The Nonesuch (7 page)

‘Julian!’ said Sir Waldo, with deep foreboding. ‘Tell me at once just
how
rum you pitched it to that wretched youth?’

‘I didn’t! I said I didn’t know what larks you was used to engage in – which was true, though I know more now than I did yesterday! Waldo,
did
you once win five guineas by flooring the bruiser at some Fair in the second round?’

‘Good God! How the devil did that story reach Yorkshire? I did: and if
that
’
s
the sort of folly this chuckleheaded new friend of yours admires I hope you told him it was a fudge!’

‘No, how could I? I told him to ask
you
for the truth of it. He didn’t like to approach you tonight, but I daresay he will, when we go to Staples next week.’

‘Before then – long before then! – I shall have sent you packing, you hell-born brat!’

‘Not you! I’d rack up at the Crown if you cast me out! Only wait until you have seen Miss Wield!
Then
you’ll understand!’

Sir Waldo returned a light answer, but he was beginning to feel a little uneasy. There was a certain rapt note in Julian’s voice which was new to him; and he had not previously known his young cousin to pursue a fair object with a determination that brushed aside such obvious disadvantages as a vulgar aunt, and a cousin whom he frankly acknowledged to be a coxcomb. He set little store by his consequence, but Sir Waldo had never yet seen him either encouraging the advances of led-captains, or seeking the company of those whom he would himself have described as being not fit to go; and it seemed highly improbable that he would try to fix his interest with any girl, be she never so beautiful, who was sprung from the mushroom-class he instinctively avoided. At the same time, it would be unlike him to be thinking of mere dalliance. Under his gaiety, Sir Waldo knew, ran a vein of seriousness, and strong principles: he might (though his experienced cousin doubted it) look for amusement amongst the muslin-company, but it would be wholly foreign to his nature deliberately to raise in any virtuous breast expectations which he had no intention of fulfilling. He had once or twice fancied himself in love, and had paid court to the chosen fair; but these affairs had dwindled, and had died perfectly natural deaths. He had never dangled after any marriageable girl in the cynical spirit of the rake: his youthful adventures in love might be transient, but he had embarked on them in all sincerity.

‘I like the Squire, don’t you?’ remarked Julian idly.

‘Better than I like his wife!’

‘Oh, lord, yes! All pretension, ain’t she? The girls are very unaffected and jolly, too: nothing to look at, of course! I suppose the most striking,
au fait de beauté
,
as Mama would say, was the redheaded dasher, with the quiz of a brother, but, for my part, I prefer Miss Chartley’s style –
and
her parents! No pretensions
there
,
but – I don’t know how to express it!’

‘A touch of quality?’ suggested Sir Waldo.

‘Ay, that’s it!’ agreed Julian, yawning, and relapsing into sleepy silence.

He made no further reference to Miss Wield, either then or during the succeeding days; and so far from showing any of the signs of the love-lorn entered with enthusiasm on a search for a likely hunter, under the aegis of Mr Gregory Ash; struck up a friendship with Jack Banningham’s elder brother, and went flapper-shooting with him; dragged his cousin twenty miles to watch a disappointing mill; and in general seemed to be more interested in sport than in ravishing beauties. Sir Waldo did not quite banish his uneasy suspicion that he was harder-hit than his mother would like, but he relegated it to the back of his mind, thinking that he might well have been mistaken.

On Wednesday, when he saw Miss Wield at the Staples party, he knew that he had not been mistaken.

The hall at Staples was very large and lofty, with the main staircase rising from it in a graceful curve. Just as the cousins, having relinquished their hats and cloaks into the care of a powdered footman, were about to cross the floor in the wake of the butler, Miss Wield came lightly down the stairs, checking at sight of the guests, and exclaiming: ‘Oh! Oh, dear, I didn’t know anyone had arrived yet! I’m late, and my aunt will scold! Oh, how do you do, Lord Lindeth!’

As conduct befitting one who was to all intents and purposes a daughter of the house this belated arrival on the scene might leave much to be desired; but as an entrance it was superb. Sir Waldo was not at all surprised to hear Lord Lindeth catch his breath; he himself thought that he had never beheld a lovelier vision, and he was neither impressionable nor three-and-twenty. The velvet ribbons which embellished a ball dress of celestial blue crape and silver gauze were of an intense blue, but not more brilliant than Tiffany’s eyes, to which they seemed to draw attention. Pausing on the stairway, one gloved hand resting on the baluster-rail, her pretty lips parting in a smile which showed her white teeth, Tiffany presented a picture to gladden most men’s hearts.

