False Colours

11

The rest of the day passed without untoward incident. Cressy, assisted spasmodically by Lady Denville, directed the invitation cards; Sir Bonamy and Cosmo, after consuming a substantial nuncheon, slept stertorously in the library all the afternoon, their handkerchiefs spread over their faces; the Dowager enjoyed her usual drive with Mrs Cliffe; and Kit, finding his young cousin idling disconsolately in one of the saloons, ruthlessly bore him off for an inspection of the stables, and a tramp across the fields to the stud-farm, where one of my lord’s brood mares had the day before given birth to a promising colt.

The evening was enlivened by the presence of the Squire, Sir John Thatcham, with his lady, and his two eldest offspring: Mr Edward Thatcham, just down from his second year at Cambridge; and Miss Anne, a lively girl, who had gratified her well-wishers by retiring from her first modest Season with a very respectable parti to her credit.

It might have been supposed that a party which included such ill-assorted persons as the Dowager, Sir John and Lady Thatcham, and Sir Bonamy Ripple was foredoomed to failure, for the Dowager, who arrogated to herself an old lady’s privilege of being as uncivil as she chose to anyone whom she considered to be a bore, could almost certainly be depended on to snub the Thatchams; and Sir Bonamy was too much the idle man of fashion to meet with Sir John’s approval. But, in the event, and due, as Cressy recognized with deep respect, to Lady Denville’s unmatched qualities as a hostess, the party was very successful, the only member of it to feel dissatisfaction being Cosmo, who pouted a good deal when he discovered that his sister had excluded him from the whist-table, set up for the Dowager’s edification in a small saloon leading from the Long Drawing-room. Having elicited the information that the Thatchams were very fond of whist, but liked to play together, Lady Denville settled them at the table with the Dowager and Sir Bonamy. No one could have guessed from Sir Bonamy’s good-humoured demeanour that he was in the habit of playing whist in the Duke of York’s company, for five pound points, with a pony on the rubber to make it worth while.

The rest of the party, with the single exception of Cosmo, who said that he was too old for such pastimes, gathered round a large table in the Long Drawing-room to play a number of games which the three youngest members of the party would, in their own homes, have condemned as being fit only for the schoolroom. But Lady Denville, who combined a genius for making her guests feel that she was genuinely happy to entertain them with an effervescent enjoyment of her own parties, rapidly infected the company with her own zest for such innocent pastimes as Command, Cross-Questions, and even Jack-straws. It was all very merry and informal, and when it culminated in a game of speculation Ambrose surprised everyone by displaying an unexpected aptitude for the game, making some very shrewd bids, and quite forgetting the languid air he thought it proper for a young man of mode to assume; and Cosmo, unable to bear the sight of his wife’s improvident play, drew up his chair to the table so that he could advise and instruct her.

At ten o’clock, the Dowager, who had been behaving with great energy and acumen, winning several shillings, and sharply censuring Sir Bonamy for what she considered faults of play, suddenly assumed the appearance of extreme decrepitude, and broke up the game, saying that she was tired, and must go to bed. As soon as she emerged from the saloon, leaning on Sir Bonamy’s arm, Lady Denville rose from the table, and went towards her, saying in her pretty, caressing voice: “Going to retire now, ma’am? I hope you are not being driven away by the noise we have been making!”

“No, I’ve had a very agreeable evening,” replied the Dowager graciously. “No need to leave your game on my account!” She nodded at Cressy. “Stay where you are, child! I can see you’re enjoying yourself, and I don’t want you.”

“Enjoying myself! Nothing of the sort, Grandmama! I’ve fallen amongst sharks, and have lost my entire fortune! What Mr Ambrose Cliffe hasn’t robbed me of has passed into Denville’s possession: I wonder that you should abandon me to such a hard-bargaining pair!” said Cressy gaily.

“I dare say you’ll come about,” said the Dowager. She allowed Lady Denville to take Sir Bonamy’s place, and nodded generally. “I’ll bid you all goodnight. Happy to have made your acquaintance, Lady Thatcham: you, play your cards very tolerably—very tolerably indeed!” She then withdrew, her ebony cane gripped in one claw-like hand, the other tucked in Lady Denville’s arm. She favoured Kit, who was holding open the door for her, with a jocular command not to knock Cressy into horse-nails, but said somewhat snappishly to Lady Denville, as they went slowly along the broad corridor, that she didn’t know why she troubled to escort her to her bedchamber.

