The Autumn Rose Page 21

  “No, I should not say that, my lord. I am so much in the custom of—”

  “Ah!” Safford broke in again shrewdly, “Custom. There is custom. There is habit.”

  Lord Seabury nodded regretfully.

  “And when this is said then all is said. There is me and there is habit,” summed up the older gentleman.

  “There is a certain—fondness,” Seabury murmured faintly, but with very little conviction.

  “I wonder if Susan still loves you,” the marquis said, chiefly to himself. “She did once, I believe.”

  Seabury felt such a conjecture to be beyond him. After a moment Safford roused himself and spoke more briskly. “What of this Lady Caroline, then?” he asked. “You find—you love her?”

  “I do not quite know how to characterize my feelings towards her,” he responded. “Whatever they are, they are strong. That is the difficulty, sir,” he went on, miserable at being obliged to make such an admission to Safford. “She affects me very much, too much.”

  “Affects you, eh?” Safford repeated, with what almost looked like a smile, though it was full of weariness. “And can you resist this—this effect?”

  “I have, sir.”

  “And can you for always?” pursued the other.

  “I can,” Seabury averred evenly. He felt certain of this as he said it, with Susan nearby and Caroline well in the distance.

  “I presume Lady Caroline will be returning to the country at the end of the season?” Safford said.

  “I believe she will.”

  “Well then…” he began meditatively. “Well then. Habit and friendship are not such a bad foundation for a marriage, my boy. They may seem a little dreary to you just now, but I can promise you they are a damned sight better in the long run than a strong and mysterious effect. If you truly believe you can put away this business of Lady Caroline, and be a good husband to my girl—well then, I think we ought to forget about this letter and go forward as we have always meant to do. I shall say nothing of the business to Susan. But you know, my old friend, you really must take this young lady in hand—your cousin I mean. She could do a great deal of harm, dashing off notes like this! A very great deal of harm.”

  Lord Seabury passed a restless night when, this interview closed and a seemingly interminable dinner dispensed with, he at last returned to Rucke House. He had no argument with Safford on any score: everything his lordship had said appeared to him to stand squarely on firm, dry ground. Certainly there could be no question that Amy must be taught some self-discipline; he had hopes her visit to the country would help, but it was possible she was simply not ready for society at all. Mrs. Henry was not adequate to the task of governing her charge; but at all events, that particular problem would prove soluble someday, he was sure. As to the ghastly triangle which had somehow materialized between himself, Lady Susan, and Lady Caroline—here solutions were scarcer. Lord Safford’s view (and doubtless the only sensible one) was that Caroline might and must be forgot, whereupon Seabury and Susan could settle down to a long and satisfactory life together. He was absolutely right, in the viscount’s opinion. Absolutely right; and yet the idea of forgetting Caroline, now that he had been advised to do so by the marquis, met up with a profound resistance in Seabury’s heart—a resistance which swelled, as the night wore on, into a virtual mutiny.

  An effort of will, he told himself, would release him for good and all from the tyranny of his irrational regard for Caroline—but how much easier, he could not help but reflect, if she should marry someone else and thus remove herself irretrievably from such consideration. Perhaps, he thought, she would accept Sir Sidney Pettingill. It was nearly a week since that young man had called to ask Seabury’s permission to offer; he must certainly come to the point soon. It was cowardly on Seabury’s part, this desire to wait until Caro herself settled the business for him; moreover, the idea of a marriage between her and Pettingill was not at all satisfactory. Still, his lordship’s confusion was so great that he contemplated such an arbitrary end to his dilemma with what almost amounted to enthusiasm. Pettingill was not a bad fellow. He was enormously wealthy, for one thing, and—and perfectly kind and honourable. Caroline would do no worse with him than Seabury would with Susan, the viscount told himself. In fact he told himself this several times, repeating it almost as if it were an incantation when he had said good-night to his man and had got into bed; she would do no worse, she would do no worse—and so thinking he fell asleep at last.

  May 19th.

