Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

2

After an astonished moment the Duchess said: “Dearest, are you roasting me? You can’t in all seriousness be asking me to choose for you!”

“No, not choose precisely. I wish you will advise me, though. You’re not acquainted with any of them, but you know their families, and if you should have a decided preference—”

“But, Sylvester, have you no preference?”

“No, that’s the devil of it: I haven’t. Whenever I think one more eligible than any of the others as sure as check I find she has some fault or trick which I don’t like. Lady Jane’s laugh, for instance; or Miss Orton’s infernal harp! I’ve no turn for music, and to be obliged to endure a harp’s being eternally twanged in my own house—no, I think that’s coming it a trifle too strong, don’t you, Mama? Then Lady Mary—”

“Thank you, I have heard enough to be able to give you my advice!” interrupted his mother. “Don’t make an offer for any one of them! You are not in love!”

“In love! No, of course I am not. Is that so necessary?”

“Most necessary, my dear! Don’t, I beg you, offer marriage where you can’t offer love as well!”

He smiled at her. “You are too romantic, Mama.”

“Am I? But you seem to have no romance in you at all!”

“Well, I don’t look for it in marriage, at any rate.”

“Only in the muslin company?”

He laughed. “You shock me, Mama! That’s a different matter. I shouldn’t call it romance either—or only one’s first adventure, perhaps. And even when I was a greenhead, and fell in love with the most dazzling little bird of Paradise you ever saw, I don’t think I really fancied myself to have formed a lasting passion! I daresay I’m too volatile, in which case—”

“No such thing! You have not yet been fortunate enough to meet the girl for whom you will form a lasting passion.”

“Very true: I haven’t! And since I’ve been on the town for nearly ten years, and may be said to have had my pick of all the eligible debutantes that appear yearly on the Marriage Mart, we must conclude that if I’m not too volatile I must be too nice in my requirements. To be frank with you, Mama, you are the only lady of my acquaintance with whom I don’t soon become heartily bored!”

A tiny frown appeared between her winged brows as she listened to this speech. It was spoken in a bantering tone, but she found it disturbing. “Your pick of them, Sylvester?”

“Yes, I think so. I must have seen all the eligibles, I fancy.”

“And have made quite a number of them the objects of your gallantry—if the things I hear are to be believed!”

“My aunt Louisa,” said Sylvester unerringly. “What an incorrigible gossip your sister is, my dear! Well, if I have now and then shown a preference at least she can’t accuse me of having been so particular in my attentions as to have raised false hopes in any maiden’s bosom!”

The hint of laughter had quite vanished from her eyes. The image she cherished of this beloved son was all at once blurred; and a feeling of disquiet made it difficult for her to know what she should say to him. As she hesitated, an interruption occurred. The door was opened; a pretty, plaintive voice said: “May I come in, Mama-Duchess?” and there appeared on the threshold a vision of beauty dressed in a blue velvet pelisse, and a hat with a high poke-front which made a frame for a ravishing countenance. Ringlets of bright gold fell beside damask cheeks; large blue eyes were set beneath delicately arched brows; the little nose was perfectly straight; and the red mouth deliciously curved.

“Good morning, my love. Of course you may come in!” said the Duchess.

The vision had by this time perceived her brother-in-law, and although she did come in she said with a marked diminution of cordiality: “Oh! I didn’t know you had Sylvester with you, ma’am. I beg your pardon, but I only came to discover if Edmund was here.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” replied the Duchess. “Is he not with Mr. Leyburn?”

“No, and it is particularly vexatious because I wish to take him with me to visit the Arkholmes! You know I have been meaning for days to drive over to the Grange, ma’am, and now, on the first fine morning we have had for an age, no one can tell me where he is!”

“Perhaps he has slipped off to the stables, little rogue!”

“No, though, to be sure, that was what I expected too, for ever since Sylvester took to encouraging him to haunt the stables—”

“My dear, they all do so, and without the least encouragement!” interposed the Duchess. “Mine certainly did—they were the most deplorable urchins! Tell me, did you have that charming pelisse made from the velvets we chose from the patterns sent down last month? How well it has made up!”