“Oh, it isn’t a trouble,” said Lady Denville. “I like to go with you, ma’am, to be quite sure that you have everything just as you prefer it. One never knows that they won’t have sent up your hot milk with horrid pieces of skin in it, or warmed the bed far too early!”

“Lord, Amabel, my woman takes good care of that!” said the Dowager scornfully. She added, in a grudging tone: “Not but what you’re a kind creature—and that I never denied!” She proceeded for some way in silence, but when the upper hall was reached, said suddenly: “That was a good notion of yours, to set the young people to playing silly games. It ain’t often I’ve seen that granddaughter of mine in such a glow of spirits. It’s little enough fun she gets at home.”

“Dear Cressy! I wish you might have heard some of her drolleries! She had us all in whoops, and even succeeded in captivating that dismal nephew of mine!”

The Dowager uttered a crack of mirth. “Him! I’ve no patience with whipstraws, playing off the airs of exquisites.” She paused outside the door of her bedroom. “I’ll tell you this, though, Amabel! I like your son.”

“Thank you!” Lady Denville said. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “No one—no one!—was ever blessed with two such sons as mine!”

“Now, don’t be a pea goose!” said the Dowager bracingly. “I should like to know what there is to cry about in that! I shall be very well satisfied if Cressy likes him well enough to marry him, for he’ll make her the kind of husband most of us wish for, and few of us have the good fortune to catch. Now, you be off, for whatever the. rest of ’em want you may depend upon it that Ripple’s thinking of nothing but his supper!”

Whatever secret longings Sir Bonamy may have been cherishing, he was far too well-mannered to allow these to appear. Lady Denville found him chatting urbanely with Lady Thatcham, who, under his benign influence, was fast coming to the conclusion that her husband’s freely-expressed contempt of him (and every other member of the Prince Regent’s set) was unjust. The game of speculation was coming to an end, with Cressy recovering some of her losses: a circumstance which she owed to the intervention of Cosmo, who had moved round the table to sit at her elbow. The stakes might be infinitesimal, but Cosmo could not bear to see her squandering her counters from what he called want of judgement, and what his disrespectful nephew later described as a want of huckstering instinct.

Informality was maintained at supper, for which lavish repast the Thatchams, in spite of demurring that a seven-mile drive lay before them, were persuaded to remain at Ravenhurst, but it did not extend to the dishes provided by Mr Dawlish, which ranged from lobsters to a succulent array of tarts, jellies and creams, upon which the younger members of the party regaled themselves with unabashed greediness. The Thatchams took their leave, Mr Edward Thatcham, gazing with youthful admiration at his hostess, informing her that he had spent the jolliest evening, and reverently kissing her hand. Lady Denville took her sister-in-law and Cressy up to bed; and Kit returned to the supper-room, where the three remaining gentlemen were sitting amongst the broken meats: Ambrose in the sulks, because his father had reproved him for allowing Kit to give him a glass of Fine Old Cognac; Cosmo delivering himself of a monologue, addressed to Sir Bonamy; and Sir Bonamy savouring the bouquet of his brandy, and nodding occasionally from an amiable wish to lead Cosmo into believing that he was attending to him. He turned his little round eyes towards Kit, and said: “Excellent supper! Very agreeable evening!”

“Thank you, sir! But the credit goes to my mother,” said Kit.

“Very true! Very true! Wonderful woman! Never anyone like her, my boy!” said Sir Bonamy, gustily sighing. He heaved himself round in his chair, groping in his pocket for his snuff-box. “In such high beauty, too! Doesn’t look a day older than when I first clapped eyes on her. Before your time, that was!”

Kit, recalling one of Fimber’s repeated admonitions, produced the snuff-box which had been placed by that worthy in his own pocket, opened it, and offered it to Sir Bonamy, saying: “Will you try some of my sort, sir?”

He knew immediately that in some way he had erred. Sir Bonamy’s unnervingly expressionless gaze remained riveted to the snuff-box for several seconds, before travelling upwards to his face. It remained fixed for several more seconds, but Sir Bonamy only said: “A pretty box, that. Purchased it in Paris, didn’t you, when you went there to meet your brother once?”

“I believe I did,” acknowledged Kit, not a muscle quivering in his face.

Sir Bonamy helped himself to a pinch. “One of Bernier’s,” he said. “You showed it to me when you came home.”