  Dearest Angela,

  It seems I must be living in a madder whirl of society than I knew, for having written to you only yesterday of your brother’s latest offer of marriage to me, I have another to report. Before I do, however, I must take advantage of this opportunity to complain that somewhere in the middle of the more recent proposal I began to sneeze, and that since my suitor has gone away, I have manifested further symptoms to such a degree that I can no longer ignore the fact that I have got a cold—and a prime little goer it appears to be, too. I have taken rhubarb, and am quite awash in gargle, so I suppose the remainder of my sufferings can be alleviated only by vigorous whining—hence the exercise you have just read. I am tucked up in bed very nicely, in any case, and Windle (though she appears to be low in spirits, for some reason) looks after me with a solicitude that is at once exhausting to herself and to her patient.

  Now for that offer. It came this afternoon at one o’clock, in the form of Sir Sidney Pettingill. I know I have written to you of him before—he is the one with the wavy red hair and the wet lips. There is enough of him to make one and a half Sir Sidneys, and enough of his chin to make three reasonable ones…well, suffice it to say that he looks perfectly stunning in twenty thousand pounds a year; or, if it does not suffice for you to say so, let it be noted that it certainly satisfies two or three dozen match-making mammas here in this great centre of civilization.

  Now then! Any one of those aforementioned mammas would give their eye-teeth to hear said to their daughters what Sir Sidney has said to me today; but I only sneezed. “My dear Lady Caroline,” he began (brilliantly original!) with a bow, “I should like to address you on a matter of some significance.”

  Thought I to myself, “I should like that too, but I can hardly suppose that what signifies to you will be of much moment to me.” I held my tongue however, and simply nodded. I may remark, indeed, ere I go further, that I was an extremely good girl during this interview! I knew from his very bow—from the very seals he had chosen to wear, forsooth—that this was to be an offer of marriage. Those seals just wailed of marriage; I read them as easily as if they had been hieroglyphs, and I a practised scholar. Moreover, I felt this cold advancing—and you know how I abhor a cold. But in spite of these tribulations, in spite of everything nature and man could do to try me, I remained absolutely on my best behaviour, and was not only courteous but (with no more than a few exceptions) also graceful.

  “It has come to my attention, dear ma’am—er, no, that is not what I mean,” said my gallant, “I mean, it has been my honour to know you…er, to continue an acquaintanceship of growing personal intimacy…or rather, at least, in short, I have had the pleasure of having the pleasure of counting myself among those who count themselves among your warmest friends for some time. I suppose you are aware of it. I hope the position is returned. Dear ma’am!”

  Angela, if I am exaggerating in even the tiniest degree how tongue-tied my admirer was, I hope I may develop pneumonia.

  “I am afraid I do not entirely understand you,” said I civilly.

  “Deuce take this collar,” said he, tugging at that article—which must indeed have cut very painfully into his over-sized chin. “What I mean to say, dear Lady Caroline, is that despite the difference between our ranks, I have taken the liberty of adoring—well, that is to say, of liking you very strongly…and that the proportions of that sentiment in my bosom having swelled to quite a great deal of—er, largeness, I am flinging myself headlong at your f
eet in hopes you will intervene before I—er, break my nose. Dear, dear ma’am!” Upon which he gazed at me with what I believe is called, by both the very religious and the very romantical, fervency.

  “Dear sir,” said I gently, and absolutely—I assure you—without laughter of any kind, “I should be very sorry were you to break your nose; and perhaps, in order to prevent such a catastrophe, I ought to interrupt you now and inform you that it is not my intention to marry—for I think your discourse drifts towards that topic?—now or ever. If I have presumed too far, I beg you will excuse my immodesty, which stems only from a desire to avoid any painful scene. If I have—”

  But at this point I was myself interrupted by Sir Sidney, who burst out gaspingly, “You do not mean to tell me that Seabury said nothing of this to you? I was certain…I had understood…I thought you must be prepared, dear ma’am—”

  “Am I to understand that you addressed Lord Seabury upon this head?”

