False Colours

12

He was permitted to dwell in this hopeful belief for rather less than twenty-four hours. Upon the following afternoon, driven indoors by a shower of rain, he was playing billiards with Cressy when Norton entered the room, and asked him in an expressionless voice if he might have a word with him.

“Yes, what is it?” Kit replied.

Norton coughed, and directed a meaning look at him. Unfortunately, Kit was watching Cressy, critically surveying the balls on the table, her cue in her hand. Their disposition was not promising. “What a very unhandsome way to leave them!” she complained. “I don’t see what’s to be done.”

“Try a cannon off the cushion!” he recommended. A second cough made him say, rather impatiently: “Well, Norton? What do you want?”

“If I might have a word with your lordship?” Norton repeated.

Kit glanced frowningly at him. “Presently: you are interrupting the game.”

“I beg your lordship’s pardon!” said Norton, his meaning look becoming almost a glare. “A Person has called to see your lordship.”

“Very well. Tell him I am at present engaged, and ask him to state his business!”

Cressy, who had raised her eyes from the table to look at the butler, said: “Do go, Denville! I’ll concede this game to you gracefully and happily, having already been beaten all hollow!” She smiled at Norton. “I collect the business is urgent?”

“Well, yes, miss!” replied Norton gratefully.

By this time, Kit, his attention fairly caught, had realized that Norton was trying to convey an unspoken message to him. Since he had been assured by Fimber that the butler had no suspicion that he was not his noble master, he was puzzled to know why he was trying to warn him. He thrust his cue into the rack, made his apologies to Cressy, and preceded Norton out of the room. “Well? Who is it?” he asked, as soon as the butler had shut the door behind him. “What’s his business with me?”

“As to that, my lord, I shouldn’t care to say: the Individual being unwilling to divulge it to me.” He met Kit’s questioning look woodenly, but added a sinister rider. “I should perhaps mention, my lord, that the Individual in question is not of the male sex.”

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Kit betray his feelings. He asked curtly: “Her name?”

“She calls herself Alperton, my lord,” responded Norton, at once disclaiming responsibility and revealing to the initiated the social status of the visitor. “Mrs Alperton—not a young female, my lord.” His gaze, became fixed on some object over Kit’s shoulder as he made his next tactfully worded disclosure. “I thought it best to show her into the Blue saloon, my lord, Sir Bonamy and Mr Cliffe being in the library, as is their custom at this hour, and her not being willing to accept my assurance that you were not at home to visitors, but declaring to me her intention of remaining here until it should be convenient to you to receive her.”

It was now apparent to Kit that when he entered the Blue saloon he would be facing guns of unknown but almost certainly heavy calibre. His first alarming suspicion that some Cyprian whom Evelyn had taken under his protection had had the effrontery to present herself at Ravenhurst had been banished by the information that Mrs Alperton was not a young female; and relief at the knowledge that he would not be confronted by a female quite so intimately acquainted with Evelyn made it possible for him to nod, and to say coolly: “Very well, I’ll see her there.”

Norton bowed. “Yes, my lord. Would you wish me to tell the postboy to wait?”

“Postboy?”

“A job-chaise, my lord, and one pair of horses.”

“Oh! Send him round to the stables: they’ll look after him there.”

Norton bowed again, and led the way across the hall, and down a wide passage to the door leading into the Blue saloon. He held it open, and Kit walked into the room, his face schooled to an impassivity he was far from feeling.

His visitor was seated on a small sofa. She greeted him with a basilisk stare, and said, with terrible irony: “Well, there! And so you was at home, after all, my lord!”

