Gwendolen Read online

  "I should be delighted," he said politely, but with an enigmatic glint that might, Gwendolen thought, have been amusement or something rather more disquieting in his eyes. "That is," he added, "if you don't think Wilfrid will object."

  "To you gallanting me? Oh, no, it is Gwen he is dangling after," Campaspe said, upon which both Lady Priscilla and Lady Otilia exclaimed, "Campaspe!" in tones of strong disapproval. "Well, it's true!" Campaspe maintained stoutly. "Not," she continued, once more turning to Lyndale, "that we think he wishes to marry her, for Aunt Pris says he is not a marrying kind of man, but one never can tell, can one? And at least he is very useful in squiring her around."

  Lyndale, who was looking at Gwendolen, which for some reason made her wish to look anywhere but at him, said that in his experience a young lady of Miss Quarters's strength of character who wanted to be engaged to a man usually succeeded in her object, upon which Gwendolen stopped not looking at him and regarded him indignantly.

  "If you are referring to Captain Belville, my lord,” she said, "he did wish to marry me. He wrote and asked me to."

  "Yes, but that doesn't prove he wished to," Lyndale said amiably. "I daresay, if the truth were known, you had manoeuvred the poor fellow into such a position that he couldn't do anything else." Gwendolen gasped. "No, don't rip up at me," Lyndale said, grinning. "I am sure you could do the same with me, if you set your mind to it. But you have had no thoughts along that line, I expect?"

  "Considering," said Gwendolen, mastering her wrath and speaking with excessive coldness, "that until recently you have been all but contracted to my sister, my lord, I may truthfully say that I have not! Nor," she added, growing even more furiously polite as she realised that, in the face of the startled and disapproving attention of her sisters, her mother, and her aunt, she was colouring up scarlet, "nor, may I say, should I have been tempted to do so even had the circumstances been quite different!"

  "Yes, I can understand that," Lyndale said, apparently not in the least abashed by what she had meant to be a crushing set-down. "I'm not easy to make into a romantic figure, like the gallant Belville, though I assure you I do my best. All that Moroccan business, for example—I expect some men might make a very good thing out of that with the ladies. But the only person I seem to have succeeded in impressing is your father. He finds my Arabian mares very romantic."

  "Mr. Quarters," said Lady Priscilla definitely, for she felt that this highly unorthodox conversation had gone quite far enough, "has not a romantic bone in his body, Lord Lyndale! And," she added, with an air of resignation, as the front door of the little house was suddenly opened and shut with a violence that set every crystal drop of the drawing-room chandelier dancing, "speak of the devil, as the saying goes—! Here he is now, I make no doubt!"

  She was quite correct in her surmise: the next minute the drawing-room door had been flung open and Mr. Quarters appeared upon the threshold with an expression of such wrath upon his highly flushed face that even Lady Priscilla was momentarily taken aback. His eyes swept the small room, lighting up fiercely at the sight of Lyndale seated there at his ease between Campaspe and Lady Otilia.

  "Hah!" he exclaimed, as dramatically as even Lady Otilia could have done. "So you're here, are you, Lyndale? Under my roof! Of all the infernal gall—!"

  "But why," enquired Lady Priscilla, rising to the occasion and speaking with her usual practical good sense, "shouldn't Lord Lyndale be here, Mr. Quarters? He has come to call upon your wife and daughters—an eminently proper attention to pay them, it appears to me, showing that he bears no ill will because of Jane—"

  "Jane! What has Jane to say to it?" Mr. Quarters demanded, his fury not a jot abated by these calming words. He strode farther into the room and, stationing himself directly before Lyndale's chair, glared down at him with an unwinking stare. "As for bearing ill will," he continued, addressing the company at large but continuing to glare at Lyndale, "why the devil should he bear ill will to anyone, when he's succeeded in carrying out the lowest, most underhanded piece of business—"

  "Mr. Quarters!" Lady Otilia interrupted, in tones of the greatest shock. "Remember that Lord Lyndale is a guest in your house!"

  "Well, I didn't ask him here," Mr. Quarters retorted rudely, but with perfect truth. "And if he likes to step outside, I'll show him that I ain't too old yet to teach him a lesson he won't forget—"

  "What is it, Quarters? The horses?" Lyndale, who seemed not at all put out by his host's singular lack of cordiality, enquired with a grin. "But someone had to buy them up, you know. That's why they were sent to Tattersall's."

