Cotillion

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘No, no, Freddy, indeed I’m not inebriated!’

  ‘Lord, no, Kit! Nothing of that sort! Just a little bit on the go! Call for some coffee! Soon set you to rights!’

  ‘I don’t want it! I am quite sober, I promise you! Oh, Freddy, please listen to me!’

  Mr Standen, however undistinguished a scholar, was at home to a peg in all matters of social usage. He knew well that it was useless to expostulate with persons rather up in the world. Miss Charing had stretched out an impulsive hand, and was clutching the sleeve of his coat in a way that could not but render him acutely apprehensive, but he refrained from drawing her attention to this. He said soothingly: ‘Of course! With the greatest pleasure on earth!’

  To his relief, she released him. He smoothed his sleeve carefully, and was inclined to think that no irreparable damage had been done to it.

  ‘I cannot and I will not return to Arnside!’ announced Kitty. ‘At least, I suppose I must for a little while, but I won’t remain there, meekly waiting for—for some obliging person to marry me! By hook or by crook I mean to go to London! Ever since I was seventeen I have yearned to go. Uncle Matthew will not let me. He says it would be a great waste of money, and that it is not to be thought of. It is useless to argue with him upon that head: in fact, it is much worse than useless, because the last time I begged him to let me go with Fish, for one week, only to see the sights, he went to bed, and stayed there for a fortnight, and would do nothing but throw things at Spiddle and poor Fish, and groan in the most affecting way whenever I entered his room! He said he had nourished a serpent in his bosom, and that I did not care how soon he was dead and buried, besides being giddy, and selfish, and too young to go to London. Of course, the thing was that he could not let me go without Fish, and that would have meant that there would have been no one left at Arnside to order everything as he likes, for he won’t employ a housekeeper, you know.’

  ‘Very hard case,’ said Freddy politely. ‘But it ain’t got anything to do with—’

  ‘It has, Freddy, it has!’ insisted Kitty. ‘Only consider! If you were to offer for me, and I should accept your offer, Lord and Lady Legerwood would wish to see me, would they not?’

  ‘Have seen you,’ Freddy said, entering a caveat.

  ‘Well, yes, but not at all lately. They—they would wish to present me to their acquaintance! Freddy, don’t you think your mama would invite me to stay with her, in Mount Street? Just for one little month?’

  Mr Standen, perceiving a straw, clutched at it. ‘Tell you what, Kit! Ask my mother to invite you. Fond of me: very likely to do it to oblige me. No need to be betrothed!’

  For a moment her eyes brightened; then they clouded again, and she sighed, and shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t serve. Ever since the buttered lobsters Uncle Matthew is convinced that he has only a few months to live! He had a dreadful colic, you know, and nothing will persuade him that it was only the lobsters, which he would eat for supper! He says his heart is very weak, and that Dr Fenwick is a clodpole. That’s why there is all this bustle about his Will. He is determined to provide for me before he dies, so, you see, he could never be prevailed upon to let me go to London if I were still unbetrothed. He would be bound to suspect I should elope with a half-pay officer.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ objected Freddy, painfully following the gist of this tumultuous speech.

  ‘Well, I don’t either,’ admitted Kitty, ‘but it is what he always says, whenever I have asked him if I might not go to London. He has the greatest dislike of military men, and when the militia were quartered in the neighbourhood he would scarcely allow me even to walk to the village. But if I were betrothed to you, Freddy, he could not refuse to let me go on that score. He could not refuse on any score, because if Lady Legerwood would be so obliging as to invite me to Mount Street it would not cost him a penny above my coach-fare. And there can be not the least necessity for Fish to go too, so that he may be sure that things will go on at Arnside just as they should.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And, Freddy, only think! He said that if I became engaged to one of you he would give me a hundred pounds for my bride-clothes! A—hundred—pounds, Freddy!’

  ‘You know, Kit,’ said Mr Standen, momentarily diverted, ‘dashed if he ain’t the kind of fellow who behaves scaly to waiters! A Plum wouldn’t buy the half of your bride-clothes! Forget how much blunt m’father dropped when Meg was married, but—’

  ‘More than a hundred pounds?’ said Kitty, awed. ‘It seems a very great sum to me. But it was quite different in your sister’s case! I mean, she is the eldest of you, and I expect your father wished her to have the very best sort of bride-clothes. Truly, I think I could contrive very well with a hundred pounds! I don’t want grand dresses, or jewels, or costly furs. Just—just one or two pretty ones, so that I need not be a dowd! Freddy, I know I am not beautiful, but don’t you think I might be passable, if I could be more in the mode?’