He advanced slowly into the middle of the room. His first thought was: Ewe-mutton! no bread-and-butter of Evelyn’s! his second, that, incredible though it seemed, Mrs Alperton was a member of a certain sisterhood of elderly females known inappropriately as Abbesses. For this uncharitable belief her attire was largely responsible. His notions of feminine apparel were vague; had he been asked to describe what his mother was wearing that day he would have been unable to do so; but it struck him forcibly that Mrs Alperton’s dashing and colourful raiment would never have been worn by a respectable, middle-aged female, and far less by a lady of quality. In spite of an elaborate array of metallic yellow locks, visible beneath a white satin cap, worn under a dome-crowned hat turned boldly up at the front, and with an ostrich plume curled over the brim to brush her forehead, he assessed her years at fifty. In fact, she was within a few months of Lady Denville’s age; but although it was easy to see that in her youth she must have been a very prime article indeed, an over-lavish use of cosmetics, coupled with an addiction to spirituous liquors, had sadly ravaged a once-lovely countenance. Captious persons might consider that the size and brilliance of her eyes was marred by an avaricious gleam, but only those who had a predilection for slender women could have found fault with her well-corseted and opulent figure.

Whatever might have been her opinion of Mrs Alperton’s taste, any woman would have recognized that she had taken great pains over her toilet, and thought it proper to wear, on a visit to a nobleman’s seat, her bettermost dress and pelisse. Kit merely hoped, very devoutly, that he could succeed in getting rid of her before any of his guests—set eyes on her; for a lilac pelisse, embellished with epaulets and cords, and worn over an open-bosomed robe of pink satin, struck him with horrifying effect. Pink kid half-boots and gloves, a lilac silk parasol, and a number of trinkets completed her costume; and she had lavishly sprayed her person with amber scent.

Kit paused by the table in the middle of the room, and stood looking down at her. “Well, ma’am?” he said. “May I know what brings you here?”

Her bosom swelled. “May you know indeed! Of course, you haven’t a notion, have you? Oh, not the least in the world! Standing there, as proud as an apothecary, and holding up your nose at one which has kept company with gentlemen of the highest rank! And I’ve had grander servants than that niffy-naffy butler of yours waiting on me like slaves, my lord! I’m here to tell you that you can’t jaunter about breaking a poor, innocent female’s heart! Not without paying for it! Oh, dear me, no!”

“Whose heart have I broken?” asked Kit. “Yours, ma’am?”

“Mine! That’s a loud one!” she exclaimed. “If I didn’t break it for the Marquis, who treated me like a princess, never grudging a groat he spent on me, besides a handsome present when we parted, as part we did, and not a hard word spoken on either side, him knowing what was due to a lady—” She stopped, unable to find the thread of her argument, and demanded: “Where was I?”

“You were saying,” supplied Kit helpfully, “that you did not break your heart for the Marquis.”

“And nor I did! So it ain’t likely I’d break it for a sprig scarce breeched, even if I were ten years younger than I am!” said Mrs Alperton, taking a telescopic view of her age. “It’s not my heart you’ve broke, but Clara’s—though that’s not to say mine don’t bleed for her wrongs! Which is why I’m here today, my lord, and small pleasure to me, being jumbled and jolted in a yellow bouncer that has been used to travel in my own chaise, lined with velvet, and four horses, and outriders, besides, let alone the violence done to my feelings to think of being obliged to demean myself, which only a mother’s devotion could have prevailed upon me to do!”

These last words effectually banished from Kit’s mind an irresistible desire to discover the identity of the Marquis who had supported Mrs Alperton in such magnificent style. He had begun to think that the affair, whatever it was, might not be very serious; but he now realized that he had been indulging optimism too far. When Mrs Alperton, after groping in the pocket of her pelisse, brandished before his eyes a scrap cut from a newspaper he had no need to read it to know what it must be. For an awful moment the thought that Evelyn, in a besotted state of mind, had made the unknown Clara an offer of marriage flashed through his brain, and the vision of an action for breach of promise assailed him. It was strengthened by Mrs Alperton’s next utterance. “You are a serpent!” she told him. “A knavish, deceiving man of the town that seduced that poor innocent with false promises!”

“Nonsense!” said Kit, maintaining his calm.

“Oh, so it’s nonsense, is it? And I suppose you’ll say next that you didn’t give her a slip on the shoulder?”

He had no hesitation in answering this, for whatever folly Evelyn had committed it was impossible to believe that he had seduced an innocent damsel—or, indeed, that a daughter of Mrs Alperton’s answered to that description. “Most certainly I shall!” he said.

“When you took my Clara under your protection, my lord, you promised you’d care for her!”

