Gwendolen Read online

  All rather too good to be true, Gwendolen found herself thinking suspiciously, for she could not bring herself to believe, after her own unfortunate experiences with his lordship, that magnanimity and a willingness to be led by a female formed any large part of his character. No doubt, she thought, he had had his own selfish reasons for behaving towards Jane as he had done, so that there was no necessity for her to modify her disapproval of him—now intensified a hundredfold by his rude and quite uncalled for remarks about Captain Belville —by giving him credit, as Jane was doing, for "kindness" and "consideration."

  But at this point the train of her thoughts, and of those of her mother and sisters, was abruptly altered by the arrival of one of the Duke of Tardiff s undergrooms, bearing a note from the Duke's unmarried daughter, Lady Maria Boulting, who served as his hostess, inviting the family at Brightleaves to dine at Beauworth on the Friday. Not a large party, the note stated in almost apologetic terms—for Lady Maria, unlike her irascible papa, was timid and self-effacing to a fault—but merely a conversable evening, with a few friends.

  Lady Otilia's eyes gleamed as she perused the note, and a look of determination crept into her plump, pretty face. Mr. Quarters, the look said, might do as he pleased about accepting Lady Maria's invitation—and, knowing her husband. Lady Otilia was quite sure that what he pleased would be not to go to Beauworth. But wild horses, that look went on to say, would not prevent her from taking her daughters there, and attired, moreover, in the first stare of fashion, if another mortgage had to be taken out on Brightleaves in order to allow her to do so.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HOWEVER, NO SUCH drastic measures turned out to be necessary, owing largely to Lady Priscilla's forethought. Lady Priscilla, quite as aware as her sister that Jane's new position in Society as the betrothed of the Marquis of Lyndale would place a perilous strain upon the wardrobes of the ladies at Brightleaves, had been beforehand in making provision for this emergency. Thus, in addition to providing Jane with gowns suitable for every social occasion she might meet with during her London Season (some of which might well be pressed into service now for Campaspe, who was much the same size and height as Jane), she had also sent in the chaise with Jane some of her own frocks, not as yet in the least demodé, though her ladyship had tired of wearing them.

  Lady Priscilla, like Gwendolen, was tall, slender, and fair; she had excellent taste and a penchant for youthful fashions, and Lady Otilia, going through the gowns she had sent with an eye to the Beauworth party, found what she considered the perfect dress for her eldest daughter to wear upon that occasion. It was a gown of almond-green crape, cut low across the bosom, the skirt front quite smooth and flat, with fulness concentrated in pleats at the back, and the hem finished with an embroidered band. As Lady Otilia complacently observed, it shrieked of a Bruton Street modiste's elegant atelier, and even Gwendolen, whose taste did not often agree with her mama's more exotic notions of fashion, gave it her unqualified approval.

  Rather than considering its effect upon the ducal party at Beauworth, however, her mind was dwelling, as she regarded her reflection in her dressing-table mirror on the morning following Lyndale's visit to Brightleaves, upon the impression it might make upon Captain Henry Belville when, as would certainly occur now that he was at last to return to Gloucestershire, she and he would be fellow guests at such festive occasions as dinner-parties and balls. She was a trifle nervous, she found, about her forthcoming reunion with the gallant Captain, not being at all certain either how she should conduct herself on their first meeting or how he would conduct himself. They had been comparative strangers, after all, when they had last seen each other; yet now they were engaged to become man and wife. Would he clasp her to his manly bosom when they met? Somehow she could not imagine his doing that. On the other hand, she thought, they could hardly shake hands and say, "How do you do?" as mere acquaintances might.

  The worst thing of all, it seemed to Gwendolen, as she looked forward doubtfully to their forthcoming meeting, was her remembrance of Lyndale's derogatory description of Captain Belville—"Of all the pompous, opinionated asses—!" Of course, she knew one really should not dignify such an obviously prejudiced remark by giving it even temporary room in one's memory; but, vexingly, she found she could not banish it from her mind. Naturally, she was quite aware that what the odious Marquis spoke of as pomposity was merely the innate dignity conferred upon a man's behaviour by a noble mind, and that when he had so meanly characterised Captain Belville as opinionated, he had merely been giving vent to an ordinary man's envy of a breadth of knowledge that made its possessor capable of providing the correct answer to any question that might be brought up in conversation.