  This appeal awoke an instant response in one whose exquisite taste was the envy of the ton. ‘I know what you mean,’ said Freddy sympathetically. ‘Need a little town-bronze! Give you a new touch!’

  ‘Yes, that is it!’ she said eagerly. ‘I knew you would understand!’

  ‘Well, I do, and, what’s more, I’d be very happy to do anything in my power to oblige you. Dashed awkward thing to have to say, but not marriage, dear girl! We shouldn’t suit! Assure we should not! Besides, I don’t want to be married.’

  She broke into a gurgle of laughter. ‘How can you be so absurd? Of course we should not suit! I did not mean we were to be really betrothed! Only hoaxing!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Freddy, relieved. He considered the matter for a moment, and perceived a flaw. ‘No, that won’t do. Bound to find ourselves in the basket. Can’t puff off an engagement, and then not get married.’

  ‘Yes, we can! I know people often cry off!’

  ‘Good God, Kitty, you can’t ask me to do a thing like that!’ exclaimed Freddy indignantly.

  ‘But why should you not? I assure you I shan’t take a pet, or care for it!’

  ‘Well, I won’t do it, that’s all!’ said Freddy, with unexpected firmness. ‘Shocking bad ton! Now, don’t start disputing about it, Kit, because it ain’t a bit of use! Good God, a pretty figure I should cut!’

  He was evidently a good deal moved. Kitty said placably: ‘Oh, very well! I’ll cry off. There can be no objection to that!’

  ‘Yes, but it would make me look like a flat!’ protested Freddy.

  ‘No, no! Everyone would say you were very well rid of me! Besides, I daresay it would not make such a stir after all.’

  ‘Well, it would. Dash it, notice in the Gazette—friends felicitating one—dress-party—wedding-gifts!’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Kitty. ‘I don’t think we should send a notice to the Gazette.’

  ‘I’m dashed sure we shouldn’t!’ said Freddy, with feeling.

  ‘You may easily hit upon an excuse for our keeping the engagement private. After all, it will only be for one month!’

  He blinked. ‘But there’s no sense in being engaged for a month!’

  ‘Freddy,’ she said earnestly, ‘anything may happen in a month!’

  ‘Yes, I know it may. The thing is I ain’t one of these care-for-nothings, and I don’t want anything to happen. No, and another thing! I don’t want to be roasted all over town, which I should be. Everyone knows I ain’t in the petticoat-line!’

  ‘No one will know we are engaged,’ she coaxed him. ‘I mean, no one except the family, because we shan’t announce it in a formal way.’

  ‘Now, listen, Kit!’ said Freddy reasonably. ‘If no one’s to know of it, there ain’t a bit of sense in it!’

  A faint flush stole into her cheeks. ‘Yes, there is, because we are obliged to hoax Uncle Matthew. And—and I think we won’t tell anyone�
��anyone at all!—that it is all a hum, because—because—perhaps your father would not like it, and—and Uncle Matthew might get to hear the truth!’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said the captious Mr Standen. ‘Never stirs outside the house! Who’s to tell him?’

  ‘Jack would, if he knew the truth!’ flashed Kitty.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t if we—’ He broke off, as a brilliant solution presented itself to him. ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘Wonder I didn’t think of it before. Wonder you didn’t. Ask Jack to do it for you! Daresay he would: done a lot of ramshackle things in his time. Likes being the talk of the town, too. Regular cool hand!’

  ‘Ask Jack?’ she repeated, in a very alarming voice. ‘I wouldn’t ask Jack—I wouldn’t ask Jack even to frank a letter for me!’

  ‘Wouldn’t be any use if you did,’ said Freddy, always practical. ‘He ain’t a Member of Parliament!’

  ‘I hate Jack!’ declared Kitty, her bosom heaving.

  Freddy was surprised. ‘Thought you liked him. Had a notion—’

  ‘Well, I do not! I think he is a great deal worse even than George! In fact, I forbid you, Freddy, to admit him into your confidence about our engagement!’

