Cotillion

Chapter X

Considerably to their surprise, and not a little to their relief, Lady Dolphinton received the engaged couple later in the evening with a degree of affability which was as rare as it was unexpected. She was a hard-featured woman, with a predatory mouth, a smile that never reached her eyes, and an air of consequence. At no time had she been popular with her deceased husband’s relations, for she was both proud and ill-natured, insolent to persons whom she considered to be her social inferiors, tyrannical to her son, and ruthless in the methods she employed to achieve her ends. Even Lady Legerwood, always prone to take the kindliest view of everyone, could not like Augusta. In her eyes, Augusta was a bad mother, whose treatment of her dull-witted son had, she maintained, done much to increase his imbecility. She could say no worse of anyone. The younger members of the family were frightened of her when children, and avoided her when rhey grew up. Mr. Penicuik detested her. He made very little secret of his belief that his nephew’s untimely decease might be laid at her door; and none at all of his conviction that his great-nephew’s peculiarities were directly inherited vrom her. He said that all the Skirlings were loose screws, adding darkly that he didn’t blame them for setting it about that old James Skirling had been drowned while fishing on a Scottish loch. No one, he said, could be expected to advertize the fact that a member of the family had to be confined in a room at the top of the house, with a couple of attendants to see that he came to no harm.

Knowing how much she must have angered the Countess by rejecting Dolphinton’s suit, Kitty went to her box in considerable trepidation, clutching Freddy’s arm tightly enough to draw from him a remonstrance. She begged pardon, and expressed the hope that her ladyship would not say anything very dreadful. He seemed surprised, and said: “Lord, Kit, you ain’t afraid of her?”

“N-no. At least—yes, I am a little! I think she is an evil person! And she can say such crue! things!”

“Go away if she does,” said Freddy.

“Oh, Freddy, would you dare?” .she asked, laughing a little.

“No question of daring: easy thing to do!”

“Freddy, she would be as mad as fire!” said Kitty, awed by the very thought.

But the practical Mr. Standen refused to be intimidated. “Wouldn’t make any odds to us if she was. Shouldn’t be there to see it,” he pointed out. “No need to be in a quake: I won’t let her frighten you.”

This unexpected sangfroid greatly impressed Miss Charing, but she could not be sorry that it was not put to the test. They found the Countess wreathed in smiles, arch felicitations to Freddy and broad compliments to Kitty issuing smoothly from between her thin, painted lips. Kitty was even permitted to kiss her ladyship’s cheek; and learned, with incredulity, that nothing had more pleased the Countess than the news of her engagement.

While his mother was overwhelming Kitty with her goodwill, Dolphinton, having acquired a grip on Freddy’s coat, was subjecting it to a series of tugs. Freddy, a wary eye on his aunt, was at first unconscious of this attempt to attract his attention, but when the tugs became imperative they attracted it to rather more purpose that Lord Dolphinton desired. “Stop it, Dolph!” he said indignantly. “First time I’ve had this coat on, and between the pair of you, you and Kit—” He paused, meeting his cousin’s anguished look of entreaty, and said: “Oh, very well! What’s the matter, old fellow?”

“Never told me you was bringing Kitty to town!” said Dolphinton imploringly. “Of course I didn’t! Why should I?” replied Freddy.

“He never told me!” said Dolphinton, addressing his parent.

She laughed, but in a way (as Miss Charing later told Mr. Standen) that boded ill for him. “Good God, Foster, what is that to the purpose? I wish you will strive to be a little less foolish! And so you are staying with dear Margaret, Kitty? Such a sweet creature, but perhaps not quite the person to take care of you! Naughty girl! Why did you not come to me? I am sure, if I have begged poor Uncle Matthew once to send you to me for a season, I have done so fifty times! I promise you, I grudge you to Margaret! It was always the wish of my heart to bring out a daughter!”

She rattled on in this style until it became time for them to return to their own box, her eyes flickering all the while from Kitty’s face to Freddy’s, and back again. She enquired solicitously after Mr. Penicuik, after the Legerwoods, after Mr. Westruther, whom she had not seen for an age: could it be that he was still out of town? She wanted to know if Kitty was being tolerably well entertained in London: did Meg mean to procure a voucher for her, admitting her to Almack’s? Had Freddy taken her driving in Hyde Park? But this was something Kitty must grant Dolphinton the pleasure of doing! She must know that he was an excellent whip: drove the prettiest turn-out. “You must take Kitty up beside you one afternoon, Foster: you will like to do that, I know!”