“Well?”

The colour rose in her cheeks, causing them to assume a hue that nearly matched her pelisse, but which was at peculiar variance with the rouge she favoured. Her eyes narrowed; and she said menacingly: “Trying to come crab over me, are you? Well, you won’t do it, my fine sir, and so I tell you! You was able to put the change on that sweet, pretty lamb, but I’ll have you know I’m more than seven, and I’m up to all the rigs!”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, smiling a little.

Her colour mounted still more alarmingly; but after glaring at him for several seconds she managed to get the better of her temper, and to say, abruptly abandoning her dramatic style for a more business-like approach: “We’ll have a round tale, if you please! You haven’t been next or nigh Clara for close on a month, and when she wrote to you, as write she did, not a word did she get in reply from you, and her sick with apprehension, thinking you was ill, or had met with an accident! Not so much as a whisper did you see fit to vouchsafe, to warn her of the shocking sight which was to meet her poor, deluded eyes in this paper! She fell into hysterics on the instant, never dreaming but what you’d have told her, if you was meaning to get riveted, and acted gentlemanly by her!”

Considerably relieved to learn from this that Miss Alperton had apparently had no expectation of marrying Evelyn herself, Kit replied: “That piece of gossip, ma’am, was published without my knowledge.” He was about to add that it was also without foundation, but he bit the words back, too uncertain of Cressy’s intentions to venture to utter them. He said instead: “Clara must know that I’m a poor hand at letter-writing, but I should have written to reassure her had I not meant to answer her letter in person. Circumstances intervened which have obliged me to postpone my visit to her—”

“Yes, and everyone knows what they are!” interrupted Mrs Alperton. “What’s more, anyone that isn’t a knock-in-the-cradle knows better than to believe that bag of moonshine! Trying to shab off without paying down your dust, that’s what you’re doing, and you living as high as a coach-horse!”

“I don’t, but you may tell Clara—”

“Oh, yes, you do!” said Mrs Alperton, a steely light in her eyes. “No use thinking you can bamboozle me into believing your pockets ain’t well-lined, my lord! for that’s where you’ll be made to turn short about! Full of juice your father was, and I’ll be bound he cut up warm. And don’t think I wasn’t acquainted with him, because I was used to know all the swells, and very well pleased most of them were to get their legs under my mahogany, I can tell you!” She added, with dignity: “Before I retired, that was. My dinners were thought to be first-rate, which I promise you they were, with a French chef, and no expense spared, the Marquis never grudging a penny, but telling me always to buy the best, and keeping the cellar stocked with his own wines.”

Breaking into this reminiscent spate, Kit said: “You are labouring under a misapprehension, ma’am. I have not the remotest intention of shabbing off; nor shall I fail, when I contemplate matrimony, to inform Clara.”

“Why, that’s just what you have done!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Leaving her to read it in the newspaper, which only a heart of stone would have done!”

“I’ve told you already that what she read was mere gossip, and—”

“Yes, and I’ll thank you not to waste your breath telling me again!” said Mrs Alperton fiercely. “Nor to tell me that it’s mere gossip that you’ve got Miss Stavely staying here with you at this very moment!”

“Miss Stavely, ma’am, is my mother’s “goddaughter, and is staying here as her guest, not mine!”

“Fancy that, now! Not that I thought other, for it’s not to be supposed she’d have come if your mama hadn’t invited her. And mighty fortunate she must think herself, for she must be twenty, if she’s a day, and if Stavely means to come down handsomely it’s more than I’d bargain for! I never knew him to be beforehand with the world! But whether she’d think herself so fortunate if she was to know the way you’ve treated my Clara is another pair of shoes, my lord!”