  All the same, the remark seemed to have watered and cultivated some nagging seed of doubt in her mind that had lain comfortably dormant there for the past two years; and it had grown into quite a monstrous little weed, exuding apprehension from every prickly leaf by the time she, her mother, and sisters set out for the Rutledges' on the morning following his lordship's visit.

  Whether she was destined to meet her betrothed at the Rutledges', she was not at all certain. Captain Belville, in the letter of which she had spoken to Lyndale on the previous day, had informed her merely that he hoped to be in Gloucestershire on this date, but without specifying any time of arrival, and had added that, as the Rutledges had invited him to be their guest, he need not trespass upon the hospitality of Brightleaves.

  This arrangement, even in view of the Captain's relationship to the Rutledges, had struck Gwendolen as slightly peculiar, and to Lady Otilia, with her maternal sensitivity to anything that appeared in the least degree likely to interfere with her present blissful condition of having three daughters all engaged to be married at one and the same time, it had immediately taken on a sinister aspect.

  "Depend upon it," she had said impressively to Gwendolen, "Annabel Rutledge has not given up hope that she may yet detach Belville from you and see him marry Evelina instead. I have no doubt that is what is behind this scheme of hers to have him stay with them instead of with us. But never fear, my love! / shall see that nothing of the sort occurs!"

  And in pursuit of her plan to scotch any machinations that Mrs. Rutledge might have in mind. Lady Otilia announced her intention of calling at the Rutledges' that very morning, with the purpose of discovering precisely when Captain Belville was expected there.

  Gwendolen herself, invited—or, rather, commanded—to accompany her, was torn between dignity and curiosity; but, as duty certainly came down upon the latter side, she pocketed her pride and went with her mother, with Campaspe and Jane rounding out the party. Perhaps rather too large a delegation, Gwendolen felt uneasily, but uneasiness was swallowed up in disagreeable astonishment when, upon their being admitted to the house by the Rutledges' butler, they found Captain Belville himself seated comfortably in the drawing room, being entertained by Mrs. Rutledge and Evelina.

  Lady Otilia, never one to allow a dramatic situation to escape her, checked upon the threshold and eyed him with what Campaspe later irreverently described as her Lady Macbeth look.

  "Hah! Belville!" she said.

  The Captain started nervously and rose from his chair with an alacrity ordinarily quite foreign to his demeanour. He was a tall, high-shouldered man, with a long face, a rather severe manner, and was seldom known to smile. A somewhat unhappy smile, however, had indubitably appeared upon his lips as the Quarters contingent entered the room, and he stammered, with a notable lack of that aplomb which, to an adoring younger Gwendolen, had made him appear the epitome of the British naval man, "Lady Otilia! Miss Quarters! What a surprise! What a—a very pleasant surprise!"

  "Yes, it is—isn't it?" said Lady Otilia, regarding him without the least attempt to hide the suspicion that was obviously burning in her bosom. "A surprise, I mean, but not an entirely agreeable surprise to me. Captain Belville, to find you arrived in our midst while we remain quite in ignorance of your presence here! Annabel,"—sh
e turned to Mrs. Rutledge with an air of strong reproof—"I am astonished—nay, more than astonished: amazed!—that you did not send us word immediately of Belville's arrival!"

  Mrs. Rutledge, a fair, plump, voluble woman who was ordinarily quite subservient in her manner towards Lady Otilia because, having married above her station, she appreciated the patronage of an earl's daughter, shrugged her shoulders a trifle recalcitrantly.

  "Dear Lady Otilia," she cried vivaciously, "of course I was just about to sit down and write you a note telling you of Henry's arrival when you walked into the room! Naturally there was no point in disturbing you last evening—"

  "Last evening!" Lady Otilia ruffled up even more and regarded Captain Belville so severely that he might have been pardoned for quailing before her almost as visibly as a midshipman before the stem gaze of Lord Nelson himself. "Am I to understand then, Belville," she addressed him directly, "that you arrived here last evening and have not yet found an opportunity of waiting upon us at Brightleaves—?"

