Gwendolen Read online

  Alas! Lady Otilia had reckoned without that knowledge of Lord Lyndale's character which had caused Gwendolen to declare to Campaspe that, whatever he did, it would be something that no one expected and probably quite upsetting. She, Gwendolen, was still in the morning room, wrestling with the accounts, and the village party had not yet returned, when the housekeeper appeared in the doorway to announce that Lord Lyndale had arrived.

  "Bother!" exclaimed Gwendolen, who had not the least desire to entertain Lyndale tête-a-tête, and, in fact, would have gone to considerable lengths to be able to escape meeting him at all. She stood up, glancing down resignedly at her plain round gown and ink-stained fingers; it did not require a mirror to tell her that her hair was rather untidy as well. No doubt Lyndale must be convinced when he saw her that she never presented the least appearance of a la modality. "Is my father in the stables, Pratson?" she went on, to the housekeeper. "Send someone at once to fetch him, please, and show Lord Lyndale into the drawing room."

  As Pratson left the morning room, Gwendolen rapidly smoothed her curls and straightened her collar, thinking as she did so, "Since I must see him, I wonder if I ought to take advantage of the opportunity to do what I can to rescue Jane? I can't simply tell him she is in love with someone else, but perhaps if I could drop a hint to him that it might be well to take the matter slowly, until Jane has time to become better acquainted with him? That would at least give her time to know her own mind better than she seems to do at present!"

  How his lordship would receive such a hint from her she could not guess, but he could do no more, at any rate, she thought, than give her a set-down for her attempt to interfere in his affairs.

  It was in this frame of mind that she walked into the drawing room, and, in the determination to do nothing to set his lordship's back up before she had even begun to put her plan into action, trod across the carpet towards him with her hand out and a smile upon her lips.

  "Good morning!" she said. "I am afraid Jane is out at the moment, but she is expected back soon, and Papa is only gone out to the stables and will be here directly. Won't you—?" She had been about to invite him to sit down, but the words died on her lips as she saw the smile of amusement that had suddenly appeared upon his lordship's bronzed face. "What is the matter?" she demanded, wondering with a horrid sense of self-consciousness if she had got ink on the tip of her nose, or something equally ridiculous. "Why are you looking at me in that—that odious way?"

  "What 'odious way'?" Lyndale countered. He had a very strong hand-clasp, and she found it impossible to draw her own hand away from his immediately, as she had intended. "If you mean my natural expression of surprise over this unexpectedly cordial greeting—"

  "You aren't surprised; you're amused!" Gwendolen said down-rightly. "And why shouldn't I be cordial? I have some notion of conduct, my lord, whatever the—the disagreeable circumstances of our last meeting may have been!"

  "Very commendable, I'm sure!" Lyndale said gravely, but still with the same glint of amusement in his very blue eyes. "It's refreshing to meet a young lady with such a forgiving nature! Were you about to ask me to sit down? Thank you; I shall be happy to."

  And he suited the action to the words. Gwendolen perforce sat down as well, and confronted him across the comfortable, shabby drawing room with as much self-composure as she could summon up. The most exasperating thing about Lord Lyndale, she was telling herself with some indignation, was that he seemed always capable of setting one on end before one had been three minutes in his company.

  However, she had not in the least forgotten her resolution to do something to postpone his fixing Jane hard and fast to a betrothal before she—Jane—had had time to resolve the conflict between love and duty that was so much disturbing her at present, and, cutting ruthlessly through the civil observation Lyndale had begun to make about the fine weather they were having, said to him abruptly, "Lord Lyndale—"

  "Yes?" said Lyndale encouragingly, as, after having taken the initial plunge, she hesitated, not knowing quite how to begin.

  "I—I should like to speak to you about Jane!" Gwendolen said, wondering what there was about Lyndale's polite but rather sceptically attentive gaze that made it so extraordinarily difficult to converse with him with one's usual aplomb. "She is —she is very young!" she plunged on rather desperately, as he gave no sign of intending to say anything himself. "Very young!" she repeated even more desperately, having not the least notion how she was to go on from there.

  "Very," agreed Lyndale equably. "You, I daresay, Miss Quarters, are much older, now?"