O my God!
thought Sir Waldo.
Now we
are
in the basket!

She resumed her floating descent of the stairs, as Julian stood spellbound. Recovering, he started forward to meet her, stammering: ‘M-Miss Wield! We meet again – at last!’

Enchanting dimples peeped as she gave him her hand. ‘At last? But it’s hardly more than a sennight since I disturbed you at your fishing! You were vexed, too – horridly vexed!’

‘Never!’ he declared, laughing. ‘Only when I looked in vain for you at the Manor last week – and I wasn’t
vexed
then: that’s too small a word!’ He ventured to press her hand before releasing it, and turning to introduce his cousin to her.

Sir Waldo, who strongly (and quite correctly) suspected that Tiffany had been lying in wait on the upper landing, and had thus been able exactly to time her appearance on the scene, bowed, and said How-do-you-do, his manner a nice blend of civility and indifference. Tiffany, accustomed to meet with blatant admiration, was piqued. She had not sojourned for long under her uncle Burford’s roof in Portland Place, but she had not wasted her time there, and she was well aware that, notwithstanding his rank, Lord Lindeth was a nonentity, when compared with his splendid cousin. To attach the Nonesuch, however temporarily, would be enough to confer distinction on any lady; to inspire him with a lasting passion would be a resounding triumph; for although he was said to have many flirts these seemed always to be married ladies, and the decided preferences he showed from time to time had led neither to scandal nor to any belief that his affections had been seriously engaged.

Dropping a demure curtsy, Tiffany raised her eyes to his face, favouring him with a wide, innocent gaze. She had previously only seen him from a distance, and she now perceived that he was very good-looking, and even more elegant than she had supposed. But instead of showing admiration he was looking rather amused, and that displeased her very much. She smiled at Lord Lindeth, and said: ‘I’ll take you to my aunt, shall I? Then perhaps she won’t scold after all!’

Mrs Underhill showed no disposition to scold, though she was quite shocked to think that two such distinguished guests should have entered her drawing-room unannounced. When, much later, she learned from her offended butler that Miss Tiffany had waved him aside, like a straw, she was aghast, and exclaimed: ‘Whatever must they have thought?’

Totton shuddered; but Tiffany, reproached for her social lapse, only laughed, and declared, on the authority of one who had lived for three months on the fringe of the ton, that a want of ceremony was just what such persons as Lord Lindeth and the Nonesuch preferred.

Lord Lindeth, too much dazzled to question the propriety of Tiffany’s conduct in impulsively seizing his hand, and leading him up to his hostess, would have endorsed this pronouncement; Sir Waldo, following in their wake, reflected that he would have thought Tiffany’s artlessness amusing, if only some other young man than Julian had been enthralled by it. He was in no way responsible for Julian; but he was fond of the boy, and he knew very well that his aunt Lindeth implicitly trusted him to keep her darling out of mischief. This duty had not, so far, imposed any great tax on his ingenuity: Tiffany would have been flattered to know that one glance at her had been enough to convince Sir Waldo that she represented the first real danger Julian had encountered.

A swift look round the room informed Sir Waldo that the company consisted of the same persons whom he had met at the Squire’s dinner-party, and he resigned himself to an evening’s boredom, exactly as his hostess had foretold. ‘Because you can’t conjure up persons which don’t exist, not with the best will in the world you can’t,’ she had said to Miss Trent. ‘Mrs Mickleby took care to invite all the genteel families she could lay her hands on, drat her! I daresay, if we only knew it, she thinks I’ll make up my numbers with the Shilbottles, and the Tumbys, and the Wrangles, which is where she’ll find herself mightily mistaken.’

Miss Trent suggested mildly that the Shilbottles were very agreeable people, but was overborne. ‘Agreeable they may be,’ said Mrs Underhill, ‘but they’re not genteel. Mr Shilbottle goes to Leeds every day to his manufactory, and I hope I know better than to invite him to meet a lord! Why, next you’ll be telling me I ought to send a card to the Badgers! No! His lordship and Sir Waldo had better be bored than disgusted!’ She added, on a hopeful note: ‘
One
thing you may depend on: they’ll find nothing amiss with their dinner!’

