Gwendolen Read online

  The Duke himself, a rather small man, looking a good deal older than his sixty-odd years, and with an air that managed to appear at the same time unceremonious and supercilious, was holding court from a large carved oak chair on the dais at the end of the long room, and thither Lady Otilia and her daughters were shepherded by an anxious Lady Maria.

  "You remember Lady Otilia Quarters, I am sure, Papa—Miss Quarters—Miss Jane Quarters—Miss Campaspe—"

  The Duke put up his quizzing-glass and stared at them, exactly, as Campaspe later indignantly said, like a judge at a cattle show.

  "You will excuse my not rising, ma'am," he said to Lady Otilia perfunctorily, when he had quite completed his survey. "Touch of the gout." His grey eyes, still keen in his ravaged face, surveyed her sardonically. "Quarters doesn't appear— eh?" he barked. "Not surprised. Tell him I'll have that land of his yet." He beckoned to Jane. "Come here, my dear," he said, leering at her unbecomingly. "No need to ask which of you it is that Lyndale's fixed his choice on; you're the Beauty, and no mistake. Sit down here beside me. It ain't often I see such a pretty face."

  This last comment, Gwendolen saw, did not appear at all to suit a tall, very handsome, dark-haired young woman, dressed in the height of fashion in an amber robe of satin and lace, who had been seated at his elbow, laughing and conversing with him, as the Quarterses had entered the room. She was presented to Lady Otilia by Lady Maria a few moments later as Miss Courtney; and Captain Belville, who had come up to greet the party as soon as they had entered—waiting deferentially to pay his devoirs to them, however, until the Duke had dismissed them—impressively added the information in Gwendolen's ear that she was a great heiress, and connected on her mother's side not only with the family at Beauworth but also with many other of the most considerable families of England.

  Gwendolen, seeing that, disappointed of the Duke, Miss Courtney had now turned her attention to Lyndale in a manner that scarcely seemed to take into account the well-known reason for his being in Gloucestershire, said critically that she was very handsome, but she, Gwendolen, hardly thought she would suit Lord Lyndale.

  "Suit Lord Lyndale! Indeed, I should think she would not,'* said Captain Belville, looking shocked, "since he has already offered for your sister!"

  "Well, there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, you know," Gwendolen said philosophically, wishing she might tell the Captain then and there that there was going to be a very large slip 'twixt the cup and the lip of their marriage. "But even if he doesn't marry Jane in the end," she went on, "I do think Miss Courtney is wasting her time. She doesn't appear to me to be in the least the sort of young woman Lord Lyndale wishes for a wife."

  Probably to Captain Belville's relief—for he was looking very much nonplussed at his beloved's cool assessment of Lyndale's matrimonial preferences—their conversation was interrupted at this point by Alain de Combray, who came up, in his rather hesitating, diffident way, to express his pleasure to Gwendolen at seeing her again, after a considerable length of time during which they had not met. He had always been a favourite of hers, ever since he had first come to Beauworth a little over a year before as the latest in the succession of secretaries to the irascible Duke. She found him pleasant and intelligent, with agreeable manners and quiet tastes, and had long felt that, except for the problem of fortune, he and Jane might have been made for each other.

  She saw a shadow now in his face, however, that had not used to be there, noticed how often his eyes strayed to where Jane sat in blushing conversation with the Duke, and wished she might have been able to give him some comfort in regard to his future. But the only comfort she could reasonably offer was the information that Campaspe had decided Jane was not to marry Lyndale, which seemed to her rather a broken reed for anyone to rely upon.

  She did observe, however, with some misgiving, that Campaspe had already begun her campaign to cause Lyndale to appear a heartless libertine, bent upon toying with the affections of one sister while making honourable offers of marriage to another, for she had now managed, by a boldness of manoeuvre that would have shocked Lady Otilia had she been able to withdraw her eyes from the pleasing spectacle of the Duke admiring Jane's beauty, to detach Lyndale from Miss Courtney and was engaging him in animated conversation.