He had, apparently, no further observations to make; but when, much later, he visited Kit in the huge room which was traditionally the bedchamber occupied by the Earls of Denville, Kit’s dismay was not attended by surprise. Fimber had just eased him out of his coat; but Sir Bonamy had already escaped from the restriction of his corsets, and his rigidly starched shirt-points, and was attired in a dressing-gown of thick brocade, of such rich colouring and such voluminous cut that his appearance, at all times impressive, was almost overpowering. “Came to have a word with you!” he announced.

Fimber, his face wooden, withdrew into the dressing-room; and Kit, feeling that his sheet-anchor had vanished, said: “Why, certainly, sir! Is something amiss?”

“That snuff of yours is dry!” said Sir Bonamy, staring very hard at him.

“Good God, sir, is it? I do most humbly beg your pardon!”

“I’ll drop a word of warning in your ear, my boy!” said Sir Bonamy, ignoring this interpolation. “I don’t know what sort of wheedle you’re trying to cut, and I don’t ask you to tell me, because it’s no affair of mine, but if you want to bamboozle people into thinking you’re young Denville, don’t offer ’em dry snuff, and don’t use two hands to open your box!”

“So that was it!” said Kit. “I was afraid I had betrayed myself, but I didn’t know how!”

“Damme, Kit, Evelyn set himself to copy Brummell’s way of handling a snuff-box! One hand only, and no more than a flick of the thumb-nail to open it! You remember that!”

“I will, sir,” Kit promised. “Thank you! You must feel that I owe you an explanation—”

Sir Bonamy checked him with an upraised hand. “No, I don’t!” he said hastily. “I’ve told you already it’s no affair of mine! I’d as lief it wasn’t, too, because it looks to me like a damned havey-cavey business.”

“It isn’t quite as havey-cavey as it must seem,” Kit told him.

“If it’s half as havey-cavey as it seems I don’t want to have anything to do with it!” replied Sir Bonamy, not mincing matters. “And from what I know of you and Evelyn—not that I came here to pull a crow with you, for I didn’t! What’s more, you won’t goad me into it, my boy, so don’t think it! If Evelyn hasn’t been able to wind me up in all the years he’s been trying to do it, it stands to reason you can’t.”

“But I don’t wish to, sir!” expostulated Kit mildly.

“Now I come to think of it,” conceded Sir Bonamy, “you never did take so much pepper in your nose at the sight of me as that whisky-frisky brother of yours, so I dare say that’s true. As a matter of fact, that’s what made me suspicious: you shouldn’t have looked as if you was glad to see me! Ought to have known better: civil enough, young Denville, but pokers up a trifle!”

“Does he? I’ll comb his hair for it!” said Kit. He smiled. “In any event I shouldn’t have done so: I’m by far too grateful to you for coming to support us! I knew, too, that I’d nothing to fear even if you did recognize me.”

“No, no, nothing at all!” Sir Bonamy assured him. “But I’m not as young as I was, Kit, and it’s no use thinking, if you’ve got hold of a wolf by one ear, that I’m going to grasp the other, because I won’t do it! So don’t you tell me anything! If your mother wishes me to know the whole she’ll tell me fast enough, bless her!” He added uneasily: “No need to edge her on to tell me, mind!”

Kit reassured him on this head; and he went off, feeling that he had done as much for his young friend as could have been expected of any man of his years and elevated position.

Lady Denville, when informed next day of this interlude, not only went into a peal of laughter, but showed a regrettably mischievous desire to devise some way of entangling her hapless adorer in an imbroglio which she proudly claimed to be of her own making.

“No, Mama!” said Kit firmly. “You’ll do no such thing! We’re devilish obliged to the old court card, and I won’t have him roasted! No one could blame him for wanting to steer clear of this affair: if we save our groats without kicking up the very deuce of a scandal it’s more than I’d bargain for!”

“I won’t do anything you don’t like, dearest,” she promised. “But you mustn’t be so downhearted!”

“Not downhearted! Henhearted!”

“No, no, Kit!” she protested, dismayed to hear him make such an admission. “Never that! Besides, why should you be? I own that there may be difficulties ahead, and, of course, our situation is often most awkward, but we shall come about!”

“What makes you think so, love?” he asked, regarding her in affectionate exasperation.

“One always does—and particularly when one thinks one is quite knocked up. Only consider how many times I have been in the briars! I have always contrived to bring myself home, even when my case appeared to be desperate! Now, why are you laughing, wicked one? It’s perfectly true! The thing is that it’s no use for us to fret ourselves over what can’t be helped. Depend upon it, something will happen, or I shall have a notion suddenly, which will bring us off prosperously. I very often do, you know—really nacky ones!”

“I know you do,” he said. “All I beg of you is that you won’t have one without telling me!”