The repast which she set before her guests was certainly enormous, consisting of two courses, with four removes, and a score of side-dishes, ranging from a rump of beef à la Mantua, wax baskets of prawns and crayfish, to orange soufflés and asparagus, and some atlets of palates: a delicacy for which her cook was famous.

Miss Trent was not present at dinner, but she brought Charlotte down to the drawing-room afterwards, and was instantly seen by Sir Waldo, when he came into the room with the rest of the gentlemen. She was wearing a dress of crape with lilac ribbons, with long sleeves, and the bodice cut rather high, as befitted a governess, but he thought she looked the most distinguished lady present, and very soon made his way to her side.

The room had been cleared for dancing, and the musicians from Harrogate were tuning their instruments. Mrs Underhill, explaining that she thought the young people would like to dance, had begged Sir Waldo not to think himself obliged to take part, if he did not care for it, which had made it easy for him to range himself amongst the elders of the party. He might be noted for his courtesy but he had not the remotest intention of standing up with a dozen provincial girls through a succession of country dances. But when the first set was forming he went up to Miss Trent, and solicited the honour of leading her into it. She declined it, but could not help feeling gratified.

‘That’s a set-down!’ remarked Sir Waldo. ‘Are you going to tell me that you
don’t
dance, ma’am?’

She was thrown into a little natural confusion by this unexpected rejoinder, and said with less than her usual calm: ‘No, thank you. That is, yes, of course I do, but not – I mean –’

‘Go on!’ he said encouragingly, as she stopped, vexed with herself for being suddenly so
gauche.
‘You do dance, but not with – er –
gentlemen who are addicted to sporting pursuits
! Have I that correctly?’

She looked quickly at him. ‘Did I say that?’

‘Yes, and in a tone of severe disapprobation. You did not
then
tell me you preferred not to dance with me, of course: the occasion hadn’t arisen.’

‘I haven’t told you so now, sir!’ she replied, with spirit. ‘I said – I hope civilly! – that I don’t dance at all!’

‘After which,’ he reminded her, ‘you said that you
do
dance,
but not
– ! Civility then overcame you, I collect! Quite tied your tongue, in fact! So I came to your rescue. I wish you will tell me what I’ve done to earn your disapproval.’

‘You are quite mistaken, sir. You must know that you have done nothing. I assure you I don’t disapprove of you!’

‘Just my imagination, Miss Trent? I don’t believe it, but I’m very ready to be convinced. Shall we join this set?’

‘Sir Waldo, you are labouring under a misapprehension! It would be most improper in me to stand up with you, or with anyone! I’m not a guest here: I am the governess!’

‘Yes, but a
most
superior female!’ he murmured.

She looked at him in some astonishment. ‘Did you know it, then? And asked me to dance? Well, I’m very much obliged to you, but I think it shows a strange want of conduct in you! To ask the governess rather than Miss Wield – !’

‘My cousin was before me. Now, don’t recite me a catalogue of the girls I
might
have asked to stand up with me! I daresay they are very amiable, I can see that one or two are pretty, and I know that I should find them all dead bores. I’m glad you won’t dance: I had rather by far talk to you!’

‘Well, it won’t do!’ she said resolutely. ‘I am quite beneath your touch, sir!’

‘No, no, that’s coming it much too strong!’ he said. ‘When I have it on excellent authority that your uncle is a General!’

For a moment she suspected him of mockery; then she met his eyes, and realized that the laughter in them was at a joke he believed she would appreciate. She said, with a quivering lip: ‘D-did Mrs Underhill say that? Oh, dear! I shouldn’t think you could possibly believe that she didn’t learn about my uncle from me, but I promise you she didn’t!’

‘Another of my misapprehensions! I had naturally supposed that you introduced him into every conversation, and had been wondering how it came about that you forgot to mention him when we first met.’

She choked. ‘I wish you will stop trying to make me laugh! Do, pray, Sir Waldo, go and talk to Mrs Mickleby, or Lady Colebatch, or someone! I might have twenty generals in my family, but I should still be the governess, and you must know that governesses remain discreetly in the background.’