Since it was obvious that Felix was fast working himself into a state of undesirable excitement, and even more obvious that an attempt to wring an apology from him would be violently rebuffed, Frederica greeted her sister’s entrance with heartfelt relief.
She did not for a moment believe that Harry was going to escort Charis on a shopping expedition, but she accepted the story, merely saying: “Are you taking Lufra? I shouldn’t, if I were you!”
“Oh, no!” Charis said, releasing her hold on Lufra’s collar. “Only he knows we are going out, and he’s bound to try to get out the instant the door is opened, so I brought him to you, Jessamy.”
He nodded, and snapped his fingers at Lufra, who was sniffing at Buxted’s well-polished boots; and Charis went away, thankful to have escaped questioning.
Buxted’s presence must have precluded suspicious enquiries, but Frederica would not, in any event, have made any. She was not a gaoler, nor did she wish Charis to feel that she was being kept under surveillance. There was little doubt that she had an assignation with Endymion, and deplorable though this was it would be needlessly unkind to prevent what would probably be their last meeting for some months. And at least she was taking Harry with her.
She dismissed the matter from her thoughts, and set herself to divert Lord Buxted, who was annoying Jessamy by commenting humorously on the astonishment visitors must feel to find such a monster as Lufra in Frederica’s drawing-room.
But none of the three visitors who were presently ushered into the room evinced any astonishment. The first was Darcy Moreton, whom Buxted eyed with hostility; and within a few minutes Lady Elizabeth Kent-mere and Lord Alverstoke were announced.
The effect of this was electric, and was observed by Mr Moreton rather ruefully. There was no misreading the smile in Frederica’s eyes, and no doubt whatsoever that Alverstoke was on the best of terms with his wards. Felix shouted joyfully: “Cousin Alverstoke!” and struggled to his feet; and Jessamy, pausing only to bow to Lady Elizabeth, began instantly to tell him of something that had happened at Monk’s Farm after his departure. As Felix also had something to tell him, and Lufra, catching the spirit of these demonstrations, uttered some yelping barks, pandemonium reigned for several minutes. Lady Elizabeth was laughing, and said, as she shook hands with Frederica: “I knew that they liked him, but not that his arrival would cause a riot!”
“No, and I apologize for them!” said Frederica, smiling. “You would suppose them to have been reared in a back-slum!”
“Hardly that!” said Buxted. “But surely it cannot be good for Felix to be so much excited? Would it not be as well if Jessamy took him into another room?”
“Oh, no!” replied Frederica. “Alverstoke knows exactly how to handle him.”
This was soon seen to be true. His lordship quelled the riot without the smallest difficulty, ordering Felix back to the sofa, requesting Jessamy to call off the Baluchistan hound, and adding that when he felt a desire to be deafened by a couple of gabblemongers he would inform them of it. These trenchant words were received with the utmost good-humour: a circumstance which Buxted observed with some surprise, and considerable disfavour. Nor was he better pleased when Alverstoke went over to sit beside Frederica, and engaged her in what appeared to be an intimate discussion. Since Eliza, who was talking to Mr Moreton, good-naturedly drew her nephew into the conversation, he was obliged to give his attention to her, instead of trying jealously to hear what Alverstoke was saying, in a lowered voice, to Frederica.
It could scarcely have been more innocuous. “A marked improvement!” Alverstoke said.
“I think so. He was a little tired after the journey, and this hot weather seems to bring back some aches and pains.”
“The sooner you can get him to Alver the better. Have you written to Knighton?”
“This morning. I mentioned your name, as you bade me, and enclosed the letter Dr Elcot gave me for him.”
He nodded. “I shall hope to see you off before the end of the week. By-the-by, in the matter of a tutor I fear I have exceeded your instructions.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve discovered one?” she exclaimed.
“No, Charles did. He offered me his brother, Septimus, and I engaged him. He is staying in Berkeley Square now: a pleasing young man, and one whom the boys will like. I only trust you may!”
“Oh, there can be no doubt! A brother of Mr Trevor’s must be acceptable to me! Pray tell Mr Trevor how grateful I am!”
“Certainly, but the arrangement will be as much to Septimus’s advantage as yours. He was already seeking a post as coach during the Long Vacation, and this one — if you will be content to remain at Alver for the summer — will enable him to continue living at home. The Rectory is only a few miles from Alver. Tell me when it will be convenient for him to call to see you, and I’ll send him round!”
“At any time: I don’t go out at present, or only for a few minutes.” She paused, as a thought occurred to her.
“I wonder if I should ask Harry to conduct the interview? I think he might wish to do so.”
“Are you? I am tolerably certain that he wouldn’t! He would be extremely embarrassed — if he could be persuaded to undertake the task of enquiring into Septimus’s scholarship, which I strongly doubt! Septimus is a Fourth Year man, my dear, at present working for a Fellowship. I don’t see Harry, by the way, or Charis: is he still virtuously doing his duty by her?”