The effect of this attempt to divert the beauty’s thoughts was unfortunate. “Yes, but only think, ma’am!” exclaimed Ianthe. “I had a suit made from it for Edmund to wear when he goes out with me—quite simple, but after the style of that red dress the boy has on in the picture by Reynolds. I forget where I saw it, but I thought at once how well Edmund would look in it if only it were not red but blue!”

“Wouldn’t he just!” muttered Sylvester.

“What did you say?” demanded Ianthe suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

“I suppose it was something ill-natured. To be sure, I never hoped that you would think it pretty!”

“You are mistaken. The picture you would both present would be pretty enough to take one’s breath away. Assuming, of course, that Edmund could be persuaded to behave conformably. Standing within your arm, with that soulful look on his face—no, that won’t do! He only wears that when he’s plotting mischief. Well—”

“Sylvester, will you be silent?” begged the Duchess, trying not to laugh. “Don’t heed him, my dear child! He’s only quizzing you!”

“Oh, I know that, ma’am!” said Ianthe, her colour considerably heightened. “I know, too, who it is who teaches poor little Edmund not to mind me!”

“Oh, good God, what next?” Sylvester exclaimed.

“You do!” she insisted. “And it shows how little affection you have for him! If you cared a rap for him you wouldn’t encourage him to run into heaven knows what danger!”

“What danger?”

“Anything might happen to him!” she declared. “At this very moment he may be at the bottom of the lake!”

“He is nowhere near the lake. If you must have it, I saw him making off to the Home Wood!”

“And you made not the smallest effort to call him back, I collect!”

“No. The last time I interfered in Edmund’s illicit amusements I figured in your conversation as a monster of inhumanity for three days.”

“I never said any such thing, but only that—besides, he may change his mind, and go to the lake after all!”

“Make yourself easy: he won’t! Not while he knows I’m at home, at all events.”

She said fretfully: “I might have known how it would be! I would as lief not to go to the Grange at all now, and I wouldn’t, only that I have had the horses put to. But I shan’t know a moment’s peace of mind for wondering if my poor, orphaned child is safe, or at the bottom of the lake!”

“If he should fail to appear in time for his dinner, I will have the lake dragged,” promised Sylvester, walking to the door, and opening it. “Meanwhile, however careless I may be of my nephew I am not careless of my horses, and I do beg of you, if you have had a pair put to, not to keep them standing in this weather!”

This request incensed Ianthe so much that she flounced out of the room in high dudgeon.

“Edifying!” remarked Sylvester. “Believing her orphaned son to be at the bottom of the lake this devoted parent departs on an expedition of pleasure!”

“My dear, she knows very well he isn’t at the bottom of the lake! Can you never meet without rubbing against one another? You are quite as unjust to her as she is to you, I must tell you!”

He shrugged. “I daresay. If I had ever seen a trace of her vaunted devotion to Edmund I could bear with her patiently, but I never have! If he will be so obliging as to submit to her caresses she is pleased to think she dotes on him, but when he becomes noisy it is quite a comedy to see how quickly she can develop the headache, so that Button must be sent for to remove her darling! She never went near him when he had the measles, and when she made his toothache an excuse to carry him off to London, and then was ready to let the brat’s tooth rot in his head rather than put herself to the trouble of compelling him to submit to its extraction—”

“I knew we should come to it!” interrupted the Duchess, throwing up her hands. “Let me tell you, my son, that it takes a great deal of resolution to drag a reluctant child to the dentist! I never had enough! It fell to Button to perform the dreadful duty—and so it would have done in Edmund’s case, only that she was ill at the time!”

“I shan’t let you tell me, Mama,” he said, laughing. “For I have performed the dreadful duty, remember!”

“So you have! Poor Edmund! Swooped upon in the Park, snatched up into your curricle, and whisked off to the torture-chamber in such a ruthless style! I promise you my heart bled for him!”

