Charity Girl

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Oh, Des, it would be the very thing for Cherry!” Henrietta cried.

  “What!” ejaculated Mr Steane, powerfully affected. “The very thing for my beloved child to become a paid dependant? Over my dead body!” He buried his face in his handkerchief, but emerged from it for a moment to direct a look of wounded reproach at Desford, and to say in a broken voice: “That I should have lived to hear my heart’s last treasure so insulted!” He disappeared again into the handkerchief, but re-emerged to say bitterly: “Shabby, my Lord Desford, that’s what I call it!”

  Desford’s lips quivered, and his eyes met Henrietta’s, which were brimful of the same appreciative amusement that had put to flight his growing exasperation. The look held, and in each pair of eyes was a warmth behind the laughter.

  Mr Steane’s voice intruded upon this interlude. “And where,” he demanded, “is my little Charity? Answer that, one of you, before you make plans to degrade her!”

  “Well, I am afraid we can’t answer it just at this moment!” said Henrietta guiltily. “Desford, you will think me dreadfully careless, but while I was visiting an old friend this morning, Cherry went out for a walk, and—and hasn’t yet come back!”

  “Mislaid her, have you? I learned from—Grimshaw—that she’s missing, but I don’t doubt she has done nothing more dangerous than lose her way, and will soon be back.”

  “If she has not been spirited away,” said Mr Steane darkly. “My mind is full of foreboding. I wonder if I shall ever see her again?”

  “Yes, and immediately!” said Henrietta, hurrying across the room to the door. “That’s her voice! Heavens, what a relief!”

  She opened the door as she spoke. “Oh, Cherry, you naughty child! Where in the world—” She broke off abruptly, for a surprising sight met her eyes. Cherry was being carried towards the staircase by Mr Cary Nethercott, her bonnet hanging by its ribbon over one arm, a mutilated boot clutched in one hand, and the other gripping the collar of Mr Nethercott’s rough shooting-jacket.

  “Dear, dear Miss Silverdale, don’t be vexed with me!” she begged. “I know it was stupid of me to run out, but indeed I didn’t mean to make you anxious! Only I lost my way, and couldn’t find it, and at last I was so dreadfully tired that I made up my mind to ask the first person I met to show me how to get back to Inglehurst. But it was ages before I saw a single soul, and then it was a horrid man in a gig, who—who looked at me in such a way that—that I said it was of no consequence, and walked on as fast as I could. And then he called after me, and started to get down from the gig, and I ran for my life, into the woods, and, oh, Miss Silverdale, I tore my dress on the brambles, besides catching my foot in a horrid, trailing root, or branch, or something, and falling into a bed of nettles! And when I tried to get up I couldn’t, because it hurt me so much that I thought I was going to faint.”

  “Well, what a chapter of accidents!” said Henrietta. She saw that one of Cherry’s ankles was heavily bandaged, and exclaimed: “Oh, dear, dear, I collect you sprained your ankle! Poor Cherry!” She smiled at Cary Nethercott. “Was she in your woods? Was that how you found her? How kind of you to have brought her home! I am very much obliged to you!”

  “Yes, that was how it was,” he answered. “I took my gun out, hoping to get a wood-pigeon or two, but instead I got a far prettier bird, as you see, Miss Hetta! Unfortunately I had no knife on me, so I thought it best to carry Cherry to my own house immediately, so that I could cut the boot off, and tell my housekeeper to apply cold poultices, to take down the swelling. I sent my man off to fetch Foston, fearing, you know, that there might be a broken bone, but he assured me that it was only a very bad sprain. You will say that I should have brought her back to you as soon as Foston had bound up her foot and ankle, but she was so much exhausted by the pain of having it inspected by Foston that I thought it best that she should rest until the pain had gone off.”

  “You can’t think how much it hurt, dear Miss Silverdale! But Mr Nethercott held my hand tightly all the time, and so I was able to bear it.”

  “What a perfectly horrid day you’ve had!” said Henrietta. “I’m so sorry, my dear: none of it would have happened if I hadn’t been absent!”

