The Grand Sophy (2 page)

“You know, Lizzie, it’s a queer thing that any son of yours and Ombersley should have grown into such a dull stick,” remarked Sir Horace dispassionately. “I suppose you didn’t play Ombersley false, did you?”

“Horace!”

“No, I know you didn’t! No need to fly into a pucker! Not with your eldest; you know better than that! Still, it is an odd circumstance—often thought so! He can marry his bluestocking, and welcome, for anything I care, but none of this explains why you should be caring a fig for what he likes or don’t like!”

Lady Ombersley transferred her gaze from the glowing coals to his face. “You do not perfectly understand, Horace.”

“That’s what I said!” he retorted.

“Yes, but—Horace, Matthew Rivenhall left his whole fortune to Charles!”

Sir Horace was generally accounted an astute man, but he appeared to find it difficult correctly to assimilate this information. He stared fixedly at his sister for a moment or two, and then said, “You don’t mean that old uncle of Ombersley?”

“Yes, I do.”

“The nabob?”

Lady Ombersley nodded, but her brother was still not satisfied. “Fellow who made a fortune in India?”

“Yes, and we always thought—but he said Charles was the only Rivenhall other than himself who had the least grain of sense, and he left him everything, Horace! Everything!”

“Good God!”

This ejaculation seemed to appear to Lady Ombersley as fitting, for she nodded again, looking at her brother in a woe-begone fashion, and twisting the fringe of her shawl between her fingers.

“So it is Charles who calls the tune!” said Sir Horace.

“No one could have been more generous,” said Lady Ombersley unhappily. “We cannot but be sensible of it.”

“Damn his impudence!” said Sir Horace, himself a father. “What’s he done?”

“Well, Horace, you might not know it, because you are always abroad, but poor Ombersley had a great many debts.”

“Everyone knows that! Never knew him when he wasn’t under a cloud! You’re not going to tell me the boy was fool enough to settle ’em?”

“But, Horace, someone had to settle them!” she protested. “You can have no notion how difficult things were becoming! And with the younger boys to establish creditably, and the dear girls— It is no wonder that Charles should be so anxious that Cecilia should make a good match!”

“Providing for the whole pack, is he? More fool he! What about the mortgages? If the greater part of Ombersley’s inheritance had not been entailed he would have gambled the whole away long since!”

“I do not properly understand entails,” said his sister, “but I am afraid that Charles did not behave just as he should over it. Ombersley was very much displeased, though I shall always say that to call one’s first-born a serpent’s tooth is to use quite unbecoming language! It seems that when Charles came of age he might have made everything quite easy for his poor papa, if only he had been in the least degree obliging! But nothing would prevail upon him to agree to break the entail, so all was at a standstill, and one cannot blame Ombersley for being vexed! And then that odious old man died.”

“When?” demanded Sir Horace. “How comes it that I never heard a word of this before today?”

“It was rather more than two years ago, and—”

“That accounts for it, then. I was devilish busy, dealing with Angouleme, and all that set. Must have happened at the time of Toulouse, I dare swear. But when I saw you last year you never spoke a word, Lizzie!”

She was stung by the injustice of this, and said indignantly, “I am sure I don’t know how I should have been thinking of such paltry things, with that Monster at large, and the Champs de Mars, and the banks suspending payment, and heaven knows what beside! And you coming over from Brussels without a word of warning, and sitting with me a bare twenty minutes! My head was in a whirl, and if I answered you to the point it is more than I would have bargained for!”

Sir Horace, disregarding this irrelevancy, said, with what for him was strong feeling, “Outrageous! I don’t say Ombersley’s not a shocking loose screw, because there’s no sense in wrapping plain facts up in clean linen, but to be cutting a man out of one’s will and setting up his son to lord it over him, which I’ll be bound he does!”

“No, no!” expostulated Lady Ombersley feebly. “Charles is fully sensible of what is due to his father! It is not that he is ever lacking in respect, I do assure you! Only poor Ombersley cannot but feel it a little, now that Charles has taken everything into his own hands.”

“A pretty state of affairs!”