  "Oh, Mama, for heaven's sake! There is no need to make a song about it!" interrupted Gwendolen, who had had quite enough of this embarrassing scene. She advanced upon Captain Belville and, extending her hand, said to him briskly, "How nice to see you again. Captain Belville! Did you have a pleasant journey from Portsmouth?"

  It was not at all the sort of greeting she had thought to give her betrothed, but she saw at once that she had said exactly the right thing, for the Captain, quite out of his depth in the face of Lady Otilia's histrionics, immediately seized upon these commonplace remarks and in reply embarked upon a sea of commonplaces of his own. The company was treated to a detailed account of the deplorable condition of the post-chaise in which he had travelled from Portsmouth, the insolence of one of the post-boys, and the complete inadequacy of the dinner to which he had been obliged to sit down at the George in Cheltenham—"not wishing to give Cousin Annabel the trouble of an unexpected guest at her table," he explained, which statement caused Mrs. Rutledge to burst into the conversation again with a paean of admiration for his consideration, coupled with an appeal to Evelina to confirm her boast that she kept a table such that, if obliged to increase her covers even for half a dozen guests, it would have placed no strain upon her resources.

  "For you know there has never been anything in the least clutchfisted about Mr. Rutledge," she said, smiling upon Captain Belville with such a proprietary expression that Lady Otilia, who had permitted herself to sit down, although with an air of in no wise sanctioning the conversation, considered most uncalled for. "Never the least word of complaint from him over the household expenses, no matter how much the butcher's bill may come to—but, there! he can afford it, and his opinion is quite the same as mine, that people who can live comfortably ought to do so. When all is said and done, there is only the one chick for it all to go to when we are gone."

  And she smiled maternally upon Evelina, who blushed, looked at Captain Belville, and then dropped her eyelids in what Lady Otilia considered a most provocative manner.

  All in all, as Lady Otilia told her highly uninterested husband later in the day in an outraged voice, it was the most vulgarly obvious lure she had ever heard in her life—"and before Gwendolen, too! As if Annabel Rutledge, and Evelina, too, didn't know perfectly well that she is engaged to him!"

  Mr. Quarters, who was reading the Racing Chronicle, said without lifting his eyes from that journal that perhaps the Rutledges felt that engagements entered into by correspondence were not as binding as the ordinary kind.

  "Nonsense!" said Lady Otilia roundly. "I know you have never liked Captain Belville above half, Mr. Quarters, but let me remind you that, whether you like him or not, he has engaged himself to marry one of your daughters, and it is your duty to see that he lives up to the obligation! It is a great pity that you weren't in when he walked back to Brightleaves with us this morning, as you might otherwise well have taken the opportunity then to put him in mind of that."

  This time Mr. Quarters's eyes were raised for a fraction of a second from the Chronicle as he remarked, in a tone of considerable scorn, that there was no need for anything of that sort.

  "That fellow Belville," he said, "hasn't the rumgumption to throw a girl over. Might make a scandal, and he wouldn't care for that. Good God, no! Careful as an old woman of his reputation."

  Lady Otilia, who, in spite of displaying an unexpectedly practical side in regard to the business of marrying off her daughters, much preferred to keep matters upon a more romantic plane, said rather crossly that she believed Captain Belville to be much attached to Gwendolen and she to him, but that people like Annabel Rutledge could always cause trouble, even between true lovers, and so she had asked Captain Belville to dinner, sans the Rutledges, for the following day.

  But as this interesting piece of information, involving as it did a decided snub to her most intimate friend, was received by Mr. Quarters with no more than a snort, signifying impatience at her continued interruption of his reading, the conversation perforce came to an end upon this unsatisfactory note.

  Meanwhile, Gwendolen, who was pretending to be writing letters in the morning room, chiefly so that she could escape from all conversations involving affairs of the heart, which appeared to be the only topic that interested the female contingent at Brightleaves, sat nibbling at the tip of her pen while she reviewed the events of the morning, and particularly of that part of the morning between the departure of the Quarters ladies from the Rutledges' and their arrival at Brightleaves.