  “Oh, no, no, no!” Cherry said, her eyes and cheeks glowing, and a seraphic smile trembling on her mouth. “It has been the happiest day of my whole life! Oh, Miss Silverdale, Mr Nethercott has asked me to marry him! Please, please say I may!”

  “Good God!—I mean, you have no need to ask my permission, you goose! I have nothing to do but to wish you both very happy, which you may be sure I do, with all my heart! But there is someone here who has come especially to see you, and whom I am persuaded you will be very glad to meet again. Bring her into the library, Mr Nethercott, and put her on the sofa, so that she can keep her foot up.”

  “Who,” demanded Mr Steane of the Viscount, “is this fellow who presumes to offer for my daughter without so much as a by your leave?”

  “Cary Nethercott. An excellent fellow!” replied the Viscount enthusiastically.

  He moved over to the sofa, and arranged the cushions on it, just as Cary Nethercott bore Cherry tenderly into the room. She exclaimed: “Lord Desford! Indeed I’m glad to meet him again, Miss Silverdale, for I owe everything to him! How do you do, sir? I have wanted so much to thank you for having brought me here, and I never did, you know!”

  He smiled, but said: “Miss Silverdale didn’t mean that you would be glad to meet me again, Cherry. Look, do you recognize that gentleman?”

  She turned her head, and for the first time caught sight of Mr Steane. She stared at him blankly for an instant, and then gave a tiny gasp, and said: “Papa?”

  “My child!” uttered Mr Steane. “At last I may clasp you to my bosom again!” This, however, he was unable to do, since she had been set down on the sofa, and the corset he wore made it impossible for him to stoop so low. He compromised by putting an arm round her shoulders, and kissing her brow. “My little Charity!” he said fondly.

  “I thought you were dead, Papa!” she said wonderingly. “I’m so happy to know you aren’t! But why did you never write to me, or to poor Miss Fletching?”

  “Do not speak to me of that woman!” he commanded, side-stepping this home-question. “Never would I have left you in her charge had I known how shamefully she would betray my trust, my poor child!”

  “Oh, no, Papa!” she cried distressfully. “How can you say so, when she was so kind to me, and kept me at the school for nothing?”

  “She delivered you up to Amelia Bugle, and that I can never forgive!” declared Mr Steane.

  “But, Papa, you make it sound as if I wasn’t willing to go with my aunt, but I promise you I was! I wanted to have a home so much. You don’t know how much!” She found that Mr Nethercott, standing behind the head of the sofa, had dropped a hand on her shoulder, and she nursed it gratefully to her cheek, tears on the ends of her eyelashes. She winked them away, and continued to address her father, with a good deal of urgency: “So, pray, Papa, don’t go away again without paying her what she is owed!”

  “Had I found you as I left you, happy in her care, I would have paid and overpaid her, but I did not so find you! I found you, after an unceasing search which was attended by such pangs of anxiety as only a father can know, being buffeted about the world, and not one penny will I pay her!” said Mr Steane resolutely.

  “In other words,” said Desford, “you mean to tip her the double!”

  “Papa, you cannot behave so shabbily! You must not!” Cherry cried, in considerable agitation.

  “I think, my love,” said Mr Nethercott, “that you had best leave me to deal with this matter.”

  “But it isn’t right that you should deal with it!” she said indignantly. “It isn’t your debt! It’s Papa’s!”

  “I do not acknowledge it,” stated Mr Steane majestically. “She may consider herself fortunate that I have decided not to bring an action against her for gross neglect of her duty. That is my last word!
”

  “In that case,” said Mr Nethercott matter-of-factly, “I will carry Cherry upstairs. You must realize, I am persuaded, sir, that she has had a very exhausting day, and has been quite knocked-up by it. Miss Hetta, will you conduct me to her bedchamber, if you please?”

  “Indeed, I will!” Henrietta replied. “No, no, don’t argue, Cherry! Mr Nethercott is perfectly right, and I am going to put you to bed directly. You shall have your dinner sent up to you,—and your Papa may visit you tomorrow!”