“It might well have done so had you seen his face as I saw it! I suppose the witless abigail who had him in charge told you I swooped upon him? All I did was to drive to Tilton’s immediately, and what was needed was not resolution but firmness! No, Mama: don’t ask me to credit Ianthe with devotion to her brat, for it sickens me! I only wish I knew who was the sapskull who told her how lovely she appeared with her child in her arms. Also that I hadn’t been fool enough to allow myself to be persuaded to commission Lawrence to paint her in that affecting pose!”

“You did so to give Harry pleasure,” said the Duchess gently. “I have always been glad to think it was finished in time for him to see it.”

Sylvester strode over to the window, and stood looking out. After a few minutes he said: “I’m sorry, Mama. I should not have said that.”

“No, of course you should not, dearest. I wish you will try not to be so hard on Ianthe, for she is very much to be pitied, you know. You didn’t like it when she began to go into society again with her mama, at the end of that first year of mourning. Well, I didn’t like it either, but how could one expect such a pleasure-loving little creature to stay moping here, after all? It was not improper in her to put off her blacks.” She hesitated, and then added: “It is not improper in her to be wishing to marry again now, Sylvester.”

“I haven’t accused her of impropriety.”

“No, but you are making it dreadfully hard for her, my love! She may not be devoted to Edmund, but to take him from her entirely—”

“If that should happen, it will be her doing, not mine! She may make her home here for as long as she chooses, or she may take Edmund to live with her at the Dower House. All I have ever said is that Harry’s son will be reared at Chance, and under my eye! If Ianthe marries again she is welcome to visit Edmund whenever she pleases. I have even told her she may have him to stay with her at reasonable intervals. But one thing I will never do, and that is to permit him to grow up under Nugent Fotherby’s aegis! Good God, Mama, how can you think it possible I would so abuse my twin’s trust?”

“Ah, no, no! But is Sir Nugent so very bad? I was a little acquainted with his father—he was so amiable that he said yes and amen to everything!—but I think I never met the son.”

“You needn’t repine! A wealthy fribble, three parts idiot, and the fourth—never mind! A pretty guardian I should be to abandon Edmund to his and Ianthe’s upbringing! Do you know what Harry said to me, Mama? They were almost the last words he spoke to me. He said: “You’ll look after the boy, Dook.” He stopped, his voice cracking on that last word. After a moment he said, not very easily: “You know how he used to call me that—with that twinkle in his eye. It wasn’t a question, or a request. He knew I should, and he said it, not to remind me, but because it was a comfortable thought that came into his head, and he always told me what he was thinking.” He saw that his mother had shaded her eyes with one hand, and crossed the room to her side, taking her other hand, and holding it closely. “Forgive me! I must make you understand, Mama!”

“I do understand, Sylvester, but how can I think it right to keep the child here with no one but old Button to look after him, or some tutor for whom he’s far too young? If I were not useless—” She clipped the words off short.

Knowing her as he did, he made no attempt to answer what had been left unspoken, but said calmly: “Yes, I too have considered that, and it forms a strong reason for my marriage. I fancy Ianthe would soon grow reconciled to the thought of parting with Edmund, could she but leave him in his aunt’s charge. She wouldn’t then incur the stigma of heartlessness, would she? She cares a great deal for what people may say of her—and I must own that after presenting a portrait of herself to the world in the role of devoted parent, I don’t perceive how she can abandon Edmund to the mercy of his wicked uncle. My wife, you know, could very well be held to have softened my disposition!”

“Now, Sylvester—! She can never have said you were wicked!”

He smiled. “She may not have used that precise term, but she has regaled everyone with the tale of my disregard for Edmund’s welfare, and frequent brutality to him. They may not believe the whole, but I’ve reason to suppose that even a man of such good sense as Elvaston thinks I treat the boy with unmerited severity.”

“Well, if Lord Elvaston doesn’t know his daughter better than to believe the farradiddles she utters I have a poor opinion of his sense!” said the Duchess, quite tartly. “Do let us stop talking about Ianthe, my love!”

“Willingly! I had rather talk of my own affairs. Mama, what sort of a female would you wish me to marry?”

“In your present state, I don’t wish you to marry any sort of a female. When you come out of it, the sort you wish to marry, of course!”