  “Well, no—not much older," Gwendolen said a trifle indignantly, wondering if he considered her quite "old-cattish." "Two years. But that makes a great deal of difference, you know!"

  “A great deal of difference about what?" enquired Lyndale, looking willing to be informed.

  Gwendolen cast her last ounce of reticence to the winds. "About being married, of course!" she said.

  "I see." To her relief, Lyndale did not appear at all put out by this bald announcement; on the contrary, he went on, in a quite ordinary, conversational tone, "I take it, Miss Quarters, that you consider yourself of a ripe age to undertake matrimony, then; in fact, if I remember correctly, I believe you informed me yesterday that you are actually engaged at present to marry a captain in the Royal Navy?"

  "Captain Henry Belville—yes!" said Gwendolen, with some degree of pride. "He will be arriving here tomorrow; I have had a letter from him only this morning. So you will no doubt have an opportunity to meet him—"

  "Belville?" One of Lyndale's mobile dark brows went up. "But I already know Captain Belville," he remarked surprisingly. "I don't imagine there can be two of them in the Royal Navy—God help the Navy if there are!—so this must be the man—"

  "What do you mean—'God help the Navy'?" Gwendolen demanded, bristling. "Captain Belville is one of the heroes of our late wars, Lord Lyndale! He served under Nelson!"

  "Yes, I know," said Lyndale. "And Lord Nelson has all my sympathy. Of all the pompous, opinionated asses—! Surely, Miss Quarters, you aren't seriously proposing to marry that fellow!"

  For a moment Gwendolen was so overcome with astonishment and wrath that she could scarcely speak.

  "I most certainly am!" she declared roundly, when she had recovered herself sufficiently to utter the words. "And, what is more, I shall consider myself honoured to do so, sir!"

  Lyndale shook his head incredulously. "I don't believe it!" he declared. "You can't be well acquainted with him—or he with you—or he would never have offered marriage to you, or you have accepted him!"

  Gwendolen assured him austerely that her acquaintance with Captain Belville dated back more than two years, but basely omitted to add that that acquaintance had consisted of nothing more than having sat beside him twice at dinner parties, stood up to dance with him once at the Cheltenham Assembly, and enjoyed a ten-minute tête-a-tête with him in the Rutledges' drawing room, during the course of which she had got over her awe of him sufficiently to inform him in a very breathless voice how happy she would be if he would honour her with an occasional letter from his post of duty, describing the arduous excitements of his life at sea.

  The letters had gradually become more frequent as the months had gone by, owing chiefly to her habit of replying to the Captain's missives on the same day that she received them; and before a year was out, it had somehow become an established fact that there was an "understanding" between them, which had eventually progressed to an engagement proper, followed (to make it quite official) by an announcement in the Morning Post. Mrs. Rutledge's belief that Gwendolen had "managed" the whole affair of the engagement was therefore unwarranted, although it was probably true that there never would have been an engagement if she had not written such long, enthusiastic letters to Captain Belville, who was not ordinarily a man to be swept off his feet by a girl without a fortune. But every man, even a naval hero, has his Achilles' heel, and in Captain Belville's case it wa
s his uneasy conviction that a gentleman could not properly carry on a voluminous correspondence with a young lady to whom he was not betrothed.

  Gwendolen's assurances as to the length of her acquaintance with Captain Belville did not appear to alter Lyndale's conviction that she and the Captain had made a signal error by becoming betrothed to each other, but she did not allow him to expatiate further on the subject

  "We were discussing," she reminded him inexorably, keeping her indignation well under for the sake of her purpose, "Jane's being married, not my own situation, my lord. Let us return to that subject, if you please, for there is something I should like to say to you before my father comes in."

  "By all means," Lyndale agreed politely. "You were remarking, I believe, that your sister is very young, and that you, on the other hand, are much—I beg your pardon!—two years older. Now where do we go on from there?"

