Gwendolen Read online

  And Lyndale's words, "Of all the pompous, opinionated asses—!" came back to her like the pronouncement of some unusually unequivocal oracle, which should have warned her but unfortunately hadn't.

  There was nothing for it now, of course, she told herself, but to release the Captain from their engagement as soon as possible. Obviously, he had found that tête-a-tête of theirs quite as unsatisfactory as she had—a somewhat lowering thought to one's amour-propre; but then it was far better, she thought, for them to have discovered at this stage that they would not suit than after the knot had been tied. The notion that her lack of fortune had had something to do with Belville's notable lack of enthusiasm over the prospect of marrying her did, of course, occur to her—"but still I don't think even that would have made him look so Friday-faced," she thought, "if I had only appeared to him the sort of milk-and-water female he seems to consider proper wife-material! Oh dear, why must men always want conformable wives? I had as well try to suit Lyndale as him!"

  As to what her mama would say about this cavalier oversetting of one of her most cherished plans, she did not speculate, for she had no intention whatever of telling her of the disappointment in store for her until the matter had been settled with Belville and it was too late for anyone to do anything about it.

  "I daresay," she said to herself, taking a resignedly philosophical point of view, "I am destined to be an aunt; but at any rate there is always plenty to do at Brightleaves, and I expect Papa and Mama would have missed me if I had actually married Henry—ugh!—and gone away and left them."

  And such was the disillusionment wrought in her by the unfortunate impression the gallant Captain had made upon her that she wondered in an almost sacrilegious way whether Lord Nelson, too, had been a bit of a bore when not performing heroics upon the quarter-deck, and had set Lady Hamilton's back up with condescending speeches beginning, "My dear Emma," exactly as Belville had with her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I HAVE HAD," said Campaspe to Gwendolen the following morning, "the most splendid idea about how to rescue Jane!”

  She sat perched upon the foot of Gwendolen's bed, having burst into her bedchamber to awaken her at an early hour of a wet morning. Gwendolen, opening one eye to take in the dim grey light and becoming conscious of a steady drumming of rain outside the window, burrowed into her pillow once more and muttered in an almost inaudible voice that Jane didn't need rescuing now.

  "Yes, she does!" Campaspe insisted, leaning forward and poking the covers indiscriminately to make sure Gwendolen did not go to sleep again. "You didn't hear her last evening. She was going on about her duty again, and how she couldn't possibly go to Beauworth tomorrow, with the Duke and Lady Maria and everyone else thinking she was going to marry Lyndale, and then end by telling him she wouldn't. So I have decided to take matters into my own hands."

  Gwendolen, with a decided feeling of foreboding, sat up and asked her what she meant to do.

  "I intend," said Campaspe proudly, "to demonstrate to Mama—and to the world, in fact—that Lyndale is completely out of the question as a husband for Jane. Well, I mean to say, after all, a man who is engaged to one woman, and at the same time involves himself in an intrigue with another, can't be thought a suitable person to marry Jane—can he?"

  Gwendolen, by this time perfectly wide awake, stared at her young sister in amazement.

  "An intrigue with another?" she repeated blankly. "Lyndale? But who in the world-?"

  "Me," said Campaspe complacently.

  "You!" Gwendolen smiled incredulously. "Oh, Cammie, don't be nonsensical!" she said. "You carrying on an intrigue with Lyndale! He would go into whoops at the very idea!"

  "No, he wouldn't!" said Campaspe indignantly. "A great many older men prefer young girls; I am sure I have read that frequently!"

  “Then you have been reading literature very unsuitable for your years," Gwendolen said firmly. "Really, Cammie, of all the birdwitted ideas—! What would Neil have to say to it, do you think, if he saw you throwing yourself at Lyndale's head?"

  Campaspe shrugged. "It might do him a great deal of good," she said with a very grown-up air. "Men are so much inclined to take one for granted!"

  "Fiddle!" said Gwendolen. "Of course he takes you for granted; after all, he has known you since you were in short coats!" She got out of bed, wriggled her feet into her slippers, and stood facing her younger sister severely. "Cammie," she said, "I absolutely forbid you to give another thought to this skipbrained idea! In the first place, it would not serve—"

  'Then you do it," Campaspe said inspirationally. "After all, you are far better acquainted with him than I am—"

  "Not for worlds!" Gwendolen declared feelingly.