  Mr Standen had a vague feeling that he was treading upon dangerous ground. Why Miss Charing should have become so suddenly agitated he had no idea; but he suspected uneasily that she had some scheme in mind which she had not yet disclosed to him. Her proposal seemed to him absurd, not to say preposterous; he pointed out to her that there was no fear that he might confide in Mr Westruther. ‘Nothing to confide,’ he said. ‘There ain’t an engagement.’

  Miss Charing argued in vain. Acutely uncomfortable, more than a little alarmed, he clung obdurately to his refusal.

  ‘It is such a little thing to do for me!’ Kitty said.

  ‘No, it ain’t. You can’t call making such a cake of myself a little thing!’

  ‘You will not: there is not the least occasion for anyone to suppose that you have made a cake of yourself!’

  ‘Well, it’s what they would think. What’s more, they’ll say I did it to get my fingers on the old gentleman’s rolls of soft.’

  ‘No, because when nothing comes of the engagement they will perceive that they were mistaken!’

  ‘Won’t perceive anything of the sort. Only thing they will perceive is that you’ve tipped me the double! Dash it, Kit—’

  ‘Freddy, you would not condemn me to remain at Arnside, used like a—a drudge!’

  ‘No, of course I wouldn’t, but—’

  ‘Or to marry Hugh!’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘But, Freddy, you cannot expect me to accept Dolph’s offer!’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘And Claud has not offered at all, besides being an odious person!’

  ‘No, is he?’ said Freddy, interested. ‘Haven’t seen him, myself, since he first joined, but I daresay you’re right. To tell you the truth, I never liked any of the Rattrays above half. Now, take George, for instance! Know what he—’

  ‘Well, I can’t take George, because he is married already,’ said Kitty, ruthlessly cutting short this discursion. ‘Besides being quite as odious as Claud! Freddy, you know I would not hold you to it!’

  ‘Yes, that’s all very well, but—’

  ‘If this one opportunity—the only one I can ever be offered!—is denied me,’ declared Kitty dramatically, ‘all hope is at an end!’

  ‘Yes, but—I mean—No, dash it, Kitty—!’

  ‘And it will be you, whom I have always believed to be the kindest of my cousins—at least, you are not indeed my cousin, for I am quite alone in the world, but I have ever regarded you as my cousin—it will be you who have inexorably slammed the gates upon my aspirations!’

  ‘Done what?’ demanded Freddy.

  ‘Condemned me to a life of misery and—and of indigent old age!’

  ‘No, that’s coming it too strong!’ protested Freddy. ‘I never—’

  ‘I should not have asked you to help me,’ said Kitty, stricken by remorse. ‘Only it seemed to me that here, perhaps, was a chance offered me of escaping from my wretched existence! I see that it will not do! I beg your pardon, Freddy: pray do not think of it again!’

  With these noble words, Miss Charing rose from the table, and retired to stand before the fire with her back to the room. A stifled sob, a sniff, the flutter of Mr Standen’s maltreated handkerchief, bore witness to the courageous attempt she was making to suppress her tears. Mr Standen regarded her bowed shoulders with dismay. ‘Kit! No, Kit, for God’s sake—!’ he said.

  ‘Do not give it another thought!’ begged Miss Charing, brave but despairing. ‘I know I am alone in the world—I have always known it! It was stupid of me to suppose that there was one person to whom I might turn! There is no one!’

  Horrified, Mr Standen uttered: ‘No, no, I assure you—! Anything in my power—! But you must see, my dear girl—dash it, it’s impossible!’

  Ten minutes later Miss Charing, restored to smiles, was thanking him warmly for his exceeding kindness. ‘And perhaps we ought to return to Arnside,’ she suggested. ‘I must say, Freddy, I shall like very much to see Hugh’s face when he learns that we are betrothed!’

  Mr Standen agreed that the prospect of making a pigeon of his cousin went some way towards reconciling him to the pitfalls ahead of him; but Kitty’s words recalled to his mind the question which had been for some time troubling him. ‘How am I to take you back to Arnside without creating the devil of a dust?’ he demanded. ‘If no one’s to know it’s all a fudge, it won’t do to let it be known you’ve been here with me this evening. George and Hugh would be bound to guess it was a take-in.’