Kit stiffened imperceptibly, realizing, from the gloating smile on Mrs Alperton’s lips, that this was not mere recrimination. Her object in coming to Ravenhurst was blackmail. This placed him in a position of extreme peril; for although a denunciation of his supposed perfidy would destroy the end she had in view he had seen enough of her to know that her hold over her temper was not strong; and he had little doubt that if he refused to comply with whatever demand she was about to make she would not hesitate to carry her threat into execution. Probably, since her voice became strident under the influence of emotion, Cressy would be by no means the only person at Ravenhurst to hear her disclosures. How to get rid of her without affording her the opportunity to kick up such a scene as he shuddered even to contemplate was a problem to which he could discover no certain answer. With the best will in the world to do it, he was powerless to silence her by presenting her with any such sum as she was likely to consider adequate: he could neither give her a draft on Evelyn’s account, nor upon his own. The will, moreover, was entirely lacking. He had no means of discovering the extent of Evelyn’s obligation; or whether Mrs Alperton was acting at her daughter’s instigation. He suspected that no money given into her hand would ever reach Clara; and he was pretty sure that she had played no part in whatever bargain Evelyn might have struck with Clara. Not only would it be very unlike Evelyn to enter into sordid negotiations with his Aspasia’s parent: it had been noticeable that throughout her discourse Mrs Alperton had refrained from making any such claim. Kit was determined to make no rash promises on his twin’s behalf.

Something of this must have shown itself in his face, for Mrs Alperton, who had been closely watching him, said, on a rising note: “And know it she shall, and so I warn you, my lord!”

“Tell me, Mrs Alperton,” said Kit, on a gentle note of mockery, “am I expected to believe that you are Clara’s mouthpiece? It seems strangely unlike her!”

It was a bow drawn at a venture, since, for anything he knew, Clara had inherited her mother’s temper, but he saw from Mrs Alperton’s face that he had hit the target. She looked angrily at him, but hardly hesitated before replying: “Oh, dear me, no! Well do you know that the sweet creature, loving you so truly as she does, would allow herself to be trampled to death rather than throw the least rub in the way of anything you wanted to do, even if it killed her, which I am afraid for my life it will do, for never have I seen her so low and disordered—scarcely able to raise her head from the pillow, and done-up with weeping! I shouldn’t wonder at it if she was to dwindle into a decline.”

Kit shook his head. “You shock me, ma’am. Do you know, I had no notion she suffered from such a profound sensibility?”

He felt himself to be on safe ground, for his imagination boggled at the vision of Evelyn developing the smallest tendre for so lachrymose a female. Apparently he had again hit the target, for Mrs Alperton informed him, in a voice of suppressed fury, that he little knew how much Clara sank under agitating reflections, or how hard it was for her to wear a smiling face whenever he chose to visit her.

“If that’s so, I should suppose her to be thankful to be rid of me,” he remarked, unable to repress an involuntary chuckle. He saw that Mrs Alperton was about to burst into further recriminations, and flung up a hand. “No, no, enough, ma’am! You’ve performed your errand! I am excessively sorry to hear of Clara’s distressing state, and I beg you will return to her bedside with all possible speed. Convey my deepest regrets to her that I have been the unwitting cause of her disorder, and assure her that as soon as it may be possible for me to do so I shall hasten to visit her.”

The issue seemed for a few moments to hang in the balance; but Mrs Alperton was made of resilient stuff. Abandoning all semblance of concern for her daughter’s broken heart, she said roughly: “Not till you come down with the derbies! I know your sort! A regular bounce, that’s what you are, but you won’t nurse my girl out of her due, not while I’m alive to protect her!”

“Mrs Alperton,” said Kit coldly, “you are making a mistake! I don’t run thin, but I am not a pigeon for your plucking! Clara will not find me ungenerous, but whatever may be the arrangement agreed upon it will be between her and me, and no one else.”

“Oh, will it indeed?” she ejaculated. Will it? If that’s your tone, my Lord Brass-face, I don’t leave this house until I’ve opened my budget to Miss Stavely! Try to have me put out if you dare! And don’t tell me she’s gone out, and won’t be back till nightfall, because if I believed you, which I don’t, I’d wait till midnight, and longer!”

At this point an entirely unexpected voice made itself heard. “What a fortunate circumstance that I haven’t gone out!” said Miss Stavely. “Did you wish to see me, ma’am?”

Since Kit had been standing with his back to the door, his person obscuring Mrs Alperton’s view of it, neither of them had seen it open a little way, and Cressy slip softly into the room. Mrs Alperton started, and let her parasol fall to the floor; but Kit spun round, the nonchalance wiped suddenly from his face, to be succeeded by a look of consternation.