  They had been accompanied, at Lady Otilia's rather pointed suggestion, by Captain Belville; and Gwendolen had no doubt that it was likewise by her mother's contrivance that she and the Captain had found themselves walking side by side ahead of the others, while Lady Otilia lagged unaccountably far behind with Jane and Campaspe.

  A tête-a-tête of reasonable length had thus been made possible to the long-separated lovers, which Lady Otilia had no doubt expected would overcome the disagreeable effect of that uncomfortable reunion in the Rutledges' drawing room. But, unfortunately, such had not been the case. The conversation, in fact, as Gwendolen reviewed it now in her mind, had gone, as far as she could recall it, something like this:

  BELVILLE: What very agreeable weather we are having, Miss Quarters! Don't you find it so? Or perhaps you would prefer it to be not quite so warm?

  GWENDOLEN: I expect you ought to call me Gwendolen now. It's a rather silly name, but then Mama has a very romantic nature, you see. And, after all, it is not as bad as Campaspe.

  BELVILLE: (nervously) Of course. Of course, my—my dear Gwendolen!

  GWENDOLEN: And shall I call you Henry?

  BELVILLE: (bringing up a smile but still very nervous) Naturally—naturally! It would be entirely suitable. (Continuing with rather an air of misery seeking company) I understand from my cousin Annabel that both your sisters are to be married soon as well?

  GWENDOLEN: Well, not exactly. That is, of course Cammie is engaged to Neil Fairhall, but Jane hasn't actually accepted Lord Lyndale's offer.

  BELVILLE: (surprised, almost incredulous) Hasn't accepted—? But, my dear Miss—my dear Gwendolen, you cannot mean that she is considering refusing such an extremely advantageous offer! It seems quite—unthinkable! GWENDOLEN: Well, it certainly isn't unthinkable, but I don't expect it is very likely, either. (With a speculative glance at him) I believe you are acquainted with Lord Lyndale, Henry. Do you think he is a suitable husband for Jane?

  BELVILLE: (somewhat taken aback) Suitable? I don't quite understand— He has a handsome fortune, I believe, now that he has come into the title—

  GWENDOLEN: Oh, very handsome! But that is not at all what I mean.

  BELVILLE: Naturally, matters would be vastly different if he had not inherited! Were he the penniless adventurer whom I had the misfortune to come across during my service in the Mediterranean—when, I may say, he was acting in support of a villainous local dignitary whom His Majesty's Government did not in the least wish
to see in a position of prominence—I could not, of course, contemplate with equanimity the prospect of his allying himself with your family, my dear Gwendolen! But the Marquis of Lyndale must certainly be a person of consequence, no matter what his past derelictions may be; and I cannot conceive of any prudent parent's not considering him a most eligible parti.

  GWENDOLEN: Unfortunately, Jane is not a prudent parent, but a young girl—and a rather innocent, sensitive one, at that. I do think you ought to remember that, in answering my question.

  BELVILLE: (tolerantly) My dear Gwendolen, if the predilections and sensitivities of young ladies are to be the sole basis on which the serious matter of matrimony is decided, I am afraid we shall have a great many excessively imprudent marriages! One must, of course, be practical, above all.

  GWENDOLEN: (rebelliously) I don't believe Lord Nelson was practical. At least he may have been when he married, but afterwards, when Lady Hamilton came into the picture—

  BELVILLE: (interrupting her, deeply shocked) Miss Quarters! Gwendolen, that is! That is not a suitable subject—!

  GWENDOLEN: (undeterred) And what about yourself? I have no fortune, and yet you have offered for me—

  BELVILLE: (swallowing visibly, but speaking manfully) Yes.

  GWENDOLEN: (regards him as if she rather expects something more. Nothing comes.)

  BELVILLE's brows are knit; he is looking gloomy.)

  GWENDOLEN: (determinedly) It is a very warm day—isn't it? Perhaps a bit too warm—

  "And why," she said to herself, as she bit the end of her pen so hard that she left tooth-marks upon it, "I didn't tell him then and there that he was free as a bird as far as I was concerned, I can't think! Oh, Jupiter! What a muddle! Can he have changed so much, I wonder, or is it me?"