  “Certainly! Just last week. On Wednesday, in fact.”

  This intelligence gripped me queerly, dear Angela, though it was not until after Pettingill’s next remark that I fully realized why.

  “I told him all about myself,” asserted he. “About the Pettingills, how long we have been in Dorset, how much I am worth in pounds a year, and all that! Did he say nothing to you?”

  Angela! What fools we mortals be—or at least, what a fool I had been. I knew then, with dismal certainty, why Lord Seabury asked me last week if I should not be sorry to live apart from my brother—in Dorsetshire, for example. And I had thought—well you can guess what I had thought…and I have been well punished for that audacity. I could have wept for an hour on realizing how corkbrained I had been; but I had not an hour to weep in. Sir Sidney continued to bear down upon his point in a most insistent way, and it took me above ten minutes to persuade him that Seabury had not informed me at all of what I was to expect from the friendly baronet.

  “Oh dear!” said he, when at last he believed me. “In that case, I must repeat to you what I said to him, before I ask you to do me the extraordinary honour which it was my purpose in coming here to ask you to do me. There have been Pettingills in Dorset, dear ma’am, for more than an hundred—”

  I broke in upon him and repeated what I had endeavoured to say definitely before: that I could not be persuaded to marry. I found this easier, you will understand, than saying I could not be persuaded to marry him.

  “But my dear Lady Caroline,” said he, with a dismay almost touching to see, “this upsets all my plans!”

  I apologized for the necessity.

  “But you simply cannot…it never occurred to me that you might…” He kept silent for a brief moment, utterly confounded at being refused—which was undoubtedly the thing that had never occurred to him. Then, as if he had had an inspiration, he broke out suddenly, “You do not refuse me because I am too young for you, do you? I hope not, dear ma’am! Believe me, I am aware of your exact age, and it does not discourage me in the least! As I told Lord Seabury, I need only one heir after all, and so long as you—”

  “I beg you will cease,” said I, feeling that the interview (never promising) had taken a decided turn for the impossible. “I am certain any number of young ladies in London would be delighted to figure in your plans, and would moreover perform their duties in that capacity more than adequately. For myself, as I believe I have said already, I have no intention of marrying regardless of who may honour me with such a petition, and even regardless of that unknown person’s age. I am sorry to disappoint you when you have been so kind as to consider me as—as a candidate, dear sir, but I must respectfully decline.”

  Do not scold me, Angel, for using the term candidate. I am convinced that is how he himself has thought of the hopeful young ladies round him all season. He was evidently crushed, however, and had I not by then been sneezing with a regularity that was quite astonishing (I have edited out the sneezes, as you see, having considered you forewarned) I might have sat with him a few minutes longer while he recovered himself. I really felt decidedly invalidish, though, so I excused myself from his company after begging him to feel free to stay in the drawing-room as long as he cared to, until he was more composed.

  Dear me, Windle has just bustled in and out of here wearing a drearier expression than any I have ever seen on her. It is a bit too much, I think, to ask me to deal with a woeful Windle when I myself am so moped. I scarcely dare ask her what is the matter; on the other hand, she is casting out martyr-like signals that simply beg for an inquiry. Oh dear, oh dear. Who would have thought a pair of blue eyes could cause me so much confusion? I wish I could read their expression as easily as I can Windle’s. I see this letter is plummeting into inexcusable self-indulgence. Farewell, then, before it worsens. Remember me (mildly) to our dear Edgar.

  Ever yours,

  C.W.

  The mystery of Miss Windle’s martyr-like expression would have been no mystery at all to Caroline could she have known what was occurring two doors away from the drawing-room where she herself received Sir Sidney, and at the very same hour. Miss Windle, to put it succinctly, had finally cornered Lord Romby in the Gilt Saloon and had closed in for the kill. The old man, though he was not fond of the Gilt Saloon, had come there when Sir Sidney Pettingill’s arrival in the long drawing-room made him see the wisdom of quitting that particular place. When Miss Windle found him he was reading an illustrated journal and muttering over it profusely. “Scoundrels! Rogues and sapskulls!” were his exact words when she entered, after a light knock. “What is this?” he went on, looking up. “Oh. No need to interrupt myself for that, is there,” he concluded, though (fortunately for her) Miss Windle could not make out his garbled words.