  "Yes, that's why they were sent there!" Mr. Quarters agreed wrathfully. 'To be bought up—but not by some jumped-up marquis who came nosing around my stables to spy out what he could, and then, when he saw he was on to a good thing, refused me a loan and went sneaking off to London to get my horses into his own hands! I'd as soon Tardiff had them! Sooner!" declared Mr. Quarters, who was rapidly working himself into a passion and, if left to himself, would no doubt presently have consigned his horses with great good will to the devil himself, rather than have them fall into Lyndale's hands.

  "But what can you be thinking of, Mr. Quarters," Lady Priscilla here interrupted incredulously, "to be making such a piece of work over it because Lord Lyndale—as I gather from your most intemperate remarks—has bought your horses? Obviously you could not afford to keep them yourself, so what possible difference can it make to you whether Lord Lyndale has them or someone else?"

  "He is racing them!" Mr. Quarters gritted out, still confronting Lyndale. "Here! At Cheltenham!"

  "Well," said Lyndale unblushingly, "I rather thought you'd like to see them run, you know. What's more, I'd say your Conqueror has a good chance to come off with the honours—"

  "He's not my Conqueror! He's yours!" said Mr. Quarters, refusing to be mollified by this praise of an animal that had been foaled and trained under his eye. "And I hope," he added, to show the extent of his present alienation, "he may come in dead last! I hope they all will!"

  "Now, Papa, you know you don't mean anything of the sort," said Gwendolen, who considered that matters had now gone far enough. "You would be mortified to death if anything of the sort happened."

  "No, I wouldn't!" said Mr. Quarters recalcitrantly. "And what's more, I won't have such a sneaking, underhand fellow marrying my daughters! Any of them! Do you understand that, Lyndale?"

  And he glared once more at the Marquis.

  "As to that, Mr. Quarters," Lady Priscilla reminded him disapprovingly, "there has never been a question of his marrying any of them but Jane, and if Lord Lyndale should be so condescending as to renew his suit to her, I am sure that even you will not be so foolish as to stand in her way."

  But Gwendolen, moving swiftly—for she foresaw that if her father were to engage Lady Priscilla as well as Lyndale in verbal warfare, there would be no end to the battle—tucked her arm through her father's and, saying persuasively, "Come along, Papa," led him fuming out of the room and into the dining room, where she poured out a large glass of Madeira from the decanter on the sideboard and handed it to him.

  "Drink that and you'll feel much better, Papa," she said consolingly. "It is quite odious of Lord Lyndale to have bought your horses behind your back, but after all, if he hadn't, the Duke would have done it, which would have been quite as bad."

  Mr. Quarters, in no mood for consolation, said unforgivingly that it wouldn't have been, because he knew where the Duke stood and he had considered Lyndale a good fellow and a friend; but he consented to drink off the bumper. He then, with some further animadversions against marquises, and an adjuration to Gwendolen never to marry any of them, because he wouldn't have one of them in the house, took himself off to meet, she suspected, with some of his racing cronies and discuss Lyndale's traitorous behaviour with them over some further spirituous consolation at the Plough or the George, leaving her free to return to the drawing room.

  Here she found that Neil Fairhall h
ad joined the company and was engaged in ignoring Campaspe quite as pointedly as she was ignoring him. He professed himself greatly disappointed upon learning that Lord Wilfrid had been before him securing the honour of escorting Gwendolen and Jane to the races that day, but Lyndale said encouragingly that, as he himself was to gallant Campaspe, he would be happy to have Neil join their party—a suggestion that was greeted with frigid silence by Campaspe, and by young Lieutenant Fairhall, after a glance at her haughtily averted profile, with a flush and a hastily muttered excuse.

  “You can see for yourself," Campaspe said vengefully to Gwendolen when Neil had gone off with Lyndale shortly afterwards, "that you are quite wrong in thinking that Neil wants to make it up with me. He comes here to see you, not me, and if you would like to marry him, I am sure I shall not have the least objection. In point of fact," she went on, with an air of resolution, "I have had the most splendid idea: it came to me when Papa said he wouldn't have Lord Lyndale marrying any of his daughters. Why should I not marry Lyndale? Then he will be obliged to do something for Papa, just as if he had married Jane, and we shan't have to go and live in Boulogne, and Jane will still be free to marry Alain—"

  But here Gwendolen interrupted her with a sharpness that surprised her almost as much as it did Campaspe.