  It was exactly like him, she thought wrathfully, as he sat gazing at her with a civilly expectant expression upon his face, not to make the least push to help her, when he must know what she wished to say to him. But there was nothing for it but to come out with it now, so she said, with as aloof an air as she found it possible to assume under the circumstances, "I merely wished to remind you, my lord, that it may be wise for you to —to proceed slowly in a matter of such importance as matrimony with a girl of Jane's age and—and timid disposition," she added inspirationally, and then looked at him hopefully to see if he had now quite taken her meaning.

  As usual, she found he had not only taken it, but was willing to put it into words in the bluntest of terms.

  "I see," he remarked. "Still, you can hardly expect me to shab off, can you. Miss Quarters?—when I've made it rather publicly known that I've come to Gloucestershire for the express purpose of offering for your sister? I shall make my offer, of course—and if, as you seem to be trying to tell me, she finds that offer unacceptable, she will have every opportunity to let me know of it."

  "Oh, but I didn't—I don't mean—" Gwendolen interrupted him hastily, hearing her father's footsteps in the hall and suddenly aghast at the conviction that she had taken far too much upon herself. After all, Jane herself had not said that she wished the projected match to be abandoned, and certainly both Gwendolen's mother and her father, to say nothing of Lady Priscilla, would be severely displeased if they knew she had done anything to throw a rub in the way of it.

  It was too late for her to say more, however, for at that moment Mr. Quarters walked into the room, wearing his usual outdoors costume of a cutty green coat, a pair of old drab breeches, and antiquated top-boots.

  "Good morning to you, my lord, and welcome to Brightleaves," he said, advancing towards Lyndale with his hand outstretched and an eager expression upon his face. "Now about those mares—"

  Gwendolen, seeing very well what sort of turn the conversation was about to take, gave it up and, excusing herself almost immediately, went back to the morning room and her accounts.

  It was useless to pretend to herself that her brief conversation with Lyndale had not left her in a state of considerable discomposure. In the first place, she was exceedingly angry with him because of the astounding and most discourteous remarks he had made about Captain Belville, and in the second place, she had an uncomfortable feeling that everyone else in the family—except, of course, Campaspe—was going to be exceedingly angry with her if they were to find out about the imprudent remarks she had made to him on the subject of Jane. Marquises, after all, did not grow on trees, particularly marquises with fortunes of fifty thousand a year; and her family, she felt, would have every right to censure her severely if Jane, forced by hard circumstance to give up all thoughts of marrying Alain de Combray, was obliged in the end to wed a husband far less desirable from a worldly point of view than Lyndale.

  She was somewhat consoled about her rashness, however, when, her mother and sisters arriving home soon afterwards from their excursion to the village, Campaspe stopped in the morning room to tell her that they had chanced to come up on Alain de Combray in the High Street, and that his agitation, and Jane's, over this unexpected encounter had been plain to anyone who wasn't as blind as a beetle.

  "It was the saddest thing I ever saw in my life," she declared with much dramatic emphasis, "exactly like the scene in The Betrayed Lovers where Maximilian meets Ermentrude for the last time and he only presses her hand and goes away without speaking because he is too overcome with grief to utter a word. Only Alain couldn't press Jane's hand, of course, because he was carrying half a dozen packages he had purchased for the Duke, and he did say Good morning, but hardly anything more. I could see that he knew all about Lyndale—well, he would, of course, since Lyndale is staying at Beauworth. And Jane had tears in her eyes—"

  All this made Gwendolen feel that perhaps she had not been so very wicked, after all, to hint to Lyndale that Jane might not be overwhelmed with joy over his proposal. And when she had confided her misdeed to Campaspe, and had heard from her how Jane had gone white as a sheet on being informed by Pratson that Lyndale was even then in the house and being commanded by Lady Otilia to run upstairs and tidy her hair before she made her appearance in the drawing room, she began to feel almost virtuous again.

  "Poor Jane!" she and Campaspe said to each other; and then they both hoped aloud that their sister would not be such a widgeon as to accept Lyndale's offer if she didn't wish to.

  “I wonder if Mama will leave her alone with him?" Campaspe debated. "She has such strict ideas of propriety— that is, when she remembers them."

  Gwendolen said that, in her opinion, it was their papa who would not leave them alone, not because he had any ideas of propriety at all, but because he would not wish to stop talking about horses to Lyndale.