  ‘Oh, there will not be the least difficulty!’ she declared optimistically. ‘I will draw my hood well over my face, and if you will stop the chaise at the gates, and set me down, I can slip through the shrubbery to the side-door, and up the backstairs to my own bedchamber. I told Fish I should lock my door, because I would not see anyone, I was so cross; and you may depend upon it that no one has the smallest notion I am not at this moment laid down upon my bed. And if you pay off the postboy, he will not be able to gossip in the stables. There is no cause for any apprehension!’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to pay off the postboy!’ objected Freddy. ‘Hired the chaise for the whole journey, you see.’

  ‘Oh, well, the postboy must take it to the Green Dragon for the night!’ said Kitty, dealing summarily with this problem. ‘You may easily contrive that! And when you enter the house, you must say you have come to see me, because I do think, Freddy, we shall go on more prosperously if you do not meet Uncle Matthew until we can confront him together.’

  With this, Mr Standen found himself to be in entire agreement; and as everything seemed now to be provided for, and the hands of the clock on the mantelshelf stood at twenty minutes past nine o’clock, he thought they would be well-advised to set forward upon the short journey to Arnside immediately. The last of the punch was disposed of, the chaise bespoken, and Miss Charing once more wrapped in her thick cloak. The travellers climbed into the chaise, the steps were let up, and the door shut; and during the minutes which it took two sturdy horses to cover little more than a mile, Miss Charing coached her reluctant swain in the part he had to play. She was set down at the gates of Arnside, and disappeared, a good deal to the postilion’s surprise, into the night. Miss Charing had her own ways of entering the jealously-guarded grounds of Mr Penicuik’s house; Mr Standen was obliged to wait until the lodge-keeper came out to open gates which were invariably locked against the outer world at dusk. Since visitors to Arnside were rare, and evening-visitors unheard of, it was some time before this individual could be roused. By the time Mr Standen alighted at the front-door of the house he judged that Miss Charing should have reached the side-door, and might even be already in her
bedchamber.

  Stobhill, the butler, was quite as much surprised as the lodge-keeper to see Mr Standen, but (also like the lodge-keeper) seemed to take an indulgent view of his eccentric conduct. Indeed, as he presently observed to his colleague, Mr Spiddle, there was never any saying what such a hare-brained young gentleman might take it into his head to do next. He was perfectly well-aware of the errand which had brought Mr Penicuik’s great-nephews to Arnside; but when Mr Standen asked in the most nonchalant way if Miss Charing would receive him, his sense of propriety was offended, and he said with some severity: ‘It’s the Master you should be seeing, sir.’

  ‘What, is he still up and about?’ asked Freddy anxiously.

  ‘As to that, sir, I’m sure I could not say. We helped him up to his room half-an-hour ago, but I daresay he’s not yet abed. If you care to step into the Saloon, where you will find my Lord Dolphinton, my Lord Biddenden, and the Reverend, I will step up to enquire if the Master will see you.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Freddy. ‘Bacon-brained thing to do at this hour of the evening! Besides, I want to see Miss Charing.’

  ‘Miss went up to her room almost immediately after dinner, Mr Freddy!’ said Stobhill, still more disapproving.

  ‘Yes, I know she did, but—’ Freddy paused, encountering an astonished stare. He was momentarily shaken off his balance, but he made a quick recover. ‘What I mean is, if my cousins are here, of course she did! Anyone would! You go and tell her I’m here, and I beg the honour of a few words with her.’

  He then moved towards the Saloon, and Stobhill, saying unencouragingly: ‘I will have your message conveyed to Miss, sir,’ opened the door for him.

  On one side of the fire, the Rattray brothers were playing cribbage; on the other, Lord Dolphinton was doing nothing. Hugh, who had found the cribbage-board, and had inaugurated the game with the self-sacrificing intention of alleviating his brother’s boredom, wore an expression of determined cheerfulness; Lord Biddenden, to whom cribbage was only less insupportable than an evening passed in talking to Hugh, was frankly impatient, made his discards almost at random, and yawned over the totting up of points. His chair faced the door, and it was thus he who first perceived Freddy. ‘Oh, the devil!’ he exclaimed.