“Dearest, how can you be so foolish? I shall be obliged to tell you, because if I do think of a clever scheme you will have to bear your part in it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he said frankly.

“You’re hipped, and I know why,” she said. “It was the lobster! I felt a trifle queasy myself, in the middle of the night, but I have some excellent powders, which Dr Ainslie gave me, so I swallowed one, and was right again in a trice. Come up to my dressing-room, poor boy, and I’ll mix one for you!”

“No, Mama, it was not the lobster!”

“Very well, dearest, I won’t tease you—though I assure you the powders aren’t in the least nasty. Don’t be in a worry, will you? When Evelyn comes home everything will be tidy again, remember!”

“You know, Mama, we have been saying that since the start of this masquerade—and God knows I wish he would come home!—but does it ever occur to you that when he does we shall find ourselves in a worse hobble than ever?”

“It must have been the lobster!” exclaimed her ladyship.

He laughed, but said: “No, do, pray, consider, love! If Evelyn were to walk in today, what are we to do? I could disappear, but not even Ambrose would be deceived for more than half-an-hour—far less Lady Stavely! It’s one thing to hoax people for an evening, quite another to do so in such circumstances as these! At the outset, none of them knew me very well and Lady Stavely not at all. But they know me now! They couldn’t meet me at breakfast, and Evelyn at dinner, and not detect the difference between us!”

“No, very true!” she said, much struck. “That is very awkward! I wonder why it should not have occurred to me? We must lose no time in trying to hit upon a—Oh, but I see just how to overcome the difficulty! Evelyn must pretend to be you, of course!”

Mr Fancot, declaring that he had now received a settler, went off, dutifully trying to think of some way of entertaining his male guests. Like the Dowager, Sir Bonamy (except under the press of extraordinary circumstances) never left his bedroom until noon; so when Kit learned from Norton that Mr Cliffe had gone out with Mr Ambrose, to see how he had come on under the gamekeeper’s tuition, his thoughts turned, very naturally, to the ladies. His search for his aunt could not have been described as more than perfunctory; but he had the great good fortune, as he stood in the hall, wondering where to look for Miss Stavely, to see her coming down the wide staircase. She was charmingly dressed in a simple, high-necked gown of French muslin, but just as he was thinking how well she looked, he saw that there was a pucker between her brows, and a troubled expression in her eyes. He said quickly: “What is it, Cressy? Something has happened to vex you?”

She paused looking down at him, and hesitated for a moment before answering. Then the crease disappeared from her brow, and she smiled, and descended the last stairs, saying: “Well, yes! That is to say, it has vexed me, but not nearly as much as it has vexed Grandmama! I am afraid it has made her out of reason cross, but I have convinced her that it is absurd to lay the blame at poor God-mama’s door! Or at Papa’s! Neither of them would do such a thing! It is one of Albinia’s high pieces of meddling, of course—trying to clinch the matter! I collect you haven’t yet seen the London papers?”

He shook his head; and she held out to him the journal she was carrying. As he took it, he saw that it was folded open at a page largely devoted to social announcements and discreetly phrased on-dits. He looked quickly up, his brows asking a question. She answered it only by wrinkling her nose distastefully, and indicating with her forefinger the paragraph to which she wished to draw his attention. It stated, after enumerating the various persons of consequence to be found recruiting nature at Worthing, that the Dowager Lady Stavely (a well-known summer visitor to that elegant resort) was this year absent from the scene, having taken her granddaughter, the Hon. Cressida Stavely, to Ravenhurst Park, the principal seat of the Earl of Denville, where they were being entertained by the noble owner, and his mother, the Dowager Countess. The writer of this titillating paragraph understood, coyly, that an Interesting Announcement was shortly to be expected from this quarter.

“My mother never sent this to the paper!” Kit exclaimed, flushing with annoyance. “Or anything that could have given rise to such a piece of impertinence!”

“No, of course she did not! I haven’t the least doubt of its being Albinia’s doing—trying to force my hand! Furthermore,” added Cressy, brooding darkly over it, “I shall own myself astonished if I don’t discover that she exerted herself to the utmost to persuade my father to insert a notice announcing that I had become engaged to marry the Earl of Denville! What a paper-skull she is! She should have known him better! You may imagine how much it has set up Grandmama’s bristles!” She began to laugh. “I don’t know which has enraged her most: the detestably sly hint, or Albinia’s impudence in having presumed to take it upon herself to give the Post information about her movements!”