  "Oh, don't be such a widgeon, Cammie!" she said. "As if Lyndale would think of such a thing—!"

  "Why shouldn't he think of it?" demanded Campaspe, stung. "I know I am not as beautiful as Jane, but everyone says I am quite well-looking—"

  "Yes, and I expect you think you are as docile and well-conducted as Jane!" said Gwendolen dampingly. "You are a widgeon, Cammie! Lyndale would no more consider marrying you than he would think of marrying me—and heaven knows we have been coming to cuffs ever since the day we first met!"

  "Well, he doesn't come to cuffs with me," Campaspe said indignantly. "We get on together famously, and I daresay we should deal extremely if we were married. It won't do any harm to ask him, at any rate."

  "To ask him! Cammie, you wouldn't!"

  "Well, not precisely, perhaps," Campaspe admitted, a little daunted by her own audacity. "But one can always lead men on."

  “Well, I don't see how you could lead him on any more than you have done already," Gwendolen said, somewhat relieved—and then, after Campaspe had flounced out of the room, asked herself what on earth she had had to be relieved about. Certainly she, Gwendolen, could have no objection to Campaspe's marrying Lyndale if she could bring him to the point. Such a marriage would, as Campaspe had pointed out, solve all their problems without sacrificing Jane to a loveless marriage, and if she, Gwendolen, was such a dog in the manger as to begrudge her young sister a brilliant marriage because she herself had no present prospects of marrying anyone at all, she deserved to pass the rest of her days as a spinster.

  So she spent the next hour in a mood of violent self-dislike, which for some reason appeared to include a violent dislike of Lyndale as well, whom her father had no doubt been perfectly justified in referring to in terms of the greatest disapprobation. All of which did not prevent her from spending that same hour in feverishly removing all the lavender ruched velvet ribbon that trimmed the charming figured French muslin dress Lady Priscilla had given her to wear that afternoon, and replacing it with pale-blue ribbon less trying, she felt, to the complexion. She was doing it, she told herself, to impress Lord Wilfrid. What Lord Lyndale might, or might not, think about the substitution was, she also told herself loftily, a matter of the most complete indifference to her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE CHELTENHAM RACES were held on Cleeve Downs, and thither Gwendolen, Jane, and Campaspe, all appearing in their best looks in their pale summer frocks and wide-brimmed hats, were escorted by Lyndale and Lord Wilfrid, the former driving his curricle and the latter a smart barouche. It was a fine, warm day—perhaps too warm, with a threat of rain in the heavy white clouds showing their thundery-blue undersides against a bluer sky. But the sunshine gleamed richly now on the procession of carriages, horsemen, and foot-travellers of every description thronging the road to the Downs, and Gwendolen was determined to forget, at least for a few hours, all the vexing problems besetting her family and enjoy herself.

  This, she soon saw, would not be difficult to do if she enjoyed flirtation, for Lord Wilfrid was at his most gallant, and obviously had every intention of providing Jane with other suitable company as soon as might be possible, with a view towards having her, Gwendolen, to himself. Gwendolen wondered if he might even be preparing to propose marriage to her, for there was an odd, significant intentness in his manner towards her that she had never observed there before. Like a very large, self-satisfied white tom-cat preparing to pounce on a mouse, she thought idly, regarding Lord Wilfrid's pale, supercilious profile as he tooled his team of matched-greys expertly through the jostling traffic on the crowded road—after which it suddenly occurred to her that the tom-cat, in such a situation, had something more predatory than courtship on his mind.

  Was she indeed about to receive an improper proposal from Lord Wilfrid? Of course she knew she ought to be highly insulted at the very thought, but the truth was that she felt it would be a great deal easier for her to handle that sort of thing than an offer of marriage, which would leave one in a most uncomfortable dilemma between duty and inclination. She certainly did not wish to marry Lord Wilfrid, but on the other hand he was a highly eligible parti, especially for a portionless young lady of the advanced age of one-and-twenty, and she had a lowering feeling that she would be almost as indecisive and generally birdwitted as Jane had been about Lyndale in trying to make up her mind whether to have him or not.

