Frederica (27 page)

From then on the scene rose to nightmarish proportions, so many people claiming damages, or threatening lawsuits, that poor Jessamy’s brain reeled. When his name and direction were demanded he had a horrid vision of a stream of injured persons descending upon Frederica, bent on extorting huge sums from her, and, of instinct, he blurted out: “Berkeley Square! My—my guardian’s house—the M-Marquis of Alverstoke!”

He had no thought in his head but to protect Frederica, but it was swiftly borne in upon him that he had uttered magical words. His assurances of redress (hitherto spurned) were accepted; the irate gentleman, saying that he hoped his guardian would make him smart, resumed his progress up the street; and the dowager, recovering from the vapours, read him a severe lecture, and said she would not fail to report what she called his naughtiness to the Marquis.

Thus it came about that for the second time a Merriville arrived in Berkeley Square at an unseasonable hour, demanding instant speech with the Marquis. Unlike Frederica, however, Jessamy did not reject Charles Trevor’s services; and he was impetuously, and rather incomprehensibly, pouring his story into Charles’s ears when Alverstoke, wearing a long and lavishly caped driving-coat of white drab over his elegant morning-dress, strolled into the room, saying: “
Now
what? Wicken informs me—” He broke off, and raised his quizzing-glass to his eye, the better to observe Jessamy’s battered appearance. He let it fall, and advanced. “Repellent boy, have you been in a mill? Why the devil haven’t you patched him up, Charles?”

“I haven’t yet been allowed to, sir,” responded Mr Trevor.

“No, no, it’s of no consequence!” Jessamy said impatiently, wiping away a trickle of blood from a cut on his forehead. “I’m not hurt! Nothing to signify! I only want—I mean I didn’t come here because of
that,
but because—Oh,
pray
don’t trouble yourself about it, sir!”

“Stand still!” commanded Alverstoke, taking that dogged chin in his hand, and turning Jessamy’s face to the light.

“It wasn’t a mill! I feel—and it serves me right!” Jessamy said bitterly, and with suppressed violence.

“No doubt, but it doesn’t serve me right to have you bleeding all over my house. Charles, I wish you will be good enough to—No, I’ll attend to it myself. Come along, you young cawker! You can tell me all about it while I put some sticking-plaster over this cut.”

Willy-nilly, Jessamy followed him out of the room, and up the broad stairs, protesting all the way that his wounds and abrasions were of no consequence, and that he had come to his lordship’s house merely to make a clean breast of his iniquity; to warn him that a number of persons of varying degree were probably following hard upon his heels, to demand compensation for the damage they had incurred at his hands; and to beg him to disburse whatever sums were required, under promise of repayment by the culprit.

Presently, having washed the dirt and the bloodstains from his face and hands, relinquished his muddy coat into Knapp’s hands, submitted to having the more accessible of his many bruises anointed, and his brow adorned with a strip of plaster, and swallowed a judicious mixture of brandy and water, his jangled nerves grew quieter, and he was able to give the Marquis a fairly coherent account of his accident, speaking in a voice of rigid control, and betraying only by the clenching and unclenching of his thin hands the inward turmoil under which his spirit laboured. He ended on a harsh note, meeting Alverstoke’s cool, faintly amused eyes with a fierce look in his own. “I had no right to furnish them with your name, sir, or to lead them to suppose that I live here. I know it, and I beg your pardon! I—I want to explain! I only did it because I couldn’t bear to have them coming down upon Frederica! I don’t know what I may have to pay: a great deal, I daresay, because the machine was smashed as well as that chair, and—But whatever it is
I
will pay, and not my sister! With all the expense of Charis’s come-out—and I was determined not to add to it!”

He ended on a note of anguish, but the Marquis applied an effective damper by saying in a prosaic and slightly bored voice: “Very proper. What is it you wish me to do for you?”

Pulled up short on the verge of an emotional outburst, Jessamy flushed, biting his lip, and managed to reply with tolerable self-command: “To lend me whatever sum may be needed—if you would be so very obliging, sir! On the understanding that I pay it back to you out of my allowance. You see, I haven’t very much left just—just at the moment. There were the lessons I had, and the hire of the machine, so—”

“Don’t let it worry you!” advised his lordship. “I shan’t dun you!”