“Yes, but one comfort is that it is not generally known. And I cannot deny that in some ways it is by far more pleasant. You would scarcely credit it, Horace, but I do believe there is not an unpaid bill in the house!” A moment’s reflection caused her to modify this statement. “At least, I cannot answer for Ombersley, but all those dreadful household accounts, which Eckington—you remember our good Eckington, Ombersley’s agent—used to pull such a face over; and the fees at Eton and Oxford—everything, my dear brother, Charles takes care of!”

“You aren’t going to tell me Charles is fool enough to fritter away old Matt Rivenhall’s fortune paying all the expenses of this barrack of a house!” exclaimed Sir Horace.

“No. Oh, no! I have not the least head for business, so it is of no use to ask me to explain it to you, but I believe that Charles persuaded his father to—to allow him to administer the estate.”

“Blackmailed him into it, more like!” said Sir Horace grimly. “Rare times we live in! Mind, I see the boy’s point, Lizzie, but, by God, I’m sorry for you!”

“Oh, pray believe it’s no such thing!” cried Lady Ombersley, distressed. “I did not wish you to think—to give you cause to suppose that Charles is ever disagreeable, for indeed he is not, except when he is put out of temper, and one must own that he has a great deal to try his patience! Which is why I can’t but feel, dear Horace, that if he does not like me to take charge of Sophia for you, I ought not to tease him!”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Sir Horace. “And why shouldn’t he like it?”

“We—we had decided not to give any parties this season, beyond what must be thought necessary. It is a most unfortunate circumstance that Charles’s wedding has had to be postponed, on account of a bereavement Miss Wraxton has suffered. One of Lady Brinklow’s sisters, and they will not be out of black gloves for six months. You must know that the Brinklows are very particular in all matters of correct conduct. Eugenia goes only to very quiet parties, and—and naturally one must expect Charles to partake of her sentiments!”

“Lord, Elizabeth, a man don’t have to wear black gloves for the aunt of a female he ain’t even married to!”

“Of course not, but Charles seemed to feel—and then there is Charlbury!”

“What the devil ails him?”

“Mumps,” replied Lady Ombersley tragically.

“Eh?” Sir Horace burst out laughing. “Well, what a fellow he must be to have the mumps when he should be getting married to Cecilia!”

“Really, Horace, I must say that I think that most unjust of you, for how could he help it? It is so mortifying for him! And, what is more, excessively unfortunate, because I don’t doubt that had he been able to attach Cecilia, which I am sure he must have done, for nothing could be more amiable than his disposition, while his manners and address are just what they ought to be! But girls are so foolish, and take romantical notions into their heads, besides all kinds of encroaching fancies. However, I am happy to think that Cecilia is not one of these dreadful modern misses, and of course she will be guided by her parents! But no one can deny that nothing could be more ill timed than Charlbury’s mumps!”

Sir Horace, once more opening his snuffbox, regarded her with an amused and sapient eye. “And what is Miss Cecilia’s particular encroaching fancy?” he enquired.

Lady Ombersley knew that her eldest son would have counseled her to preserve a discreet silence; but the impulse to unburden herself to her brother was too strong to be denied. She said, “Well, you will not repeat it, I know, Horace, but the fact is that the silly child thinks she is in love with Augustus Fawnhope!”

“Would that be one of Lutterworth’s brood?” asked Sir Horace. “I don’t think much of that for a match, I must say!”

“Good heavens, don’t mention such a thing! The youngest son, too, with not the least expectation in the world! But he is a poet.”

“Very dangerous,” agreed Sir Horace. “Don’t think I ever saw the boy. What’s he like?”

“Quite beautiful!” said Lady Ombersley, in despairing accents.

“What, in the style of Lord Byron? That fellow has a great deal to answer for!”

“N-no. I mean, he is as fair as Cecilia is herself, and he doesn’t limp, and though his poems are very pretty, bound up in white velum, they don’t seem to take very well. I mean, not at all like Lord Byron’s. It seems sadly unjust, for I believe it cost a great deal of money to have them printed, and he had to bear the whole—or, rather, Lady Lutterworth did, according to what I have heard.”

“Now that I come to think of it,” said Sir Horace, “I do know the boy. He was with Stuart in Brussels last year. If you take my advice you’ll marry her off to Charlbury as quickly as you can!”