  Fortunately, the announcement of dinner put an end to this improper tête-a-tête (or at least it was as improper as Campaspe knew how to make it), and the company all went down to the great dining room, which was extremely large and mediaeval and would no doubt have had rushes strewn on the floor and minstrels playing on sackbuts and hautboys if the Duke had not detested music and preferred Aubusson carpets to floor coverings taken directly from nature. Gwendolen found herself seated between Captain Belville and Lord Wilfrid Boulting, and was relieved to see that Campaspe had been placed quite at the other end of the table from Lyndale, who had Jane on one side and Miss Courtney on the other. Regarding Miss Courtney with some disfavour—for that enterprising young lady had not wasted a moment, once she found herself seated beside the Marquis, in claiming his attention, quite regardless of good manners—Gwendolen thought that if Campaspe wished for a likely female to enter into an intrigue with Lyndale, the dashing Miss Courtney was certainly proclaiming herself to be available.

  A voice at her elbow broke in upon these reflections.

  “I know," said Lord Wilfrid Boulting, in the faintly supercilious drawl that even the famous Mr. Brummell himself could not have improved upon for sheer sweetly self-centred arrogance, "that by all the canons of social usage you should be conversing with Belville, Miss Quarters, but since Frieda Courtney is upsetting the whole table by talking to Lyndale, may I join in the general anarchy by holding converse with you? Besides, you can't really wish to talk to Belville. I don't know why it is that naval men are always either tediously jolly or overwhelmingly dull, but so it is. The gallant Captain, I should say from brief observation, falls into the latter category."

  Gwendolen stared at him, not quite certain whether to be affronted or amused. She had never met Lord Wilfrid before, as he spent very little time at Beauworth and at any rate would have had no time at all for the rather untidy schoolgirl she had been before the celebrated quarrel between the Duke and Mr. Quarters had broken off intercourse between the two families, and she wondered now if she thought him handsome. Probably not, she decided, since his eyes were too close together, his features undistinguished, and his figure somewhat thickset; but as an indisputable member of the exclusive Bow Window Set he appeared to know how to make an air of absolute self-confidence take the place of mere physical endowments.

  "You can't," she remarked to him, once she had decided this point, "be aware, I think, sir, that Captain Belville and I are betrothed. But, pray," she added kindly, "don't let it embarrass you."

  "On the contrary," said Lord Wilfrid, "I am quite aware of it, and I am not at all embarrassed. I find it so much easier, you see, to get on with people if I am perfectly frank with them, regardless of the proprieties. All of which leads me to remark that I cannot think why a perfectly charming girl like you should wish to be married to a naval man, which appears to me in all respects a fate worse than death, involving as it does widowhood—practically speaking—for a goodly portion of one's life, without the consolation of being able to cast one's eyes about for a suitable replacement."

  Gwendolen, looking at him with some interest, said it was remarkable, but she hadn't thought of that.

  "I daresay," she said thoughtfully, "it is because I never got that far. I mean, when you are engaged it seems somehow a quite permanent state of affairs, or at least one never actually gets beyond the wedding in one's mind. After that, it's like having to imagine what happens to the characters after you've read the last chapter of a novel. That is, if they aren't dead, as they mostly seem to be in tragedies."

  "But you and the Captain," pursued Lord Wilfrid, evidently intrigued out of his customary boredom by her matter-of-fact reply to his rather provocative speech, "will not
be dead, presumably. Miss Quarters."

  "Oh, no," said Gwendolen. "But, on the other hand, we won't be—"

  She caught herself up. She had been about to say, “We won't be married, either," but it had occurred to her just in time that it would be not only improper but also highly unwise to let Lord Wilfrid (who looked as if he would be good at remembering secrets and making use of them for his own advantage) learn, before she had informed the Captain himself of the fact, that she had no present intention of marrying Belville.

  Lord Wilfrid, as she had feared he would, at once took up her suspended words.

  "You won't be what?" he enquired.

  "Oh—nothing," Gwendolen said vaguely. "I forget what I was saying. This is a splendid room, isn't it? But rather overpowering. You don't come to Beauworth often, do you?"