  “How kind you are! How very kind you are, Miss Silverdale!” Cherry sighed. “I own I am feeling rather fagged, so—so if you won’t think it very uncivil of me, Papa, I believe I will go to bed! Oh, Lord Desford, in case I don’t see you again, goodbye, and thank you a thousand, thousand times for all you’ve done for me!”

  He took the hand she stretched out to him, and kissed it, saying in a rallying voice: “But you will be constantly seeing me, you little pea-goose! We are to be neighbours!”

  “As to that,” said Mr Steane haughtily, “I have by no means decided to give my consent to this marriage. I shall require Mr Nethercott to satisfy me as to his ability to support my daughter in a manner befitting her breeding.”

  Mr Nethercott, already in the doorway with his fair burden, paused to say with unruffled composure that he would do himself the honour of laying before his prospective father-in-law all the relevant facts concerning his birth, fortune, and situation in life as soon as he had carried Cherry up to her room. He than continued on his purposeful way, preceded by Henrietta, and telling his betrothed, very kindly, to hush, when she attempted to argue that her marriage had nothing whatsoever to do with her father.

  The Viscount shut the door, and strolled back to his chair, regarding Mr Steane with a pronounced twinkle in his eyes. “You are to be congratulated, Mr Steane,” he said. “Your daughter is making a very creditable marriage, and you need never suffer pangs of anxiety about her again.”

  “There is that, of course,” acknowledged Mr Steane heavily. “But when I think of the plans I have been making for years—I should have known better! All my life, Desford, I have been quite the dregs of my family as to luck. It disheartens a man! There’s no denying that!” He turned his jaundiced gaze upon the Viscount, and added: “Not that you know anything about it! You seem to me to have the devil’s own luck! Well, consider what has happened this day! You wouldn’t have braced it though if this fellow, Nethercott, hadn’t dropped out of the sky like a honey-fall for you!”

  “Oh, yes, I should!” said the Viscount. “Not to use words with the bark on them, your intention was to bludgeon me into marrying Cherry, but you chose the wrong man, Steane: there was never the least hope of buttoning that scheme up!”

  “I abandoned all thought of your marrying Cherry when I learned of your betrothal,” Mr Steane replied. “Never shall it be said of me that I wrecked the happiness of an innocent female—however deluded she may be! But I fancy, my lord, you’d have come down handsomely to keep this scandalous business quiet! Or, at any hand, that stiff-necked father of yours would!”

  “From what I know of my stiff-necked father, Mr Steane, I think he would have been far more likely to have driven you out of the country.”

  “Well, it’s a waste of time to discuss the matter!” said Mr Steane irritably.

  “Of course it is! Consider instead how much cause you have to be thankful that your only daughter has had the good fortune to become attached to a man who will certainly make her an admirable husband!”

  “My only daughter! She’s another disappointment! There’s no end to them. I had hopes of her when she was a child: seemed to be a bright, coming little thing. She could have been very useful to me.”

  “In what way?” asked Desford curiously.

  “Oh, many ways!” said Mr Steane. “I hoped she might act as hostess in the establishment I have set up in Paris, but I saw at a glance that she’s too like her mother. Pretty enough, but not up to snuff. Wouldn’t know how to go on at all. A pity! Sheer waste of my time and blunt to have come to England.”

  Since he seemed to be slipping rapidly into a maudlin frame of mind, the Viscount was relieved to see Mr Nethercott come back into the room. He was accompanied by Henrietta, and it was immediately plain to the Viscount that it was she who had prompted him to suggest to Mr Steane that it would be more convenient to discuss such matters as Settlements at Marley House.

  “I think that an excellent notion!” she said warmly. “You will wish to inspect Cherry’s future home, I expect, Mr Steane. And if you care to visit her tomorrow, Mr Nethercott has been kind enough to say that he will be happy to put you up for the night!”

  “I am obliged to you, sir,” said Mr Steane, reverting to his grand manner. “I shall be happy to avail myself of your hospitality—but without prejudice, understand!” He then took a punctilious leave of Henrietta, bowed stiffly to the Viscount, and allowed himself to be ushered out of the room by the impassive Mr Nethercott.