Smiling brightly upon him, Cressy advanced into the room. Involuntarily he put out a hand to check her, but she ignored it, and went to sit down in a chair facing Mrs Alperton across the empty hearth. “Pray forgive me for interrupting you!” she said gracefully. “But you were speaking rather loudly, you know, ma’am, and I could not help but hear a little of what you were saying. I collect you have something you wish to tell me?”

“No!” said Kit.

Mrs Alperton, her high colour abating, glanced speculatively at him, before resuming her study of Cressy. There was an uncertain look in her eyes; and it was plainly to be seen that she was unable to decide whether Cressy’s entrance could be turned to pecuniary advantage, or whether it had effectually spiked her guns. She said slowly, and to gain time: “So you’re Stavely’s girl, are you? You don’t favour him much, by what I remember.”

Accepting this familiarity with unruffled calm, Cressy replied: “No, I am thought to resemble my mother. Now, what is it that you wish to say to me, if you please?”

“As to that,” said Mrs Alperton, “it’s not my wish to say anything to you, not bearing you any ill-will, nor being one to tell tales, unless I’m pushed to it.” She transferred her gaze to Kit’s face, and said: “Maybe you’d prefer I kept mum, my lord?”

“But I shouldn’t,” intervened Cressy.

Mrs Alperton paid no heed to this, but continued to watch Kit maliciously. He met her eyes, and his own hardened. “I should infinitely prefer it,” he said, “but I have warned you already that I am not a pigeon for your plucking! Take care what you’re about, Mrs Alperton! The glue won’t hold: you’ll bowl yourself out.”

“Not before I’ve bowled you out!” she declared venomously. “Which I’ll be glad to do, for I’m a mother myself, and it would go to my heart to see an innocent girl deceived like my poor Clara has been! Ah, my dear, you little know what a cozening rascal has been casting out his wicked lures to you!”

Kit leaned his shoulders against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, and resigned himself.

“No, indeed!” agreed Cressy. “Is Clara your daughter, ma’am?”

“My daughter!” said Mrs Alperton, in a throbbing voice. “Seduced by that villain, and left to starve without so much as a leave-taking!”

“How very dreadful!” said Cressy. “I must say I am astonished! I should never have thought he would have behaved so shabbily.”

Mrs Alperton was considerably taken aback. So too was Kit. He had hoped that Cressy would discredit the greater part of the story; but none of it was fit for the ears of a gently nurtured girl, and he had not dared to hope that she would not suffer a severe shock, attended by painful embarrassment. But neither he nor Mrs Alperton had taken into account the peculiar circumstances of her girlhood, or the undisguised gallantries of her father.

“Very improper indeed!” pursued Cressy. “I do most sincerely pity her—and you, too, ma’am, for nothing, I dare say, could be more disagreeable than to feel yourself compelled to remind Lord Denville of his obligations.”

“No,” said Mrs Alperton, a little dazed. “No, indeed!”

“But perhaps there is a misunderstanding?” suggested Cressy hopefully. “The thing is that he is abominably forgetful, you know. You did very right to put him in mind of the matter, for I am persuaded he will do just as he ought, now that he has remembered it, won’t you, sir?”

“Just as I ought!” corroborated Kit.

“Well, upon my word!” gasped Mrs Alperton. “I never did, not in all my life! I’m telling you he’s a rake, miss!”

“Yes, but do you think you should, ma’am?” asked Cressy diffidently. “I perfectly understand your telling him so, but it doesn’t seem to be quite the thing to tell me, for it is not in the least my affair—though I am naturally very sorry for your daughter.”

“I might have known it!” said Mrs Alperton terribly. “It wouldn’t make a bit of difference to you if he was a murderer, I dare say! Oh, the sinful hollowness of the world! That I should have lived to hear a lady of consequence—and single, too!—talk so bold and unblushing! Well, they didn’t do so in my day, whatever they may have thought! Not those that held themselves up as the pink of gentility! And very right they shouldn’t,” she added, moved to a moment of sincerity. She seemed to be about to expatiate on this point, but changed her mind, and instead said, reverting to her original style: “And me coming to warn you, believing you was but an innocent, and my heart wrung to think of you married to one such as he is! You’ll live to regret it, my girl, for all his gingerbread, and his grand title!”