  "Because of Captain Belville?"

  "Because of my own self-respect! Lord Lyndale and I have already come to cuffs more than once. He knows exactly what I think of him, and, I daresay, when he learns I am not going to marry Belville, he would immediately consider, if I began casting out lures, that I was looking towards a greater fortune and a title-"

  It was now Campaspe's turn to stare. "You're not going to marry Belville!" she repeated.

  "No."

  "Oh, Gwen, how perfectly, perfectly splendid!" Campaspe flew at her sister and kissed her enthusiastically. "I didn't like to say so yesterday, but he is a horrid man—so stiff and pompous! I can't think why you ever wanted to marry him!"

  "Nor can I," Gwendolen confessed. "I expect it was because I didn't know him very well, and of course while he was away at sea I had no opportunity of finding out my mistake."

  "Have you told him yet? Will he be very angry?"

  "Very relieved, I should think," Gwendolen said coolly, "though I haven't had an opportunity to speak to him on the matter yet. I don't believe he wants to marry me any more than I want to marry him. And, after all, there is Evelina, with all that lovely Rutledge money, ready to drop into his lap like a ripe plum." She looked warningly at Campaspe. "But you mustn't tell any of this to Mama," she said. "I shall contrive to speak to Belville after dinner this evening, and that will be quite time enough for her to learn of it, when we have settled it all between us."

  "Heavens! She will fly up into the boughs!" Campaspe said, looking awed but at the same time highly gratified at this prospect of approaching drama.

  But, as matters fell out, neither was Belville to learn that evening of his miraculous escape from marriage with a portionless young lady, nor was Lady Otilia to suffer the mortification of seeing her cherished plan for marrying off her eldest daughter to an eligible suitor overset, for at four o'clock one of the Rutledge grooms arrived at Brightleaves, bearing a note from Mrs. Rutledge. Poor Henry, she wrote at greater length and with more obvious satisfaction than Lady Otilia considered decent, would unfortunately be unable to keep his engagement to dine with them that evening, having contracted a very nasty feverish cold, no doubt from sleeping between unaired sheets in that horrid inn where he had stopped in travelling up from Portsmouth. She could not recommend, she wrote, his exposing himself to the rain, but the Quarterses might rest assured that everything that could be done to make him comfortable and speed his recovery was being done for him under her roof, and that they might expect to see him at Brightleaves as soon as he was again himself.

  Lady Otilia, being a gentlewoman, did not grind her teeth or swear upon receiving this missive; but she made several highly uncharitable remarks about Mrs. Rutledge's motives in inducing Captain Belville to coddle himself to the extent of remaining by the fire with his feet in a steaming bath of mustard and water, eating thin gruel and slighting his social obligations, when there was no more amiss with him than a cold. She then declared her intention of calling at the Rutledges' the first thing in the morning, taking Gwendolen with her, for the purpose of ascertaining for herself how serious the Captain's indisposition actually was.

  But to this plan Gwendolen entered an emphatic veto. Nothing, she declared, would induce her to intrude in Captain Belville's sick-r
oom, engagement or no engagement, and she had almost come to the point of telling her mother that there would be no engagement as soon as she had managed to get a private word with her betrothed when fortunately Jane came into the room and Lady Otilia's maternal energies were diverted in the direction of endeavouring to discover whether she had decided to put off her missish temporising and accept Lord Lyndale's offer of marriage.

  Lady Otilia's intention of calling at the Rutledges' received a further setback the following morning, when, before she could leave the house, a note was brought her from Captain Belville himself. In it he apologised once more for his inability to accept her invitation to dinner the previous evening and assured her that he was sufficiently improved to be able to look forward to meeting her and the young ladies at Beauworth that evening, Lady Maria having been kind enough to send him an invitation when she had learned he was staying in the neighbourhood.