“You are not being in the least helpful!” he complained. “I thought mothers always made marriage plans for their sons!”

“And consequently suffered some severe disappointments! I am afraid the only marriage I ever planned for you was with a three-day infant, when you were eight years old!”

“Come! this is better!” he said encouragingly. “Who was she? Do I know her?”

“You haven’t mentioned her, but I should think you must at least have seen her, for she was presented this year, and had her first season. Her grandmother wrote to tell me of it, and I almost asked you—” She broke off, vexed with herself, and altered the sentence she had been about to utter. “—to give her a kind message from me, only did not, for she could hardly be expected to remember me. She’s Lady Ingham’s granddaughter.”

“What, my respected godmama? One of the Ingham girls? Oh, no, my dear! I regret infinitely, but—no!”

“No, no, Lord Marlow’s daughter!” she replied, laughing. “He married Verena Ingham, who was my dearest friend, and the most captivating creature!”

“Better and better!” he approved. “Why have I never encountered the captivating Lady Marlow?” He stopped, frowning. “But I have! I’m not acquainted with her—in fact, I don’t remember that I’ve ever so much as spoken to her, but I must tell you, Mama, that whatever she may have been in her youth—”

“Good heavens, that odious woman is Marlow’s second! Verena died when her baby was not a fortnight old.”

“Very sad. Tell me about her!”

“I don’t think you would be much the wiser if I did,” she answered, wondering if he was trying to divert her mind from the memories he had himself evoked. “She wasn’t beautiful, or accomplished, or even modish, I fear! She defeated every effort to turn her into a fashionable young lady, and never appeared elegant except in her riding-dress. She did the most outrageous things, and nobody cared a bit—not even Lady Cork! We came out in the same season, and were the greatest of friends; but while I was so fortunate as to meet Papa—and to fall in love with him at sight, let me tell you!—she refused every offer that was made her—scores of them, for she never lacked for suitors!—and declared she preferred her horses to any man she had met. Poor Lady Ingham was in despair! And in the end she married Marlow, of all people! I believe she must have liked him for his horsemanship, for I am sure there was nothing else to like in him. Not a very exciting story, I’m afraid! Why did you wish to hear it?”

“Oh, I wished to know what sort of a woman she was! Marlow I do know, and I should suppose that any daughter of his must be an intolerable bore. But your Verena’s child might be the very wife for me, don’t you think? You would be disposed to like her, which must be an object with me; and although I don’t mean to burden myself with a wife who wants conduct, I should imagine that there must be enough of Marlow’s blood in this girl to leaven whatever wildness she may have inherited from her mother. Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife!”

“My dear, what nonsense you are talking! If I believed you meant it I should be most seriously disturbed!”

“But I do mean it! I thought you would have been pleased, too! What could be more romantic than to marry the girl who was betrothed to me in her cradle?”

She smiled, but she did not look to be much amused. His eyes searched her face; he said in the caressing tone he used only to her: “What is it, my dear? Tell me!”

She said: “Sylvester, you have talked of five girls who might perhaps suit you; and now you are talking of a girl of whose existence you were unaware not ten minutes ago—and as though you had only to decide between them! My dear, has it not occurred to you that you might find yourself rebuffed?”

His brow cleared. “Is that all? No, no, Mama, I shan’t be rebuffed!”

“So sure, Sylvester?”

“Of course I’m sure, Mama! Oh, not of Miss Marlow! For anything I know, her affections may be engaged already.”

“Or she might take you in dislike,” suggested the Duchess.

“Take me in dislike? Why should she?” he asked, surprised.

“How can I tell? These things do happen, you know.”

“If you mean she might not fall in love with me, I daresay she might not, though I know of no reason, if she doesn’t love another man, why she shouldn’t come to do so—or, at any rate, to like me very tolerably! Do you suppose me to be so lacking in address that I can’t make myself agreeable when I wish to? Fie on you, Mama!”

“No,” she said. “But I didn’t know you had so much address that you could beguile no fewer than five girls of rank and fashion to be ready to accept an offer from you.”

He could not resist. “Well, Mama, you said yourself that I make love charmingly!” he murmured.