  “You unprincipled woman!” said the Viscount, when the door was fairly shut behind the departing visitors. “You should be ashamed of yourself! Saddling the unfortunate man with that old rumstick!”

  “Oh, did you guess it was my doing?” she said, breaking into pent-up laughter.

  “Guess!” he said scornfully. “I knew it the instant you came in looking as demure as a nun’s hen!”

  “Oh, no, did I? But I had to get rid of him, Des, or Mama would have taken to her bed! What with thinking Charlie had eloped with Cherry, and then hearing that Wilfred Steane was on his way to visit us, she’s been having spasms, and vapours, and every sort of ache and ill, and is now in the worst of ill-humours! I shall have to go to her, or she will fall utterly into the hips. But before I do go, tell me what you feel about this astonishing betrothal! Will it do, or is he too old for her? I’ve noticed that she seems to prefer old men, but—”

  “Never mind what I think! What do you think, Hetta?”

  “How can I say? I think she is so amiable, and sweet-tempered, that she will be happy, as long as he is kind to her. As for him, he seems to be extremely fond of her, so perhaps he won’t find her a trifle boring.”

  “Fond of her! He must be nutty on her to be willing to marry her now that he’s seen her father!”

  She laughed. “You know, Des, I didn’t think he could be as bad as people say, but he’s worse! If he weren’t such a funny one I couldn’t have borne to sit there listening to him! But when I was discussing her prospects with Mr Nethercott one day, he said that her parentage ought not to weigh against her in the mind of a man who fell in love with her. So I daresay he won’t think her father worth a moment’s consideration!”

  “Hetta, tell me the truth! Has it hurt you?” he asked bluntly.

  “Good God, no! Though it has sadly lowered my crest, I own! I was vain enough to think that he came here to visit me, not Cherry!”

  “When I first met him, dangling after you, none of us had ever heard of Cherry,” he reminded her.

  “I might have known you’d roast me for having been cut out by Cherry! What an odious creature you are, Des!” she said affably. “By the by, do you and Simon mean to spend the night at Wolversham? I wish I might invite you both to dine with us; but I daren’t! Mama has taken you in the most violent dislike, for having foisted Cherry on to us, and she never wants to see the face of a Carrington again! So for the present I must say goodbye to you!”

  “Just a moment before you do that!” he said. “You and I, my pippin, have still something to discuss!”

  He spoke lightly, but the smile had vanished from his eyes, which were fixed on her face with a look in them that made her feel, for the first time in all their dealings, as shy as a schoolgirl. She said hurriedly: “Oh, you refer, I collect, to that nonsensical story Simon made up about us! I must say I was excessively vexed with him, but I don’t think any harm will come of it! Simon says that if it does leak out that we are secretly engaged we have only to den
y it, or for one or other of us to cry off.” He returned no answer, and when she ventured to steal a look at him she found that he was still watching her intently. In an attempt to relieve what, for some inscrutable reason, she felt to be an embarrassing situation, she said, with a very creditable assumption of her usual liveliness: “If it comes to that, I collect the task of crying off will be mine! I can never understand why it is thought very improper for a gentleman to cry off an engagement, but no such thing if the lady does it!”

  “No,” he agreed, but not as if he had been attending to her. “I give you fair warning, Hetta, that if it does come to that the task will be yours, for I have not the most remote intention—or desire—to cry off.” He paused for an instant, trying to read her face, but when she lifted her eyes, as though compelled, to his, his mouth twisted, and he said in a voice she had never heard before: “But you shan’t! I won’t let you! Oh, Hetta, my dear pippin, I’ve been such a fool! I’ve loved you all my life, and never knew how much until I thought I was going to lose you! Don’t say it’s too late!”

  A tiny smile wavered on her lips. She said simply: “No, Des. N-not if you really mean it!”

  “I never meant anything more in my life!” he said, and went to her, holding out his arms. She walked straight into them, and they closed tightly round her. “My best of friends!” he said huskily, and kissed her.