  "Well, I daresay we need not call in to see him this morning, after all, since we are assured of meeting him this evening," Lady Otilia said, though still with some lingering dissatisfaction in her manner. She read through the note once more. “He says nothing, I see, my dears," she observed, brightening, “of the Rutledges' having been invited as well, which is a decided snub to them, of course; but then the Duke simply will not have people at Beauworth who don't amuse him, no matter how odd it may sometimes seem. Poor Lady Maria was used to tell me—before the Duke and your papa had that unfortunate falling-out, naturally—how uncomfortable it often made her, but there is nothing that she can do."

  It was Gwendolen's private opinion, which she communicated to Campaspe after Lady Otilia had left the room, that the Duke would find Captain Belville even less amusing than he would have found the Rutledges, but that no doubt, like herself, he knew him more by reputation than by nature and would soon discover his error. Jane, who was seated quietly in a comer of the room engaged in some of the exquisite needlework at which she excelled, and who had been almost forgotten by her sisters, looked up at this, with a slight, puzzled frown wrinkling her brows.

  "But, Gwen," she protested mildly, "you don't think Captain Belville is dull—?"

  "Oh, don't she?" retorted Campaspe. "And, what's more, he is dull—only it doesn't matter now, because she's not going to marry him."

  “Not going to—!" Jane let her needlework fall, her eyes growing round. "Oh, Gwen, you aren't going to jilt him!" she gasped.

  "Well, yes, I expect I am," Gwendolen said judicially, "if jilting means telling a man who obviously doesn't want to marry you that you don't want to marry him, either." She saw Jane's eyes fill with tears. "Now don't be a widgeon, Jane!" she said briskly. "It's not the tragic end of a beautiful love; after all, I haven't so much as clapped eyes on the man for two years, and it's quite, quite clear that I had my head in the clouds all that time and was imagining him to be a prince out of a fairy tale instead of the very ordinary man he is—"

  Jane took out her handkerchief and determinedly wiped her eyes. "It's n-not that," she declared, her speech still slightly impeded by the emotion she was obviously endeavouring to repress. "If you don't w-wish to marry Captain Belville, of c-course you must not; only—only I shall have to tell Lord Lyndale now that I will marry him—'

  "Well, I don't see that!" Campaspe said roundly. *'Why should this make a difference in what you do?"

  Jane raised her brimming eyes to her face. *'Mama," she said simply. "Oh, don't you see, Cammie?—we can't both disappoint her! It would be too cruel!"

  Gwendolen and Campaspe looked at each other, appalled. It had never occurred to either of them that Jane would see the matter in this light, and after a moment's stunned silence they set themselves simultaneously to the task of convincing her that the mere fact that Gwendolen's engagement was to be broken off did not automatically require her to enter into one with Lyndale. Campaspe's arguments imaginatively included the prediction that Gwendolen, free now of her entanglement with Belville, would undoubtedly fascinate one—if not several—of the gentlemen of wealth and title whom the Duke always had staying at Beauworth, and would be deluged with matrimonial prospects far more splendid than any Belville could offer, while Gwendolen threatened, if Jane did not promise to do nothing at present concerning Lyndale, to marry the odious Captain out of hand and be bored to death for the rest of her life.

  "All the same," Campaspe said darkly when she and Gwendolen, having prevailed upon Jane to give them her word that she would take no immediate steps to enter into a definite engagement with Lyndale, went off together, "I don't trust her not to let her higher feelings get the better of her if she sees Mama falling into the dismals after you have sent Belville about his business. You may say what you like, Gwen, but something really must be done, and unless you can think of a better plan, I shall certainly go on with mine."

  This declaration made Gwendolen even less happy when she contemplated the coming evening at Beauworth, adding as it did a further complication to her own problem of being obliged to appear there as Belville's betrothed in company with the Captain himself. She had toyed with the idea of sending him a note in which she would politely but kindly inform him that their engagement was at an end, but had eventually decided that it would be far better to face the embarrassment of a public appearance as his betrothed than to break off with him in this cavalier fashion.

