engaged Fanny in idle conversation, while Selina sought in vain for further reasons why Abby should not drive out with him.

When Abby came back into the room, suitably attired for the expedition, Selina made a last attempt to convince her that she was running the gravest risk of contracting a heavy cold, if not an inflammation of the lungs, but Fanny, giving Abby an impulsive kiss, interrupted her very rudely, saying: “Fiddle! It is the finest day we have had for weeks! I’ll come and tuck you up in quantities of shawls, Abby!”

“Thank you!” Abby said, laughing. “I fancy one will be enough! Goodbye, Selina: there is no need for you to be in a fidget, I promise you.”

Mr Calverleigh watched her go out of the room, and turned to take leave of Selina. “Don’t worry!” he said. “I shall take great care of her.”

Five minutes later, leaving Fanny waving farewell on the doorstep, he drove off at a smart trot, and said darkly: “Indian manners, my dear!”

Abby chuckled. “Rag-manners! Poor Selina!”

“I was afraid you might yield to her entreaties.”

“No. I hoped I might see you again. It was so uncomfortable—saying goodbye as we did. I never told you about Fanny, either. We—we won’t discuss that other matter, for there is nothing to be said, and I know you won’t distress me by trying to persuade me, will you?”

“No, no, I won’t try to persuade you!” he promised.

This ready acquiescence was unexpected, and not altogether welcome; but after a few moments Abby said, with determined cheerfulness: “Stacy did mean to elope with Fanny, you know. She told me the whole. If she hadn’t contracted influenza, heaven knows what might have happened! But she did, and while she was laid up we had the most amazing stroke of good fortune befall us!”

He laughed. “No, did you?”

“Yes, for who should arrive in Bath but a rich widow! Fabulously rich, by all accounts! I never saw her myself, but I believe she is quite young, and very pretty. And she put up at the White Hart!”

“No!”

“Yes! With a companion, and a maid, and a footman—oh, and a courier as well! You wouldn’t have believed it!”

“Oh, wouldn’t I!” said Mr Calverleigh.

“And she hadn’t been there for a day before Stacy was busy fixing his interest with her! Would you have thought it possible?”

“Not only possible, but certain.”

“Well, I must say I didn’t, when I first heard of it. I never supposed him to be as—as shameless as that!”

“My odious nephew, I regret to say, is entirely shameless.”

“He must be. I can’t help pitying the widow, for I think she must have found him out. She left Bath quite suddenly, and although I was excessively thankful that Stacy did attach himself to her, it must have been very painful for her.”

“Set your mind at rest, my love! It wasn’t at all painful for her.”

“You can’t know that!” objected Abby.

“Oh, yes, I can!” he retorted. “I sent her here!”

“You?” she gasped.

“Yes, of course. Didn’t you guess it? I rather thought you would.”

“Good God, no! But who was she? How did you contrive to send her to Bath? And what a shocking thing to do! Exposing her to—Miles, it was monstrous! How can you laugh?”

“You shouldn’t make me laugh. My precious pea-goose, I hired her to bamboozle Stacy! As far as I can discover, her performance was most talented—though she seems to have broken down a trifle before she rang down the final curtain. As to who she is, I really don’t know, except that she was at onetime an actress.”

Miss Abigail Wendover, having digested this information said, in accents of stern disapproval: “I collect, sir, that she is not a—a respectable female?”

“Let us rather say, ma’am, that you are unlikely to meet her in the first circles.”

“You seem to have done so!”

“No, no, not in the first circles!”

Her dimple quivered, but she suppressed it. “And are you very well acquainted with her?” she enquired politely.

“Oh, no! I only met her once—to rehearse her in her role, you know. Dolly found her for me. Dolly was Mrs Clapham’s companion. I was extremely well acquainted with her—some twenty years ago,” he explained outrageously. “She used to be known as the Dasher, and a very dashing little barque of frailty she was! She is now engaged in—er—a different branch of the profession, and has become alarmingly tonnish. However, she consented, at an extortionate price, to take part in my masquerade. In fact, she insisted on doing so. She never could resist a spree.”

“You,” said Abby, in a shaking voice, “are the most disreputable person I have ever encountered!”

“Well, that’s not saying much! Except for my odious nephew, I don’t suppose you’ve encountered any disreputable persons at all.” He turned his head, and added: “You never knew me in my disreputable days, Abigail. They are all in the past.”

Her eyes fell. After a minute, she said: “It must have cost you a great deal, I fear. The masquerade, I mean. When I asked you to rescue Fanny, I never intended—”

“Oh, I had an axe of my own to grind as well!” he assured her.

“Oh!” she said doubtfully. “Well,—” She stopped suddenly, recognizing a landmark. “Good gracious, we are on the London road! Where are we going?”

“Reading,” he replied.