  Lord Wilfrid's thin, sandy brows went up. "So many red herrings!" he said. "I suspect there must be something behind them all. You and the Captain won't be—what, Miss Quarters? Could the missing word possibly be—married?"

  "Well, of course we would be married if we got married,'* Gwendolen said, confusing the issue with a false air of frankness. "Only people sometimes don't—do they? Take Jane and Lord Lyndale, for example—"

  "I should like very much to take Jane," said Lord Wilfrid, extremely improperly. "As for Lyndale, he is exactly the sort of man one does so wish would never appear to blight the social scene. He has no tact, says exactly what he thinks to my ducal papa, so that life becomes a matter of nerve-shattering explosions when they are together, and exhibits a shocking lack of reverence for his Boulting blood. And so like him (if you will forgive my saying it, but of course you will; I have never met a young lady who seemed so totally tolerant) to fix his choice on a little provincial nobody, when he might have his choice of the current crop of London Beauties. Look at Miss Courtney, for example. She won't give up the hunt until the happy couple walks out the door of St George's, Hanover Square."

  "Well, I think it would be charitable of you to tell her, then, that she is wasting her time," Gwendolen said decidedly. "Lord Lyndale wants a conformable wife; he has told me so himself. And Jane is nothing if not conformable. I do wish she weren't!"

  Lord Wilfrid's sandy brows once more ascended. "Am I to understand," he enquired, "that you don't wish your sister to marry Lyndale? How very odd!" Gwendolen said nothing. "Don't you?" he persisted.

  "Well—not if they won't be happy together," Gwendolen said, rather ambiguously.

  Lord Wilfrid smiled. It was not his custom to laugh, or he looked as if he would have done so. "My dear good child," he said with an air of tolerant condescension, “you really must not talk like the heroine of a sentimental novel. It is quite out of fashion in London circles to consider that marriage must have any connexion with love."

  "Yes, but, you see, I have never been to London."

  "You should go. You must go. I shall sponsor your entrance myself into the most exclusive circles, and you will be the rage of the town. But not," he warned, "if you make sentimental speeches, and not if you are married to the naval hero at your elbow. Are you quite sure that you must take that fatal step?"

  "Well—one never knows, does one?" Gwendolen said judicially. "You see, I rather think he wants a conformable wife, too, and I am not at all conformable." She looked at Lord Wilfrid speculatively. "Would you really take me up if I went to London?" she demanded. "I daresay you are a person of extreme importance there? You look as if you are, and, after all, you are a duke's son."

  "Being a duke's son," said Lord Wilfrid with hauteur, "has nothing to do with it, my dear Miss Quarters. I am an extremely important person in London, but it is genius that has raised me to the eminence I occupy. The arrangement of my neckcloth, the cut of my coat, the exquisite manner in which I take snuff—these are all points upon which I admittedly excel, subjects which I have studied to a degree of mastery that is the despair of those who would emulate me—Am I boring you?" he broke off to demand with some acerbity, as he saw that Gwendolen's attention was obviously wandering from his words.

  "Well, yes, you are, rather," Gwendolen said, smiling at him agreeably. "How very acute of you to realise it! Most people don't, you know. They will go prosing on forever about something that is not of the least interest to one. But I daresay it is your wide experience in Society that has made you more perceptive about such things than most people are." As Lord Wilfrid, who had never, in the dozen years since he had come upon the town, been informed that he was anything less than a premier conversationalist, merely gazed at her, for once stunned into silence, she went on amicably, "At any rate, I really must talk to Belville now; he is looking quite sulky over our behaving so badly. But, remember, if ever I do get up to London, I shall expect your patronage."

  She thereupon turned her attention to Captain Belville, who was, indeed, looking very much put out by her neglect of her social duties. It was not an easy matter to induce him to enter into civil conversation with her, and when he did, she was even more bored than she had been by Lord Wilfrid's praise of his own "genius," for his one topic appeared to be a reverential inventory of the splendours of Beauworth. Prodded out of that, he fell into praise of the dinner that was being set before them, with a few sotto voce remarks (interspersed amid his encomiums on the sauté of fillets of fowl à la Lucullus and the fricandeau de veau), concerning the exalted rank of their fellow guests, upon which he appeared to have made minute enquiries of Lady Maria.