“Like to do that,” he repeated obediently, but looking so miserable that Kitty was hard put to it to refrain from laughing.

“And, I must say,” she told Freddy, once they were out of earshot, “I hope he does not offer to take me, for I am persuaded he would overturn me!”

“No, there you’re wrong,” replied Freddy. “Wouldn’t think it, but he’s a first-rate fiddler. Bruising rider too, if ever he had the chance! She don’t let him hunt, but we had him down to stay in Leicestershire once. Never saw the poor fellow so happy! Dashed if he didn’t lay his leg over the ugliest customer m’father ever had in the stables! Brute went like a lamb with him, what’s more. You’d be quite safe. Not that I think he’ll take you: looked devilish blue, didn’t he?”

She agreed, but, knowing the Countess, she was not surprised when he came to pay a morning’Call in Berkeley Square the following day, escorting that determined lady. The Countess, graciously embracing her niece, had come to congratulate her on her situation. She had been calling in Mount Street, to enquire after the invalids, and had learnt from her dearest sister that Meg was increasing. But her ungrateful niece, observing with amazement the affability she showed towards Miss Charing, thought that she had come rather to ingratiate herself with a girl whose adoption by Mr. Penicuik she had deplored for years. She heard Dolphinton, acting under his mother’s goad, make an assignation to take Kitty for a drive in the Park that very afternoon, and was quite at a loss to understand the meaning of these strange tactics. “For what,” she argued, when these unwelcome visitors had left the house, “can she hope to achieve, when she is apprized of your engagement to Freddy? I perfectly understand how greatly she must have wished you to marry Dolph, when my uncle made you his heiress, for Mama says that his estates are much embarrassed, and she, you know, is shockingly expensive! Did you remark the furs she was wearing? I could not but stare, and wonder how she contrived to rig herself out so handsomely on a jointure which Mama says cannot have been large!”

“Well, she does not!” said Kitty. “Poor Dolph is so foolish that you may depend upon it that it is she who still holds his purse-strings! That is what Uncle Matthew says, at all events; and also that there is nothing amiss but what a little management and economy might well set to rights. Though I am bound to own,” she added conscientiously, “that that is just what Uncle Matthew would say!”

Meg laughed, but said: “It may be so, yet still I don’t see why she should think it worth while to encourage Dolph to take you driving!”

“Encourage! PoorDolph! She compelled him!” exclaimed Kitty, unable to suppress a giggle.

“Well, I know she did, but I was never more surprised in my life than when I heard you say you would go with him! Why, Kitty?”

“Oh, Freddy assures me he won’t overturn this phaeton of his!” said Kitty blithely. “I could not refuse, when I knew that odious woman would be so cross to him if I did! Besides, I mean to discover why she made him invite me! What should I wear, Meg, to go out driving in a phaeton?”

“To go out driving with Dolph, anything!”

“No, don’t be provoking! Do, pray, tell me!”

“I will rather tell my poor brother how he is betrayed! The hair-brown pelisse, you goose, and the hat with the gold feathers!”

Lord Dolphinton arrived punctually in Berkeley Square, but Kitty’s hopes of inducing him to explain his mother’s odd conduct seemed likely to be blighted by the presence of a wooden-faced groom, who stood perched up behind them, well able to hear every word that was spoken. Indeed, when she ventured to suggest to Dolphinton that he was out of spirits, he shot a scared look at her, and followed this up by a series of grimaces which she correctly interpreted to be intended to convey a warning. She at once began to talk of trivialities, taking a great interest in everything about her, and trying to hit upon some means of detaching him from his guardian angel. It was a bright, day, and a week of such spring-like weather had caused many buds to open. A glimpse of a path leading between flower-beds provided Kitty with the excuse she needed. She cried out in delight, and said: “Primroses! Oh, how pretty! How much I should like to explore that path!”

The hint failed. Lord Dolphinton shook his head. “Not a carriage-way,” he said.