“Reading?” she echoed blankly. “Don’t be so absurd! It must be sixty miles away!”

“Sixty-eight.”

She laughed. “Just a gentle drive, to exercise the horses! Seriously, where are we going?”

“I am perfectly serious.”

“Oh, are you, indeed?” she retorted. “And we shall be back in good time for dinner, no doubt!”

“No my darling, we shall not,” he said. “We are not going back at all.”

She stared incredulously at him. “Not—Miles, stop bantering me! It is too ridiculous! You cannot suppose I’m such a ninny as to believe we could drive all the way to Reading in a curricle-and-pair!”

“Oh, no, of course I don’t! We are only going as far as to Chippenham in the curricle. My post-chaise is waiting there, to carry us the rest of the way.”

She still felt that he must be trying to hoax her, but she began to be uneasy. “And what do we do when we reach Reading?” she asked.

“We get married, my very dear.”

“Have you run mad?” she demanded.

“Well, I don’t think so!”

“Miles—Miles, you are joking me, aren’t you?”

“I promise you I was never more in earnest. I can’t show it to you at the moment, but I have a special licence in my pocket.”

“Oh, how dare you?” she gasped. “Stop at once! If you think I am going to elope with you—”

“No, no!” he said. “This isn’t an elopement! I’m abducting you!”

She tried to speak, but dared not trust her voice.

“I thought it would be the best thing to do,” he explained.

That was too much for her self-control; for the life of her she could not help bursting into laughter. But when she managed to stop laughing, she said: “Oh, do, please, take me home! How could you think I would consent to such a shocking thing?”

“My dear girl, you don’t consent to an abduction! You consent to an elopement, and I knew you wouldn’t do that.”

“You told me once that you thought an unwilling bride would be the very devil!” she reminded him.

“If I had thought that you were unwilling you wouldn’t be sitting beside me now,” he replied.

“But I am unwilling! Miles, I won’t—I can’t! Oh, I believed you understood!”

“I did. You said you wouldn’t marry me for a great many reasons which were most of them quite idiotish, but you also said that you couldn’t seek your own happiness at the cost of Selina’s and Fanny’s. Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you sacrifice me!”

After a moment’s stricken silence, Abby said remorsefully: “I never thought of that! Would it—would it be—?”

“Yes,” he said. “It would!”

“Oh, if only I knew what I ought to do!” she cried wretchedly.

“You don’t, but I do. So don’t argue with yourself any more! You haven’t any choice in the matter, you know. That’s why I’ve forcibly carried you off. It makes it much easier for you, don’t you think?”

“Miles, you are the most impossible, disgraceful—Only think what a scandal there would be!”

“What, you don’t imagine that any member of your family would breathe a word about it, do you? No, no! The marriage was private, of course! I expect James will think of some excellent reason for that.”

“James! He will utterly disown me!”

“No hope of that,” he said. “I daresay he may hold off for a few months to save his dignity, but it won’t be for long. You, my loved one, little though it interests you, are about to become an extremely wealthy woman. You are also going to become the mistress of Danescourt.”

“Danescourt? But doesn’t that belong to Stacy?”

“No, it belongs to me: I’ve bought it from him. I am taking you there tonight. It’s in a deplorable state, but I threw an army into it last week to put it into some kind of order, and told our old housekeeper to hire some servants, so I hope you won’t find it too uncomfortable. We won’t stay there above a day or two, but I want you to inspect it, and decide what you wish for in the way of curtains and things of that nature. Where would you like to go after that?”

She said helplessly: “I don’t know. Oh, this is too fantastic! For heaven’s sake, take me home! Only think of poor Selina!”

“Nothing would prevail upon me to take you home. You may write a note to poor Selina from Chippenham: I’ll send it by a post-boy: but you are not going to see her again until you are firmly riveted, my girl, and it is too late for her to cling round your neck!”

“But what will she do?” said Abby distractedly.

“She will in all probability find a substitute for you in Miss Butterbank,” he replied calmly. “What’s more, they will deal extremely together. Fanny, I daresay, will go to your sister in London. By the by, do you wish for a London house?”

“No, of course I don’t! Miles, do you realize that I haven’t even a toothbrush?”

“Do you know, I believe you’re right?” he said. “And I thought I had remembered everything! What a fortunate thing that you mentioned it! We must buy one in Reading.”

“Have you had the audacity to—Oh, you are too abominable! I won’t marry you! I will not! Take me home!”

Mr Miles Calverleigh brought his horses to a halt at the side of the road, and turned, and smiled at her. “Tell me that that is what, in your heart,you want me to do, and I will!”

She looked into his eyes, and what she saw in them made her pulses race.

“Tell me, Abby!”

“You may be able to abduct me,” said Abby, with dignity, “but you can’t force me to tell lies!... Miles! there’s a coach coming, and a man staring at us over the hedge! For heaven’s sake—!”