  But as it fell out. Lady Otilia, with a marquis and fifty thousand pounds a year at stake, was for once a match for her husband's horse-mania, and by dint of several broad hints and a final outflanking action which included actually taking him by the arm and leading him out of the room, succeeded in giving Lyndale the opportunity for a private conversation with Jane. She had also, she stated with some smugness to Gwendolen and Campaspe as they waited in deep suspense for this conversation to be concluded, managed to pin her spouse down to the subject of Jane long enough for him to assure Lyndale that he had no objection to the Marquis's paying his addresses to her, so that there was now no obstacle, she remarked complacently, between her middle daughter and a coronet.

  Unfortunately for her hopes, the matter turned out to be not quite so simple as that. Lyndale, emerging from the drawing room, not ten minutes after she had left him alone with Jane, with a rather thoughtful air which even Lady Otilia could not translate as the mien of a triumphant lover, merely informed her courteously, before taking himself off, that he fancied it might be best for her to hear from Jane herself how matters stood—an ominous statement that sent Lady Otilia into the drawing room with the gravest misgivings the moment the front door had closed behind him.

  Gwendolen and Campaspe followed her. They found Jane seated on the sofa, dissolved in gentle tears. She looked up mistily as Lady Otilia entered.

  "Oh, Mama!" she said, with a wavering attempt at a smile. "Lord Lyndale has been so kind—so very considerate! I should not have believed—"

  "Kind? Considerate?" Lady Otilia's misgivings appeared to deepen; young ladies, her face suggested, who had just received an offer of marriage and had returned a blushing affirmative answer did not ordinarily use such terms in describing their prospective bridegroom's behaviour. "What had he to be kind and considerate about?" she demanded. The colour came up abruptly beneath the perfect alabaster of Jane's complexion. "Surely," said Lady Otilia awfully, sensing the worst, "you did not Refuse Him, Jane!"

  "Oh, no—no. Mama!" Jane said quickly and distressfully.

  “Thank God!" Lady Otilia sank into an armchair, where she reclined with one hand pressed over her heart. "I do not believe," she said dramatically, "that I could have survive
d such a disappointment—"

  "It is only. Mama," Jane went on, regarding her with anxious timidity, "not quite—quite settled yet, you see. That is to say. Lord Lyndale has told me that, though he wishes very much to marry me, he does not wish me to feel bound to give him any—any really binding promise until I am quite ready to, so that in the meantime we may go on comfortably and learn to know each other better—"

  "I have never heard of such nonsense!" declared Lady Otilia, bouncing up to sit erect in her chair with an energy that quite belied her languid manner of a moment before. "Learn to know each other better! Pray, what is there for you to know about him but that he is a gentleman of title, fortune, and unexceptionable character—" (Gwendolen blinked, recalling certain not-so-veiled-hints about the Marquis's adventures abroad that had penetrated even to Gloucestershire) "—or for him to know about you but that you are a young lady of excellent birth, modest habits, and a proper education? Do you mean to tell me, you ridiculous girl, that you have left matters so? That you are not now actually engaged to him?"

  "Well," said Jane doubtfully, "I don't really know that, dearest Mama. That is, he says he considers himself engaged to me, but that I am not to consider myself engaged to him unless I am sure I wish to be. That does seem rather odd, I expect, but it sounded quite sensible when he was proposing it to me, and made me feel so very much more comfortable—"

  Lady Otilia, calling upon heaven to be her witness that she had never done anything in a blameless life to deserve having such a peagoose for a daughter, again sank back against the cushions of her armchair, evidently somewhat mollified, however, by the fact that the accomplishment of a proper engagement obviously waited only upon her success in overcoming Jane's unaccountable scruples against it.

  Meanwhile, Gwendolen realised with astonishment that her conversation with Lyndale, unsatisfactory as it had seemed at the time, had apparently borne fruit in the way of an arrangement which she felt even she could not have improved upon. There would be ample time now for Jane to decide whether or not she really wished to give up the prospect of becoming a marchioness for what seemed a hopeless attachment to Alain de Combray; and, in the meantime, there was Lyndale to be had for the lifting of a finger.