  “I hope I do not intrude upon you, sir?” said she timidly.

  “If you hoped with real devotion you would avoid the risk altogether by not coming in,” he remarked.

  “I do intrude, then?”

  “See how far behind you you have left the door, and judge for yourself,” he suggested.

  “Oh dear, my lord! You speak in such witty riddles sometimes that it is all I can do to keep up with you!”

  “I should have said you did a fine job of keeping up with me today; it is keeping away from me you need to work at.”

  Miss Windle laughed a delicate, desperate laugh from behind her green silk fan and protested, “One can never take you at your word, dear sir. I know, if no one else does, how true that is. May I sit down?” she added, advancing to a chair just opposite to his.

  “Certainly,” he answered. “And may I stand up?”

  She gave another helpless giggle. “I hope you will not.”

  “You are simply bursting with these little hopes today, madam. Be careful, or the sheer weight of probability will ensure your disappointment.”

  “Ah!” said she wisely, smoothing the skirt of the green silk morning gown it had taken her a month to make. She had bespoke the fan to match it, and had moreover purchased (at no little sacrifice, for her means were slender) a pair of green silk slippers to add to the effect. The cap on her greying locks was laced with long green ribands, and she carried a reticule of the same hue. All in all she looked a little like a sea-weed. “I place the greatest of my hopes in such kind and capable hands, that I fear not of so sorry an end to it. I wonder if you know what I mean,” she brought out diffidently, almost blushing.

  “Wonder no more, in that case: I have not the slightest notion.”

  “Oh! I must explain myself better, then.”

  “Not at all; I beg you will feel under no such obligation, madam. I am not curious.”

  “Oh, la! You men are such jokesters!”

  His lordship looked slowly over one stooped shoulder, then over the other. “We men?” he echoed when he had done so. “Is there someone invisible in the room, or do you address me in the plural?”

  “Oh, naughty creature!” cried she, shaking her fan at him playfully. “Are you never serious?”

>   “Never, madam,” he assured her. “I live at this same giddy pace year in and year out, and am likely to die of hilarity at any moment.”

  Perfectly delighted with this account, she gave a peal of laughter. “But my dear sir, I must beg—I must implore you will be serious, nonetheless, if only for an hour.”

  “By God, I have been gay so many years, I can hardly tear the smile from my lips; but for you, madam, I shall attempt it.” He glared at her unpleasantly while awaiting her response.

  “My lord, I hope you will not think me bold if I say that, having watched you carefully above a month now, I believe I can discern behind your self-sufficient exterior a lonely and mournful gentleman.”

  “There are those little hopes again, madam. You ought to watch them more carefully, I protest.”

  “I am not afraid to hope,” said she meaningfully, “where the benefit, if granted, means so much happiness.”

  “Well if it means so much happiness to you as all that, I agree not to think you bold. There! Are we done? Is that all? Are you happy?”

  “Dear sir, really, I must plead for a trifle more seriousness; indeed I must!”

  “Oh, very well then,” he grumbled. “Go ahead and plead.”

  “My lord, really!”

  “Spit it out, spit it out!” said he, reaching for his stick with an intuition that he might soon need to pound it against the floor.

  “It is a little difficult—” she faltered.

  “Then give it up, my good woman!”

  “No. I must have my say,” she replied, feeling harassed to a degree but also resolute. “Lord Romby, it is my impression that you are in need of a—a friend. A helpmeet who will stand by your side and share your little sorrows and your little joys. A person, in short, who will sympathize with you in your goals, encourage you in your endeavours, strengthen you in your weaknesses, congratulate you in your triumphs. You have been alone too—”

  “I have a valet,” he interrupted.