Jessamy’s flush deepened. “I know that! Pray don’t say I needn’t pay you back at all, or tell me not to worry! Nothing would prevail upon me not to pay you back, and I
ought
to worry! At the first test I yielded to temptation! Vainglory! Yes, and worse! I wanted to outshine Felix! Could anything be more contemptible, or show how—how unfitted I am even to
think
of entering into Holy Orders?”

“Yes, quite a number of things,” replied Alverstoke. “Stop magnifying a trivial incident into a major sin! All you have done is to get into a scrape, through no particular fault of your own, and there is no need whatsoever for any soul-searching. I am glad to know you
can
fall into scrapes: you’ll be a better parson if you have understanding of human frailty than if you were to be a saint at sixteen years of age!”

Jessamy looked to be rather struck by this, but after frowning over it for a moment, he said: “Yes, but—but when one has made a resolution—not to have the strength to resist temptation shows such weakness of character—doesn’t it, sir?”

“If your resolution was to behave like an ascetic, it shows that you stand in grave danger of becoming a prig!” said his lordship brutally. “Well, you’ve applied to me for assistance, in which you’ve at least shown that you don’t lose your wits in an emergency! I’ll settle the reckoning and you can repay me when you can do so without leaving yourself at a standstill. As for all the threats that were hurled at you, forget them! If any coachman, chair-mender, or any other such person, had the temerity to come here, demanding your blood, you may depend upon it that Mr Trevor would be fully capable of dealing with such impudence! But they won’t come.”

“No,” Jessamy said, his brow darkening. “I didn’t give your name for that reason—it didn’t even occur to me!—but as soon as I said you were my guardian—” He stopped, brooding over it, and then said, raising his austere eyes to Alverstoke’s face: “That’s as contemptible as the rest!”

“Possibly, but you’ll own it’s convenient! Spare me any moralizing on the hollowness of worldly rank, and pay attention to what I am going to say to you!”

“Yes, sir,” said Jessamy, bracing himself.

“You’ve claimed my protection as your guardian, and you must now submit to your guardian’s judgment. Which is that you will henceforth moderate your studies—believe me, they are excessive!—and devote some part of every day to your physical needs. What you want, Jessamy, is not a Pedestrian Curricle, but a horse!”

Light sprang to Jessamy’s sombre eyes; he exclaimed involuntarily: “Oh, if only—!” He stopped short, and shook his head. “I can’t. Not in London! The expense—”

“There will be no expense. You are going to exercise one of my hacks—thereby doing me a favour!”

“R-ride your horses? You—you’d let me—
t-trust
me?” stammered Jessamy. “Oh, no! I don’t deserve to be
rewarded,
sir!”

“You are not being rewarded: you are being commanded!” said Alverstoke. “A novel experience for you, young man!” The glowing eyes lifted to his, the trembling of Jessamy’s lip, touched him. He smiled, and dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, gripping it. “Pluck up, you gudgeon!” he said. “You haven’t broken even one of the Ten Commandments, you know, so stop trying to turn a molehill into a mountain! If Knapp has finished furbishing up your coat, I’ll drive you home now.”

XV

Upon the following morning, the Marquis received a letter from Frederica, thanking him for his kind offices, and expressing her regret that he should have been put to so much trouble on Jessamy’s behalf. He read it appreciatively, knowing very well that its civility hid—or was meant to hide—intense mortification. She acknowledged it, when, two days later, he met her at an assembly. She said, in answer to his quizzing accusation: “Oh, no, no, no, not
cross,
but so deeply mortified! After all my protestations—! I do most sincerely beg your pardon!”

“Nonsense! What had you to do with it?”

“Oh, everything!” she sighed. “I brought him to London against his wish, and I’ve neglected him for Charis. I ought not to leave him so much to his own devices.” She thought this over, and added candidly: “Not that he would like it if I were to thrust my company on him too frequently. In fact, it would irk him past bearing. He is a—a very solitary person, you know. And that’s my fault too: I expect I should have at least made a push to cure him of that.”

