Sylvester (2 page)

This he was prevented from doing by the hurried entrance from the adjoining bedchamber of Miss Augusta Penistone, who begged him, somewhat incoherently, not to trouble himself, since she considered the task peculiarly her own. She then pushed the table to the side of the room, and instead of effacing herself, as he always wished she would, lingered, amiably smiling at him. She was an angular, rather awkward lady, as kind as she was plain, and she served the Duchess, whose kinswoman she was, in the capacity of a companion. Her good nature was inexhaustible, but she was unfortunately quite unintelligent, and rarely failed to irritate Sylvester by asking questions to which the answers were patent, or commenting upon the obvious. He bore it very well, for his manners were extremely good, but when, after stating that she saw he had not gone out hunting, she recollected that one didn’t hunt after severe frost and said, with a merry laugh at her mistake: ‘Well, that
was
a stupid thing for me to have said, wasn’t it?’ he was provoked into replying, though with perfect suavity: ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

The Duchess intervened at this stage of the dialogue, urging her cousin to go out into the sunshine while it lasted; and after saying that, to be sure, she might venture to do so if dear Sylvester meant to sit with his mama, which she had no doubt of, and pointing out that Anna would come if the Duchess rang the bell, she got herself to the door, which Sylvester was holding open. She was obliged to pause there to tell him that she was now going to leave him to chat with his mama, adding: ‘For I am sure you wish to be private with her, don’t you?’

‘I do, but how you guessed it, cousin, I can’t imagine!’ he replied.

‘Oh!’ declared Miss Penistone gaily, ‘a pretty thing it would be if I didn’t know, after all these years, just what you like! Well I will run away, then—but you should not trouble to open the door for me! That is to treat me like a stranger! I am for ever telling you so, am I not? But you are always so obliging!’

He bowed, and shut the door behind her. The Duchess said: ‘An undeserved compliment, Sylvester. My dear, how came you to speak as you did? It was not kind.’

‘Her folly is intolerable!’ he said impatiently. ‘Why do you keep such a hubble-bubble woman about you? She must vex you past bearing!’

‘She is not very wise, certainly,’ admitted the Duchess. ‘But I couldn’t send her away, you know!’

‘Shall I do so for you?’

She was startled, but, supposing that he was speaking out of an unthinking exasperation, only said: ‘Nonsensical boy! You know you could no more do so than I could!’

He raised his brows. ‘Of course I could do it, Mama! What should stop me?’

‘You cannot be serious!’ she exclaimed, half inclined still to laugh at him.

‘But I’m perfectly serious, my dear! Be frank with me! Don’t you wish her at Jericho?’

She said, with a rueful twinkle: ‘Well, yes—sometimes I do! Don’t repeat that, will you? I have at least the grace to be ashamed of myself!’ She perceived that his expression was one of surprise, and said in a serious tone: ‘Of course it vexes you, and me too, when she says silly things, and hasn’t the tact to go away when you come to visit me, but I promise you I think myself fortunate to have her. It can’t be very amusing to be tied to an invalid, you know, but she is never hipped or out of temper, and whatever I ask her to do for me she does willingly, and so cheerfully that she puts me in danger of believing that she enjoys being at my beck and call.’

‘So I should hope!’

‘Now, Sylvester—’

‘My dear Mama, she has hung on your sleeve ever since I can remember, and a pretty generous sleeve it has been! You have always made her an allowance far beyond what you would have paid a stranger hired to bear you company, haven’t you?’

‘You speak as though you grudged it!’

‘No more than I grudge the wages of my valet, if you think her worth it. I pay large wages to my servants, but I keep none in my employment who doesn’t earn his wage.’

There was a troubled look in the eyes that searched his face, but the Duchess only said: ‘The cases are not the same, but don’t let us brangle about it! You may believe that it would make me very unhappy to lose Augusta. Indeed, I don’t know how I should go on.’

‘If that’s the truth, Mama, you need say no more. Do you suppose I wouldn’t pay anyone you wished to keep about you double—treble—what you pay Augusta?’ He saw her stretch out her hand to him, and went to her immediately. ‘You know I wouldn’t do anything you don’t like! Don’t look so distressed, dearest!’

She pressed his hand. ‘I know you wouldn’t. Don’t heed me! It is only that it shocked me a little to hear you speak so hardly. But no one has less cause to complain of hardness in you than I, my darling.’

‘Nonsense!’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘Keep your tedious cousin, love—but allow me to wish that you had with you someone who could entertain you better—enter into what interests you!’