It drew a smile from her, because she could never withstand that gleaming look, but she shook her head as well, and said: “For shame, Sylvester! Do you mean to sound like a coxcomb?”

He laughed. “Of course I don’t! To be frank with you, there are not five but a dozen young women of rank and fashion who are perfectly ready to receive an offer from me. I’m not hard to swallow, you know, though I don’t doubt I have as many faults as a Mr. Smith or a Mr. Jones. Mine are more palatable, however: scarcely noticeable for the rich marchpane that covers them!”

“Do you wish for a wife who marries you for the sake of your possessions?” the Duchess asked, arching her brows.

“I don’t think I mind very much, provided we were mutually agreeable. Such a wife would be unlikely to enact me any tragedies, and anything of that nature, Mama, would lead to our being regularly parted within a twelvemonth. I couldn’t endure it!”

“The enacting of tragedies, my son, is not an invariable concomitant of love-matches,” she said dryly.

“Who should know that better than I?” he retorted, his smile embracing her. “But where am I to look for your counterpart, my dear? Show her to me, and I will engage to fall desperately in love with her, and marry her, fearing no after-ills!”

“Sylvester, you are too absurd!”

“Not as absurd as you think! Seriously, Mama, although I have seen some love-matches that have prospered, I have seen a great many that most certainly have not! Oh! no doubt some husbands and wives of my acquaintance would stare to hear me say I thought them anything but happy! Perhaps they enjoy jealousies, tantrums, quarrels, and stupid misunderstandings: I should not! The well-bred woman who marries me because she has a fancy to be a duchess will suit me very well, and will probably fill her position admirably.” His eyes quizzed her. “Or would you like me to turn my coat inside out, and sally forth in humble disguise, like the prince in a fairy tale? I never thought much of that prince, you know! A chuckle-headed fellow, for how could he hope, masquerading as a mean person, to come near any but quite ineligible females whom it would have been impossible for him to marry?”

“Very true!” she replied.

He was always watchful where she was concerned. It struck him now that she was suddenly looking tired; and he said with quick compunction: “I’ve fagged you to death with my nonsense! Now, why did you let me talk you into a headache? Shall I send Anna to you?”

“No, indeed! My head doesn’t ache, I promise you,” she said, smiling tenderly up at him.

“I wish I might believe you!” he said, bending over her to kiss her cheek. “I’ll leave you to rest before you are assailed by Augusta again: don’t let her plague you!”

He went away, and she remained lost in her reflections until roused from them by her cousin’s return.

“All alone, dear Elizabeth?” Miss Penistone exclaimed. “Now, if I had but known—but in general I do believe Sylvester would stay with you for ever, if I were not obliged at last to come in! I am sure I have said a hundred times that I never knew such an attentive son. So considerate, too! There was never anything like it!”

“Ah, yes!” the Duchess said. “To me so considerate, so endlessly kind!”

She sounded a little mournful, which was unusual in her. Miss Penistone, speaking much in the heartening tone Button used to divert Edmund when he was cross, said: “He was looking particularly handsome today, wasn’t he? Such an excellent figure, and his air so distinguished! What heart-burnings there will be when at last he throws the handkerchief!”

She laughed amiably at this thought, but the Duchess did not seem to be amused. She said nothing, but Miss Penistone saw her hands clasp and unclasp on the arm of her chair, and at once realized that no doubt she must be afraid that so rich a prize as Sylvester might be caught by some wretchedly designing creature quite unworthy of his attention. “And no fear of his marrying to disoblige you, as the saying goes,” said Miss Penistone brightly, but with an anxious eye on the Duchess. “With so many girls on the catch for him I daresay you would be quite in a worry if he were not so sensible. That thought came into my head once—so absurd!—and I mentioned it to Louisa, when she was staying here in the summer. “Not he!” she said—you know her abrupt way! “He knows his worth too well!” Which set my mind quite at rest, as you may suppose.”

It did not seem to have exercised the same beneficial effect on the Duchess’s mind, for she put up a hand to shade her eyes. Miss Penistone knew then what was amiss: she had had one of her bad nights, poor Elizabeth!