“You would have been wasting your time. I wish you will explain to me why you are making such a heavy matter of a trivial and perfectly understandable episode? He, of course, was bound to do so, at this stage of his career, but why should you?”

“Oh, I don’t!” she said quickly. “If he hadn’t turned to you instead of to me I should have been excessively diverted! But it does vex me that he should have dragged you into the affair. Yes, and although he gets upon his high ropes if I question him, and says it is no concern of mine, but quite his own business, I am persuaded you must have paid for all the damage he did, and that I
cannot
bear!”

“Nor could he, so I have merely lent him the necessary sum—in return for his promise that he will abate his studies a trifle. Yes, I know you are burning to reimburse me immediately, but that, let me tell you, would be a high piece of meddling—and, if I were to allow you to do it, which I shan’t—destructive of the good I rather think I may have achieved.”

She looked at him, her eyes warm with gratitude. “Indeed you have! I was afraid that he would have fallen into dejection, for in general he always does so when he has kicked up a lark, but this time he is more
aux anges
than in despair. I wish you might have seen him when he rode up to our door on your horse, and called me out to admire its points! So proud and happy! I won’t meddle, but at least let me thank you!”

“No, the subject has begun to bore me. Tell me, instead, who’s the dashing blade with Charis?”

Her eyes travelled to her sister, who was waltzing with a lively young gentleman, obviously of the first stare of a la modality, and even more obviously bent on fixing Ms interest with her. “Mr Peter Navenby. We met him at Lady Jersey’s party. She told me he no sooner set eyes on Charis than he begged her to present him. There’s nothing unusual in that, of course, but he has become extremely particular in his attentions, and—which I think
most
significant!—he prevailed upon his mother to pay us a morning visit! I liked her so much! What’s of more consequence is that
she
liked Charis. I collect, from something she said to me, that her dread is to see him snapped up by some horridly mercenary girl on the catch for a rich husband—which she instantly perceived Charis is
not
!”
She looked anxiously at Ms lordship. “It
would
be an eligible match, wouldn’t it?”

The Marquis, who was surveying Mr Navenby through his quizzing-glass, said: “Young Navenby, is he? Oh, a most eligible match! He has all the advantages of birth, and a respectable fortune—prospective, of course, but we must hope his father won’t be long-lived.”

“I don’t hope anything of the sort!” said Frederica, flushing angrily. “An—an abominable thing to say—even for you, my lord!”

“But I thought you were determined to marry Charis to a fortune!”

“I am not, and nor did I ever say so. I wish to see her
comfortably
established—which is a very different matter to scheming for titles and fortunes! What I do
not
wish for her is a handsome muttonhead like your cousin, whose fortune is as small as his brain! I shall be very much obliged to you if you will nip that affair in the bud!”

He looked rather amused, but merely said: “You must have been listening to my cousin Lucretia. Let me reassure you! Endymion was not born without a shirt. He inherited quite an easy competence.”

Conscious of having let her annoyance betray her into a very improper speech, she said stiffly. “I shouldn’t have spoken as I did about your cousin. I beg your pardon!”

“Oh, I’ve no objection!” he replied indifferently. “I have really very little interest in Endymion, and not the smallest intention of interfering in his concerns. So you won’t have to be obliged to me. That should at least afford you some consolation.” He glanced mockingly at her as he spoke, but she had turned her face away, biting her lip. “Well? Doesn’t it?”

“No. You made me fly into a miff, and snap your nose off, but I didn’t mean to offend you. I hope I am not so ungrateful!”

“You haven’t offended me, and I don’t want your gratitude,” he said. Startled by the harsh note in his voice, she looked up at him, doubt and a little dismay in her face. His was inscrutable, but after a moment he smiled, and said, in his usual languid way: “Gratitude is another of the things which I find a dead bore.”

“Then you must take care not to give me cause to feel it,” she replied.

He had transferred his attention again to Charis, and said abruptly: “A budding Tulip, young Navenby. Am I to understand that you have abandoned hope of her milky suitor?”