“No, but do, pray, stop for a minute, Dolph! Would you object to it if I were to run back, just to walk a very little way down the path?”

“No,” said his lordship, drawing his pair to a standstill. “Can’t see why you want to look at primroses, but I don’t object. I won’t keep the bays standing more than ten minutes, though. Not disobliging, but won’t do that. Bad for them.”

The groom, who had jumped down from the phaeton, and stood waiting to assist Miss Charing to alight, gave a discreet cough, and said, touching his cockaded hat: “I could walk the horses, my lord, if you should wish to accompany Miss.”

“Oh, yes!” instantly said Kitty, “Pray allow him to do so, Dolph! I would dearly love to walk for a little while in this beautiful park!”

Dolphinton appeared to be much struck by this suggestion. He said, with the first sign of animation he had shown that day: “That’s what I’ll do! That’s a good notion. You think it’s a good notion, don’t you, Kitty? Females don’t walk alone in London. Finglass shall walk the horses, and I’ll go with you.”

A fair-minded girl, Miss Charing realized that Lady Dolphinton was not altogether to be blamed for treating her only child with impatience. She curbed her own impatience, however, and waited until Dolphinton should have finished issuing his painstaking, and somewhat repetitive, instructions to his groom. But exasperation nearly got the better of her when his lordship said, as they walked away together: “I’ll tell you why I said it was a good notion. I don’t want to look at primroses. Don’t want to look at anything. Want to say something Finglass can’t hear.”

“Well, of course!” Kitty said. “That is why I said I should like to walk down this path!”

“You want to say something he can’t hear?” asked his lordship, surprised. “Well, of all things! It’s a—it’s a— well, I forget the word, but there is one. Both of us wanting the same thing.”

“Yes, Dolph, but never mind that!” said Kitty, taking his arm, and pressing it in a motherly fashion. “Tell me what it was you wished to say to me!”

“Wanted to say mustn’t say anything with Finglass up behind. Tells my mother,” explained his lordship.

Once again Miss Charing was obliged to exert considerable self-control. “Dolph, does that creature spy on you?” she demanded.

“Tells my mother where I’ve been. Tells her what I do.”

“Why don’t you turn him off?” she said hotly.

“She wouldn’t let me.”

She gave his arm a little shake. “She could not stop you! You are a man, Dolph, not a schoolboy!”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But she could.”

“Oh, I wish you were not so much afraid of your Mama!” sighed Kitty.

He paused to look down into her face, his own greatly astonished. “You do? It’s that thing again. Thing I’ve forgotten. Because I do, too.”

She perceived that it would be fruitless to pursue this subject. She said instead: “Why did your mother urge you to bring me for this drive?”

A deep sigh shook him. “Wants you to marry me,” he replied. “Says I did the thing badly.”

“But this is nonsensical!” she pointed out. “How can she think of such a thing when she knows I am engaged to Freddy?”

“Says you aren’t. Says she suspected a bubble all along. Says she knew you wasn’t when she saw you last night. Says she ain’t to be deceived.” He sighed again. “True!” he said, in a depressed tone.

Miss Charing’s arm had stiffened. She said carefully: “She is quite out this time, however. Of course I am engaged to Freddy! Why should she suppose it is a bubble?”

Dolphinton wrinkled his brow in an effort of memory. “Something to do with Jack,” he produced. “It don’t make sense, which is why I can’t remember it. I remember things very well in general, but not when I don’t understand them.”

“Well, it is a very good thing that you don’t remember foolish things!” said Kitty warmly. “You may tell your Mama that she very much mistakes the matter! No, I suppose you would not dare to do so: I shall contrive a way of telling her myself.”

He gripped her arm in great agitation. “No, no! You won’t tell Mama I told you what she said!”

He was so much alarmed that her anger died. She said soothingly: “No, I promise you I will not, Dolph. I would never betray you: you know I would not! I wish very much that I could help you.”

His grip shifted from her wrist to her hand, which he pressed gratefully. “I like you, Kitty!” he uttered. “I like you better than Freddy. Better than Hugh. Better than—”

“Yes, yes!” she interrupted hastily. “Better than any of them!”