Kit’s eyes were kindling. “And she thought that Mama—Mama!—would stoop to—”

She interrupted him, laying a hand on his arm, and saying quickly: “Oh, pray, don’t you rip up, Denville!” She gave a tiny choke of laughter. “She did Godmama the justice to say, even in the height of her rage, that she would not have thought it of her, which is more than she said of poor Papa, when she decided it must have been his doing! In fact, she said that it was just like him! I assure you it is not, however.”

The angry look was fading, but as Kit glanced again at the paragraph his lips curled contemptuously. “Insufferable! Your mother-in-law should have her neck wrung! As for the sneaking tattlemonger who composed this masterpiece—!” He tossed the paper aside. “He took good care, you’ll observe, to write nothing which I can either contradict or force him to apologize for!” His face softened, as he turned towards her again. “I don’t know why I should fly up into the boughs, when it is you who are the victim—except for that reason! My poor girl, I’m well aware of the embarrassment it must cause you to feel! Don’t let it cut up your peace, or influence your decision!”

An odd little smile flickered for a moment in her eyes. “No, I shan’t do that. As for Albinia, I left Grandmama writing to her. You may depend upon it that it will be a thundering letter! I dare say she had liefer have her neck wrung than receive it. Indeed, I could almost pity her, for my father will be vexed to death, and although he is in general easy-going to a fault he flies into a worse passion than Grandmama, if one succeeds in putting him out of temper. The impropriety of this horrid piece of gossip will strike him most forcefully: I wish it may not lead to a serious quarrel between him and Albinia.”

“Do you? I’m not so charitable!”

“Well, she’s such a pea-goose!” Cressy explained. “One can’t blame her for being foolish, or, I suppose, for being so jealous. One ought rather to feel compassion for her—or at least try to!—because she is bound to suffer a great deal of anguish.”

This view of the matter was not shared by Lady Denville, who, when she read the paragraph, was put into a flame. She went pink with anger, her eyes flashing magnificently. She turned them upon Kit, demanding in a trembling voice: “How dared they? Who is responsible for this abominable piece of vulgarity!”

“Cressy believes that it was her mother-in-law. I feel as you do, Mama, but our only course is to ignore it.”

“That woman!” exclaimed her ladyship. “I might have guessed as much! Do you see what she had the effrontery to call me? The Dowager Countess! Dowager—!”

He was taken aback. “Well, yes, but—”

“And I know why!” raged her ladyship. “She is a jealous, spiteful toad, and she knows that Stavely offered for me once, and still has a tendre for me! It would afford me very great pleasure to set her mind at rest! Very great pleasure! I’ll have her know that if I had no fancy for Stavely when he was young, and passably good-looking, I have less now! She is very welcome to a husband who will offer a carte blanche to some lightskirt the instant he becomes bored with her charms!”

Somewhat alarmed by this unusual venom, Kit made a quite unavailing attempt to soothe her. She interrupted him, requesting him not to put her out of all patience; and swept away, the offending newspaper clenched in her hand, to knock imperatively on the door of Lady Stavely’s bedchamber. Since nothing annoyed the Dowager more than to receive visitors before she chose to emerge from her seclusion, Kit waited for the inevitable disaster. It did not befall. The two ladies remained closeted together for a full hour, deriving great benefit from a free exchange of opinions on the character of Albinia Stavely. The only discordant note was struck by Lady Stavely, who bluntly informed her lovely hostess that however little she might relish the notion, she was Dowager Countess, and would be well-advised to accustom herself to this title.

“Which I cannot do, Kit!” Lady Denville said later, and in tragic accents. “No one can say that I haven’t borne up under a great deal of adversity, but this stroke is too much!”

The effect of the paragraph upon his maternal relations Kit dealt with summarily and conclusively. He told his aunt, who said that she had seen from the first how it was, that if his mother had dreamt that such an absurd construction would be placed on a visit from her favourite godchild she would never have invited her to Ravenhurst; and when his uncle, in a dudgeon, started to read him a lecture on the impropriety of allowing the news of his approaching nuptials to reach his relatives through the medium of the press, he put a swift end to any further recriminations by saying, in a voice of cold and quelling civility: “You may rest assured, sir, that when I contemplate matrimony I shall do myself the honour of informing you of the impending announcement.”

Ambrose, whose evil genius prompted him to quiz his cousin, was disposed of without finesse; and when Kit was able to exchange a private word with Cressy he told her not to waste a thought on an unpleasant, but evanescent annoyance. “I fancy we shall hear no more about it,” he said.