“Good God, I should think so indeed!” exclaimed Cressy. “Marry Lord Denville? But I’ve no such intention!”

Mrs Alperton was fast losing control of the situation, but she made a gallant attempt at a recover. “Oh, you haven’t? Then perhaps you’ll tell me, Miss Stavely, what this means?”

Cressy, blinking at the scrap of print held up before her, presented for a moment all the appearance of one wholly bewildered. Then her puckered brow cleared, and she fell into laughter. “Now I understand!” she said. “Do you know ma’am, I have been quite in a puzzle to know why you should have wished to talk to me? It seemed the oddest thing! But I see it all now! You have read that absurd paragraph in the Morning Post, which has had us all in whoops! Oh dear, was there ever anything so nonsensical? But it is a great deal too bad!” she said, resolutely schooling her countenance to an expression of gravity. “I beg your pardon, ma’am! Infamous of me to laugh, when the tattling wretch who wrote that ridiculous farrago has been the cause of your being put to so much pain and inconvenience! How very kind it was in you to have come to see me! Indeed, I am excessively obliged to you, and shockingly distressed to think you should have undertaken such a disagreeable task for nothing.”

“Not going to marry him?” Mrs Alperton said incredulously. She looked from Cressy to Kit; and then, as she saw the smile in his eyes, as they rested on Cressy, said roundly: “Humdudgeon! And I collect he’s not nutty upon you either!”

“Oh, no! At least, I sincerely trust he is not, for I am persuaded we should not suit.”

“That’s a loud one!” ejaculated Mrs Alperton, with a scornful crack of laughter. “You won’t gammon me so easily! Why, anyone could see—”

“Pray say no more!” begged Cressy, suddenly assailed by maidenly shyness. “There is no possibility of my marrying Lord Denville, ma’am, as you will understand when I tell you that my affections are—are already engaged!”

There was a moment’s frozen silence, during which Mrs Alperton seemed to wilt where she sat. Kit, withdrawing his intent gaze from Cressy’s face, quietly left the room, feeling that she stood in no need of support, and that no time should be lost in summoning Mrs Alperton’s chaise to the door. He despatched a footman on this errand, desiring him at the same time to send Challow up to the house.

That worthy arrived speedily. He evinced no surprise at the curt question which greeted him, but replied: “Yes, sir, I do know where it came from. According to what the postboy told me, it was hired in Tunbridge Wells. And a regular saucebox he is, but he’d got no reason to tell me a whopper, so we may as well believe him as not. Also according to him, Master Kit, the party which hired it had quite an argle-bargle with Norton before he let her into the house, saying as how his lordship would regret it to his dying day if he didn’t see her. Very full of it, the lad was! Well, it made me prick up my ears, as I don’t need to tell you, but by what the lad says, the party was naught but an old griffin: not by any manner of means one of his lordship’s convenients—asking your pardon, Master Kit, if I’m speaking too bold!”

“Not one of his convenients: her mother!” said Kit, his brows knit.

“You don’t say!” exclaimed Challow, shocked. “Whatever brought her here, sir?”

“It seems his lordship hasn’t visited her daughter for nearly a month. She thinks he has abandoned her. I hoped that perhaps—But if she comes from the Wells we are no better off than we were before, for we know that wasn’t where he went!”

“I’ll take my affy-davy it wasn’t,” asserted Challow. “And a very good thing too if he has abandoned that one! All the same, Master Kit, it looks like you’re in a case of pickles—if her ma’s half the archwife the postboy says she is! Seems to me you’ll have to hang up your axe.”

Kit’s frown disappeared, and the ready laughter sprang into his eyes. “Yes, it looked like a case of pickles to me too,” he admitted. “In fact, I thought it was all holiday with me! But I was rescued in the very nick of time—and the arch-wife is about to depart: beaten at all points!”