“Well, and so I would, if only—that is to say, of course I would not, if I thought she held him in aversion! And you must see, Horace, that it is quite out of my power to do anything of the sort when he is in bed with the mumps!”

Sir Horace shook his head. “She will marry the poet.”

“Do not say so! But Charles thinks that I should do wisely not to take her where she is bound to meet the young man, which is another reason why we are living in a quiet style for the present. It is of all things the most awkward! Indeed, sometimes I feel that it would be much easier if the wretched creature were quite ineligible—a fortune hunter, or a merchant’s son, or something of that nature! One could then forbid him the house, and forbid Cecilia to stand up with him at balls, only it would not be in the least necessary, for we should never meet him in society. But naturally one meets the Fawnhopes everywhere! Nothing could be more provoking! And although I am sure Charles’s manner towards him is most repellent, even he acknowledges the impropriety of being so repulsive to him as to offend his family. Almeria Lutterworth is one of my oldest friends!”

Sir Horace, who was already bored with the subject, yawned, and said lazily, “I daresay there is no occasion for you to be on the fidgets. The Fawnhopes are all as poor as church mice, and very likely Lady Lutterworth desires the match as little as you do.”

“Nothing of the sort!” she replied, quite crossly. “She is foolish beyond permission, Horace! Whatever Augustus wants he must have! She has given me the most unmistakable hints, so that I scarcely knew where to look, much less what to say, except that Lord Charlbury had requested our leave to address Cecilia, and I believed her to be—well, not indifferent to him! It never entered my head that Augustus was so lost to all sense of propriety as to apply to Cecilia without first approaching Ombersley, yet that is precisely what he has done!”

“Oh, well!” said Sir Horace. “If she has such a fancy for him, you had better let her take him. It’s not as though she would be marrying beneath her, and if she chooses to be the wife of a penniless younger son it is quite her own affair.”

“You would not say so if it were Sophia!” said his sister.

“Sophy’s not such a fool.”

“Cecilia is not a fool either!” declared Lady Ombersley, affronted. “If you have seen Augustus you cannot wonder at her! No one could help feeling a decided partiality for him! I own, I did myself. But Charles is quite right, as I was soon brought to acknowledge; it would not answer!”

“Ah, well, when she has her cousin to keep her company it will divert her, and very likely give her thoughts another direction,” said Sir Horace consolingly.

Lady Ombersley appeared to be much struck by this suggestion. Her face brightened; she said: “I wonder if it might be so? She is a little shy, you must know, and does not make friends easily, and since her dear friend, Miss Friston, was married, and has gone to live in the Midlands, there is really no young female with whom she is upon terms of intimacy. Now, if we had dear Sophia to stay with us ...” She broke off, obviously turning plans over in her mind. She was still engaged on this exercise when the door opened, and her eldest son entered the salon.

The Honorable Charles Rivenhall was twenty-six years old, but a rather harsh-featured countenance, coupled with a manner that combined assurance with a good deal of reserve, made him give the impression of being some years older. He was a tall, powerfully built young man, who looked as though he would have been better pleased to have been striding over his father’s acres than exchanging civilities in his mother’s sitting room. He nearly always wore riding dress in preference to the more fashionable pantaloons and Hessians, tied his cravat in the plainest of styles, would permit only a modicum of starch to stiffen his very moderate shirt points, wholly disdained such fopperies as seals, fobs, or quizzing glasses, and offended his tailor by insisting on having his coats cut so that he could shrug himself into them without the assistance of his valet. He had been heard to express the hope that heaven would forbid he should ever be mistaken for one of the dandy set, but, as his friend Mr. Cyprian Wychbold kindly pointed out to him, there was not the least need for heavenly intervention in the matter. The dandies, said Mr. Wychbold with some severity, were distinguished as much for their polished address as for their exquisite apparel, and were in general an amiable set of men, whose polite manners and winning graces made them acceptable in any drawing room. As Mr. Rivenhall’s notion of making himself agreeable in company was to treat with cold civility anyone for whom he felt no particular liking, and his graces, far from winning, included a trick of staring out of countenance those who pretensions he deprecated, and of uttering blighting comments which put an abrupt end to social intercourse, he stood in far greater danger (Mr. Wychbold said) of being mistaken for a Yahoo.