They walked slowly on, Kitty lost in thought, Dolphinton content to remain silent. Suddenly Kitty spoke. “Dolph, I have been thinking, and it has occurred to me all at once— You don’t wish to be married to me, do you?” He shook his head. “Why don’t you?” she demanded straitly.

He swallowed once or twice. “Not—not good at explaining!” he said.

She paid no heed to this. “You like me, and you always do what your Mama bids you, and I must say it does seem to me as though you would be very glad to be married, if only to escape from your Mama. Dolph, can it be—are you— Dolph, do you wish to marry someone else?”

He turned quite pale, and almost dragged her round. “Go back to the carriage!” he said. “Keeping the horses standing!”

“No, that horrid groom is taking care of them for you. Tell me, Dolph! I won’t tell your Mama! I won’t tell anyone—upon my honour, I will not! It is some lady whom she does not like?”

“Never met her,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t like her.”

“Come and sit beside me on that seat!” she coaxed.

“Take a chill! Better go back!”

“We will directly. It is so warm that I am sure it can do us no harm to sit for a few minutes in the sun. There! You see how pleasant it is! Pray don’t be afraid to confide in me! I would like so much to be able to help you. What is her name?”

“Hannah.”

“Hannah! Well—well, that is a very pretty name, I am sure! And her other name?”

“Plymstock. That’s her brother’s name,” said his lordship, making the matter plain. “Lives with him. Lives with his wife, too. Mrs. Plymstock. Don’t like her. Don’t like Plymstock either.” He reflected for a moment. “Or the children,” he said.

“Why don’t you like Mr. Plymstock?” asked Kitty, rather taken aback.

“He’s a Cit,” replied his lordship simply.

“Oh, dear! But perhaps he is perfectly respectable!”

“No, he ain’t. He’s a Revolutionary.”

“Good heavens!”

He nodded. “Doesn’t like me. Doesn’t want me to marry Hannah. She says he don’t like Earls. Shows you, doesn’t it?”

She thought that it certainly threw a little light, but she refrained from saying so. “Tell me about Miss Plymstock!” she begged. “Is she pretty?”

“Yes,” said his lordship. “Got the kind of face I like. Thought so the first time I saw her.”

“When was that, Dolph?”

“Cheltenham, last year. Mama took the cure. Thought I was hacking about the country. Wasn’t. Hoaxed her.”

“A very excellent thing to have done!” approved Kitty. “I think you were very clever to have thought of it!”

“Hannah thought of it. I ain’t clever: she is. But she don’t bother me. Like to marry her,” he said wistfully.

It appeared to Miss Charing that there would be little likelihood of his being permitted to do so. Only one circumstance could render such a match tolerable in Lady Dolphiriton’s eyes. She put a tentative question, and received in answer one of his melancholy headshakes.

“No. No fortune,” he said.

“Oh, dear!” she said, thinking that it all seemed rather hopeless.

“I don’t want a fortune. I want horses. Like to go and live at Dolphinton and breed horses.”

“To Ireland! Well, and so you should! Does Hannah say that too?”

“Yes. She don’t want to live in London either.”

“I wish I could meet her!”

He looked surprised, but pleased. “You do? Wish you could meet Hannah?”

“Yes, but if she lives in Cheltenham—”

“Don’t live in Cheltenham. Lives in Keppel Street. Not a good address. Mama wouldn’t like it. Full of Cits and lawyers. Don’t like it much myself. But I go there,” said Dolphinton, in a burst of confidence. “Mama thinks I go to Boodle’s. That’s a hoax too.”

It seemed to Kitty that this particular hoax was one which could only lead to disaster. She almost shuddered to think of what Dolphinton’s fate would be if some chance discovered the deception to his parent. “Dolph, why should you not take me to visit Miss Plymstock?” she asked. “I wish very much to help you, but first I do think I should see her, because—well, I think I should!”

“Couldn’t. Finglass would tell Mama.”

“And so he may, for I have thought of an excellent scheme! Now, listen carefully, Dolph! When we go back to the carriage, I shall ask you where is Keppel Street. I think perhaps you should say you don’t know—hoaxing Finglass, you see.”

“I should like to do that,” said his lordship, showing faint animation.

“Of course you would! Then you will ask Finglass if he knows. And I shall say that I have a friend living there—what is the number of Miss Plymstock’s house, Dolph?”