‘Well, I have Ianthe,’ she reminded him. ‘She doesn’t precisely enter into my interests, but we go on very comfortably together.’

‘I am happy to hear it. But it begins to seem as if you won’t have the doubtful comfort of her society for much longer.’

‘My dear, if you are going to suggest that I should employ a second lady to keep me company, I do beg of you to spare your breath!’

‘No, that wouldn’t answer.’ He paused, and then said quite coolly: ‘I am thinking of getting married, Mama.’

She was taken so much by surprise that she could only stare at him. He had the reputation of being a dangerous flirt, but she had almost given up hope of his coming to the point of offering for any lady’s hand in matrimony. She had reason to think that he had had more than one mistress in keeping—very expensive Cythereans some of them had been if her sister were to be believed!—and it had begun to seem as if he preferred that way of life to a more ordered existence. Recovering from her stupefaction, she said: ‘My dear, this is very sudden!’

‘Not so sudden as you think, Mama. I have been meaning for some time to speak to you about it.’

‘Good gracious! And I never suspected it! Do, pray, sit down and tell me all about it!’

He looked at her keenly. ‘Would you be glad, Mama?’

‘Of course I should!’

‘Then I think that settles it.’

That made her laugh. ‘Of all the absurd things to say! Very well! having won my approval, tell me everything!’

He said, gazing frowningly into the fire: ‘I don’t know that there’s so much to tell you. I fancy you guessed I haven’t much cared for the notion of becoming riveted. I never met the female to whom I wished to be leg-shackled. Harry did, and if anything had been needed to confirm me in—’

‘My dear, leave that!’ she interposed. ‘Harry was happy in his marriage, remember! I believe, too, that although Ianthe’s feelings are not profound she was most sincerely attached to him.’

‘So much attached to him that within a year of his death she was pining for the sight of a ballroom, and within four is planning to marry a worthless fribble! It will not do, Mama!’

‘Very well, my dear, but we are talking of your marriage, not Harry’s, are we not?’

‘True! Well, I realized—oh, above a year ago!—that it was my duty to marry. Not so much for the sake of an heir, because I have one already, but—’

‘Sylvester, don’t put that thought into Edmund’s head!’

He laughed. ‘Much he would care! His ambition is to become a mail-coachman—or it was until Keighley let him have the yard of tin for a plaything! Now he cannot decide whether to be a coachman or a guard. Pretty flat he would think it to be told that he would be obliged instead to step into my shoes!’

She smiled. ‘Yes,
now
he would, but later—’

‘Well, that’s one of my reasons, Mama. If I mean to marry I ought, I think, to do so before Edmund is old enough to think his nose has been put out of joint. So I began some months ago to look about me.’

‘You are the oddest creature! Next you will tell me you made out a list of the qualities your wife must possess!’

‘More or less,’ he admitted. ‘You may laugh, Mama, but you’ll agree that certain qualities are indispensable! She must be well-born, for instance. I don’t mean necessarily a great match, but a girl of my own order.’

‘Ah, yes, I agree with
that
! And next?’

‘Well, a year ago I should have said she must be beautiful,’ he replied meditatively. (She is not a beauty, thought the Duchess.) ‘But I’m inclined to think now that it is more important that she should be intelligent. I don’t think I could tolerate a hen-witted wife. Besides, I don’t mean to foist another fool on to you.’

‘I am very much obliged to you!’ she said, a good deal entertained. ‘Clever, but not beautiful: very well! Continue!’

‘No, some degree of beauty I do demand. She must have countenance, at least, and the sort of elegance which you have, Mama.’

‘Don’t try to turn my head, you flatterer! Have you discovered among the debutantes one who is endowed with all these qualities?’

‘At first glance, I suppose a dozen, but in the end only five.’

‘Five!’

‘Well, only five with whom I could perhaps bear to spend a large part of my life. There is Lady Jane Saxby: she’s pretty, and good-natured. Then there’s Barningham’s daughter: she has a great deal of vivacity. Miss Bellerby is a handsome girl, with a little reserve, which I don’t dislike. Lady Mary Torrington—oh, a diamond of the first water! And lastly Miss Orton: not beautiful, but quite taking, and has agreeable manners.’ He paused, his gaze still fixed on the smouldering logs. The Duchess waited expectantly. He looked up presently, and smiled at her. ‘Well, Mama?’ he said affably. ‘Which of them shall it be?’

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.