  All in all, Gwendolen was heartily glad when Lady Maria took her ladies away to the great Crimson Saloon, leaving the gentlemen to enjoy their wine in the dining room.

  But she soon found that social life among the female contingent at Beauworth was even more unrewarding than it had been in mixed company, for she was not only bored, she was also snubbed, particularly by the dashing Miss Courtney, who made amused comments behind her fan to her friends about "provincial Beauties," laughed a great deal over witticisms with references that were entirely lost on the ladies from Brightleaves, and perseveringly looked right through Gwendolen out of large, condescending, oxlike eyes (the last uncomplimentary adjective was Gwendolen's) whenever the latter ventured to speak.

  Lady Maria, quite obviously wretched over the bad manners of her London guests, was yet too timid to take the conversation in hand herself, and so matters stood until the arrival of the gentlemen broke off the uncomfortable situation.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE DUKE, WHO, though his own dancing days were over, much enjoyed watching a bevy of attractive young ladies engaged in waltzes and country dances, had arranged for an orchestra to play after dinner, and for one of Beauworth's large saloons to be cleared for dancing, the ballroom, as he remarked to Lady Otilia, being far too large for a mere six or eight couples.

  Gwendolen expected that she would be obliged to stand up with Belville for the first set, and was looking forward to this without a great deal of enthusiasm, for she had already had her fill of hearing him go into raptures over the glories of Beauworth, and remembered, besides, that as a dancer he was more dogged than expert, when she suddenly found herself being approached by Lyndale, who came strolling up to her with the same lack of ceremony he had displayed upon their previous meetings and asked her to partner him in the set of country dances that was forming.

  "But shouldn't you ask Jane?" Gwendolen enquired, looking at him rather dubiously, for in spite of the fact that she had no desire for him to press his suit upon her sister, neither did she wish to see Jane slighted.

  "Not at all," said Lyndale promptly. "That is Wilfrid's honour, as the Duke's representative. He has already claimed her hand."

  "Oh—very well, then," Gwendolen agreed. "I daresay it will be better than standing up with Belville, at any rate, and I am sure he has the intention of asking me. I am very sorry, Henry," she went on as the Captain, just on cue, appeared at her elbow and opened his mouth to speak, "but Lord Lyndale has already asked me to stand up with him for this set. Why don't you go and
dance with Cammie? Lieutenant Fairhall, as you can see, can scarcely hobble, much less dance, and these London people seem so taken up with each other that I am afraid none of them will think of asking her."

  The unhappy Belville, finding himself again Slighted for Another, as Gwendolen had no doubt he was expressing it in his own mind, compressed his lips and looked at Lyndale in a highly unfriendly fashion; but then, apparently recollecting that rank had its privileges, bowed to him somewhat stiffly, said he, Lyndale, was indeed happy in his choice, and walked away.

  "You aren't going to marry that fellow, are you?" Lyndale asked in tones of some amusement, as he led Gwendolen into the set. "I seem to detect a distinct lack of loverlike ardour in your behaviour towards him this evening. Being a gentleman, I shan't hint, of course, that he scarcely appears overcome, either, by your fatal beauty and his own passionate feelings."

  "But you have hinted it," Gwendolen pointed out. "In fact, you have said it very plainly." She looked critically across the room at the Captain's tall, high-shouldered figure bowing over Campaspe's hand. "And perhaps it is true," she acknowledged, "that he is not overcome by his feelings, but, on the other hand, you must admit that he is very obedient, which is an excessively desirable quality in a husband. I am sure he will make an excellent one."

  "But not" Lyndale said positively, "for you."

  "Oh? Why not?" she asked innocently. She might not have the least intention, she said to herself, of marrying Belville, but she was certainly not going to give the Marquis the satisfaction of hearing from her lips how correct he had been in his estimate of the Captain's character.

  Lyndale, however, merely said in a maddeningly matter-of-fact way that if she didn't already know that, she would find out soon enough after she had married him, and then turned the subject to Campaspe, enquiring what the devil the chit was about this evening.