“Seventeen,” he answered, watching her with rapt attention.

“Good! I will remember. I shall ask if you would object to it if I paid her a visit.”

Lord Dolphinton, much stirred, had a flash of genius. “I’ll say I don’t object, and we’ll go there!”

“Exactly so! Can you keep that in your head, do you think?”

He requested her to repeat it all; and when she had done so said that he could remember it very well. She did not feel hopeful, but it soon appeared that he had not been making an idle boast when he had told his cousins that he could remember things that were said to him two or three times. All passed precisely as had been planned, and it was not long before Miss Charing was seated in a drawing-room in Keppel Street, waiting for the man-servant to bring Miss Plymstock to her. While she waited, she took stock of her surroundings. The house was respectable; the room in which she sat was furnished with propriety, if not with elegance; and she could perceive no signs of vulgarity, such as would render an alliance with Miss Plymstock quite ineligible. Then the door opened, and Miss Plymstock stood before her.

Miss Charing suffered a severe shock, and as she put out her hand realized that Dolphinton must have formed a greater passion than she had supposed to be at all possible. Only a man in love could have described Miss Plymstock as pretty. She was a rather stout young woman of about his own age, with sandy hair and lashes, and a florid complexion. While there was nothing repulsive in her appearance, few persons would have gone so far as to have said that she was even passably good-looking. Upon Dolphinton’s performing the introduction, which he did as soon as he had been prodded by Kitty, she shook Kitty’s hand heartily, and said in a blunt but by no means ungenteel voice: “How do you do? I’m very happy to make your acquaintance, for I know of you from Foster here, and I can tell he likes you.”

She then kissed his lordship’s cheek, and patted him in a motherly way, told him to sit down and be comfortable, and turned again to Kitty. “He has told you about us, I don’t doubt, and I can see you’ve not come here to tell me our marriage would be unsuitable. Well, I’m sure there’s no need for anyone to do so, for I’m no fool, and I know it. But I mean to marry him, for all that, only how to bring it about is more than I can see.”

Dolphinton, who had been watching her with an expression of dog-like devotion, sighed heavily.

“But his Mama cannot prevent the marriage, if he is set upon it!” Kitty said. “Dolph, you are twenty-seven years old! Could you not be resolute?”

He looked frightened, and began to stammer. Miss Plymstock took his hand, and sat patting it. “Don’t be in a taking, Foster!” she said kindly. “Your Mama shan’t know of it until I have you safe, and so I promise you.”

The servant came in just then with a tray, which he set on one of the tables. Miss Plymstock rose, and said: “Now, you shall have a glass of the Madeira wine you like, and sit drinking it by the fire, while I take Miss Charing to my bedchamber. Sister’s out, so no one will come in to disturb you, and if your Mama should ask you about your visit here you may say that Miss Charing and I went off together and left you alone, and she will be satisfied.”

Kitty, feeling that in her own way Miss Plymstock wss quite as masterful as Lady Dolphinton, meekly went with her up two pairs of stairs to her bedroom at the back of the house.

“You’ll excuse my bringing you hene,” stated Hannah, putting forward a chair for her. “I was wishful to talk to you, and I don’t care to speak out before Foster, because it makes him nervous, poor fellow!”

“If only one could prevail upon him to be firm with that odious woman!” Kitty exclaimed. “I own, I am a little afraid of her myself, but there is nothing she can do to him, after all!”

“Yes, there is, Miss Charing, and she don’t scruple to hold it over his head. She and that precious doctor of hers! A pretty pair, and it would do me good, it would indeed! to tell them what I think of them! If he don’t do what she bids him, she threatens she’ll have him under lock and key, and tell everyone he’s mad.”

“Oh, no! She could not!” Kitty cried, horrified. “He is not! Not mad!”

“No, he’s not, but no one could deny he hasn’t all his wits,” said Miss Plymstock dispassionately. “However, there’s no harm in him, and I warrant you if he had me to look after him he would be a great deal better than he is now. For one thing, I don’t mean to let his Mama come scaring him out of his senses; and for another, I think it will suit him much better to live in this Irish place of his than to be racketing about town, the way he’s made to. He can have his horses, and though I daresay I shall find it a damp, ramshackle place, I don’t care for that, because I’ve always had a taste for the country, and I don’t doubt I shall soon set it in order.”