  It required all the assurance given by her mirror, however, reflecting as it did the salutary effect made upon her appearance by the first really elegant evening-frock she had ever owned, to send her off to Beauworth that evening in a state of reasonable equanimity. Lady Otilia, regal in purple-bloom satin, had no such misgivings, and, indeed, any mother's heart might have swelled with satisfaction at sight of the three young ladies who foregathered with her in the shabby drawing room, ready to be conveyed to Beauworth in the lumbering old family coach. Jane, of course, was the undisputed beauty of the group, a fairy-tale princess in her gown of rose-pink gauze; but Gwendolen, in the almond-green gown, her fair hair dressed high on her head, with a few fascinating ringlets straying at nape and temples, was certainly in her best looks that evening; and even Campaspe, in a demure white muslin frock, her ruddy hair arranged a l'Anglaise, appeared very much the young lady of fashion.

  All in all, Lady Otilia thought proudly, the Duke, who was well known to be a connoisseur of feminine beauty, would have every reason to regret the quarrel that had resulted in the exclusion of the Quarters family from the portals of Beauworth; and she confidently expected that, once he had set eyes on her daughters, this would be but the first of many occasions when they would appear within those august precincts. Of Mr. Quarters she quite despaired; he had refused to go to Beauworth that evening, saying that only the chance of having a long talk with Lyndale about his Arabian mares would have tempted him thither, and as Lyndale had come round that morning to look over his stables, and they had had a very satisfactory conversation then, there was really no need for him to put himself to that trouble.

  So the Brightleaves ladies went off to Beauworth without him, and shortly afterwards their coach turned into the ducal grounds through the great gates and went clip-clopping up a winding lane, past an Embroidered Parterre, a Grotto, a Fountain, and an Arboretum of exotic trees, to the spectacular but quite hideous mansion, built in the fashionable Picturesque style, which the Duke, having taken a fancy some twenty years before to improve his Gloucestershire estate, had caused to be constructed upon the site of the more modest Jacobean house that had satisfied his ancestors. It resembled nothing so much as a mediaeval castle, with oriels and bays, a prodigious tower, and pepperpot-crowned comer turrets.

  Inside, when the Quarters ladies entered, they found themselves in a staircase hall of seemingly vertiginous height, the stairs mounting in two flights to a first floor surrounded by marble arcades which were overshadowed by a corbelled gallery beneath a fan-vaulted coving.

  "Jupiter!" Campaspe, who had never seen it before, whispered in Gwendolen's ear as they followed a
stately butler up the long staircase. “Neil says he feels as if he ought to be wearing a suit of armour when he comes here, and I know now exactly what he means. Do you know he will be here tonight? The Fairhalls were asked, and the doctor said he might come."

  "Sh-h-h!" said Gwendolen.

  They were approaching the head of the staircase, where Lady Maria, without the Duke, but supported by a thin, fair, slight young man with delicate, distinguished-looking features, was standing to greet them.

  "Alain!" hissed the irrepressible Campaspe, again in Gwendolen's ear. "I daresay Lady Maria needed him this evening to make up her table. Look at Jane! I do believe she is going to faint!"

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JANE, HOWEVER, HAD been far too well schooled during her London Season by Lady Priscilla to do anything so shockingly unfashionable as swooning away at sight of her beloved; and, though her lips quivered and her face was indubitably extremely pale, she managed a very creditable smile as she made her curtsey to Lady Maria and said good evening to M. de Combray—the latter, in truth, looking quite as white as she was herself. Fortunately, since the Fairhalls arrived just then and came up the stairs in something of a bustle, owing to the difficulty experienced by young Lieutenant Fairhall in managing the long flight with a leg that was still very lame from his wound, the two star-crossed young lovers had ample opportunity to regain control of their feelings before they entered the Long Gallery, where the Duke and his other guests had foregathered.

  Lady Maria had spoken of a small party, but Gwendolen saw at a glance, as she entered this imposing apartment, with its hammer-beam roof and its windows filled with traceried lights in the Gothic style, that they would sit down at least twenty to dinner. In addition to the local guests and the members of the Duke's family, represented tonight by Lady Maria and the Duke's second son. Lord Wilfrid Boulting, she perceived at least half a dozen strangers whom she guessed to be staying at Beauworth, all attired in the latest London fashions and all apparently upon intimate terms with the Duke and with one another.