  "Of course I ought to, if it is really marriage that he offers me," she told herself, "for I haven't Jane's excuse of being in love with someone else"—but even as she said the words to herself, a face quite unlike Lord Wilfrid's pale, complacent one flashed into her mind, a deeply bronzed face with intensely blue eyes, a determined chin, and a mouth that could curl into an arrogant but likable grin.

  And what had Lord Lyndale to say to the matter? she asked herself in something of a temper at her own unaccountable silliness in thinking of him at such a time. Obviously, nothing at all, for it was quite clear that, in spite of his rather improper remark earlier that day about her being able to make him offer her marriage if she wished to do so, he had not the least interest in the eldest Miss Quarters, and on the contrary considered her to be a disagreeable and "overmighty" female, certainly not at all the sort of person one would wish for a wife.

  All of which for some reason caused her, when they had reached the Downs and Lord Wilfrid's barouche had by an unlucky chance been drawn up beside Lyndale's curricle, to give her escort far more encouragement than she would ordinarily have done if there had been strangers seated beside them. When they arrived, the area was already crowded with dozens of other carriages, drawn up three and four deep, generally without horses, and many of the occupants were discussing picnic nuncheons, while all around them the colourful hangers-on at such festivities plied their trades. A troupe of brightly clad gypsies was staging a display of acrobatics while their women climbed up into the carriages to have their palms crossed with silver and read the fortunes of the occupants; Mr. Punch in his booth engaged in raucous battle with Judy; minstrels chanted "The Roving Soldier" or "The Westbury Cocking"; and around the white betting-post, a hundred paces from the goal, a dense throng of bettors—earls and dukes, grooms and livery-servants, "sharpers" and "black-legs"—shouted out their wagers, making such a din that it seemed impossible any business could be transacted in it.

  Jane, always timid in the midst of a large, boisterous crowd, shrank back into a corner of the barouche, scarcely tasting the cold chicken, the creams, aspics, jellies, and champagne produced in lavish abundance from a large hamper by Lord Wilfrid's groom, and regained some animation only when Campaspe, who had eaten enough for a young lady twice her size and had had a lively dispute with Lyndale, endi
ng in total defeat, over the question of her being provided with a glass of champagne, announced her intention of having her fortune told.

  "Oh no, Cammie—indeed you mustn't!" she said earnestly as her young sister, almost falling out of the curricle in her efforts to attract the attention of one of the gypsy women, beckoned her to the carriage. "You know what dreadful thieves those people are—"

  "Well, I haven't anything to steal, and I daresay Lord Lyndale is rich enough to afford another watch if they prig his," Campaspe said. She smiled brilliantly at the dark, gaily shawled young woman who had come up to approach the carriage. "Here is my hand," she said, offering it to her. "If you tell me a splendid fortune, I am sure Lord Lyndale will cross your palm with twice as much silver as he will if you tell me a horrid one. Shall I be married soon, or go on a journey?"

  The gypsy took her hand and studied it intently.

  "Oh, very soon!" she confirmed almost at once, looking up at Campaspe with an enigmatic smile. "Very, very soon! And go on a journey—"

  "Good!" said Campaspe, giving a little jump of satisfaction and excitement. "Is he fair or dark! Is he"—she shot a mischievous, meaningful glance at Lyndale "—at all like this gentleman?"

  The gypsy, who obviously saw how the land lay, shrugged noncommittally.

  "Who can tell?" she said evasively.

  “Well, you ought to be able to tell," Campaspe answered her downrightly. "It's what you're being paid for, isn't it?"

  The gypsy, without replying, abandoned her hand and cast a quick, sidelong glance up at Gwendolen.

  "And you, pretty lady—?" she said in a wheedling voice. "I can tell a fine fortune for you if the gentleman’ll cross my palm with silver."

  "By all means," said Lord Wilfrid languidly, drawing a half-crown from his pocket. "What sort of fortune would you like, my dear Gwen? A dark stranger and a trip across the water? Yes, I think definitely a trip across the water, but perhaps one could omit the dark stranger. A fair gentleman with whom you are already acquainted might serve the purpose even better—"