Kitty did not doubt it either. Regarding her hostess with a fascinated eye, she faltered: “I beg your pardon, but—but— do you love Dolph?”

The question in no way discomposed Miss Plymstock. She replied camly: “I collect that you mean to ask me if I have fallen in love with him. Well, I have not, and I don’t suppose anyone could. I like him very well, and I shall like to be the Countess of Dolphinton, and to be a married lady. My brother don’t favour him, and he don’t wish me to marry him, but I don’t heed him. I’m not pretty, like you, and I have no fortune. It isn’t likely I shall receive another offer.” She met Kitty’s eyes squarely, and said in her forthright way: “I’m not his equal in station, and I don’t pretend I am; but you might say he wasn’t fit to marry anyone. I promise you this: I mean to take good care of him, and to make him happy, poor Foster!”

Kitty stared at her, her brain working swiftly. Secluded though her life had been, she was well aware that there was perhaps no one amongst Dolphinton’s relations who would not be shocked by such an alliance as this. Even Freddy, good-natured though he was, would frown upon it, she thought, recalling his disparaging remarks about the late Mr. Yalding. In the eyes of society, Dolphinton’s peculiarities were outweighed by his birth; the enjoyment of a substantial fortune was the only thing that could render Miss Plymstock eligible, and she had no fortune at all. But Kitty, looking at that homely countenance, could see poor, bewildered Dolphinton happily ambling round his Irish bog, ruled certainly, but kindly, and as certainly protected from his mother’s disturbing influence. She drew a breath, and said: “I’ll help you!”

Miss Plymstock’s already high colour deepened to a rich beetroot. “You’re very obliging! I’m not one to wrap things up in clean linen, so I’ll tell you I know how he was made to offer for you, and what you said when you rejected him, and it made me think you was a nice girl, and one I’d be glad to meet. Once his ring’s on my finger I shall know what to do, for I’m not afraid of any of them; but the thing is, how to get it there? You must know, Miss Charing, that he’s got a set of spies round him, that carry tales to his Mama. I don’t doubt she’s told them he’s a trifle queer in his head. Well! If Sam —that’s my brother!—would lend me his aid, I could maybe do the thing, but he won’t, for he don’t like Foster, and he would be glad to match me with a friend of his own, if he could do it. What he says is, an Earl’s all very well if he’s affluent, but one like Foster, with a weak head and no fortune, is a bad bargain. But to my way of thinking he’s a better bargain than a tea-merchant, with snuff all over his waitcoat, and one foot in the grave—even if Mr. Muthill was to offer for me, which I’ll lay my life he don’t mean to!”

“Exactly so!” said Kitty faintly.

“I’ve thought of Gretna Green,” pursued Miss Plymstock, “because banns won’t serve. If her ladyship didn’t discover we had put ‘em up, Sam would, for he keeps a close watch on me. I know it ain’t the thing to be married across the Border—”

“No, pray do not do that!” Kitty interrupted, much shocked.

“I can’t do it, because it would cost a deal of money, and her ladyship don’t allow Foster more than a pittance. And it wouldn’t be good for Foster to be chasing to Scotland for as much as three days, I daresay, thinking all the time his Mama was on his heels,” replied Miss Plymstock, with unshaken calm.

“Oh, I am persuaded it would be very bad for him! We must think of a better scheme than that.”

“But can you?” asked Miss Plymstock.

“Yes, between us we must be able to do so. I own, I do not immediately perceive how it is to be contrived, but I mean to think very particularly about it. It will be best if Lady Dolphinton believes him to be obedient, I think. She is the most absurd creature! I daresay you are aware that she has compelled him still to angle for me! Should we not turn this to account? Recollect, if she knows him to be in my company she will be satisfied! Something may suggest itself: it must do so! If you do not object, I will encourage him to be a great deal in my company; and—though it will go sorely against the grain with me!—I’ll let her think I am not wholly averse from his suit.”

“I’m agreeable,” said Miss Plymstock. “But maybe this cousin Freddy of Foster’s won’t like it?”

“Freddy? It has nothing—I mean,” Kitty corrected herself hastily, “he will have not the least objection, I assure you!”