She smiled, but answered, with a touch of constraint: “Why, yes! I believe he has taken her out to do some shopping.”
She did not believe it, nor would she have been surprised to have learnt that Charis was at the moment seated on a bench in a secluded part of Kensington Gardens, between her brother and her lover, agitatedly telling Endymion of her conviction that they were to be for ever parted.
“I wish you will stop talking such flummery!” said Harry. “I’ve told you a score of times that nobody can part you for ever!”
“Couldn’t do it for ever,” agreed Endymion.
“Once I am imprisoned at Alver — ”
“Ay, that’s the worst of it!” said Endymion, his brow darkening. “Devilish shabby trick, I call it! Shouldn’t wonder if it was a plot: devilish clever fellow, Alverstoke, up to all the rigs! Y’know, I haven’t been easy in my mind since he told me not to be quite so particular in my attentions. Amiable enough but giving me the office — that’s what I thought! I was right, too. Well, what I mean is, might have seen you at Ramsgate, but not at Alver. Everyone knows me down there, and you may lay your life some snitcher would tell Alverstoke, if I was to show my nose within ten miles of the place!”
“And when we leave Alver, you will have been sent on a dreadful mission, and Frederica will drag me back to Graynard!”
“Not if he’s been sent off on a mission,” interposed her more practical brother. “Now I come to think of it, she couldn’t do it in any event: she hired the place to Porth for a twelve-month.”
“Harrogate, then — so that Felix may drink the waters!” said Charis bitterly.
“She might do that,” Harry admitted.
“I shan’t go on a mission,” suddenly announced Endymion. “I shall sell out. Nothing my cousin can do to stop me. What’s more, once I’ve done it, there’s nothing anyone cando to stop me marrying Charis!”
“But I am under age,” said Charis sadly.
“Ay, that’s the devil of it! And when I think of having to wait for two whole years, and very likely not being given the chance even to see you — well, it’s enough to drive one to the Border! Not that I would!” he added hastily, and with an apprehensive glance at Harry. “Too ramshackle by half!”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t do such a shocking thing! Perhaps, if Frederica realizes that we are unalterably determined — But she won’t give her consent! I know she won’t!”
“Just a moment!” interrupted Harry, sitting up with a jerk. “Lord, why didn’t I think of that before? By Jupiter, I have it!”
Two anx
ious faces were turned towards him; Charis said breathlessly: “You have what, dearest?”
“You don’t need her consent: nothing to do with her!” Harry said, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “She’s not your guardian: I am!”
XXVII
It was surprising, Frederica thought, how much benefit was to be derived from two nights of unbroken sleep. She felt very much better, far less depressed and irritable. Her affairs having been taken back into the Marquis’s capable hands, she had very little to worry about: none of the complicated arrangements attached to the removal of a family from a house in London to another a hundred miles distant, and no housekeeping cares to contend with at the end of the journey. To one who, from early girlhood, had never had a respite from these, this was bliss indeed. It ought to have made her happy, and she was obliged to take herself to task when she found that she was looking forward to several months spent in sylvan solitude with a slight sinking of the heart. Not that it would be really solitude, of course: there would be Charis, and the boys, and the unknown Mrs Osmington, the widowed cousin whom Alverstoke had decided, in his usual highhanded way, to install at Alver. There would be Septimus as well, and no doubt his mama would drive over to visit them. It was bound to seem a trifle flat at first, and she would certainly miss her friends in London; but Alverstoke meant to come down for a few days, which would make an agreeable break. He had given her a carte blanche to invite any of her friends she chose to stay with her, begging her to consider the house her own. She had no intention of taking him at his word, but as she was unable to think of any friend whom she particularly wanted to invite this resolve cost her no regret.
Alverstoke was going to escort them to Alver, too: that was another of his sudden and highhanded decisions! She had protested, as in honour bound, but he had merely said that he had business there, so she had said no more, though she guessed that his business was to introduce her to his cousin, and to make sure that his servants had provided every comfort for the party. How anyone could say that he was selfish and heartless was beyond comprehension! No one was ever less so; it made one quite hot with anger that people.should dare to misjudge him so wickedly.
For the rest everything was going on fairly well. Mr Peplow had invited Harry to accompany him on a visit to Brighton; Buddle and Mrs Hurley were thankful to be granted a long holiday after the exigencies of a London house; and Charis, though in unequal spirits, seemed to be growing more resigned to her fate. To be sure, she was subject to sudden attacks of woe, which made her run out or the room with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, but Frederica, recalling the agonies attending the dismissal of her first very undesirable suitor, hoped that the present agonies would be of similarly short duration.
Septimus Trevor, a well-set-up young man, with easy manners, and a general air of cheerful competence, she liked on sight. So, which was more important, did her brothers. She made an excuse to leave him alone with them, to become acquainted. She felt a little doubtful about Felix, who, unlike Jessamy, was not at all eager to resume his studies; but when she came back into the room he greeted her with the information that this Mr Trevor knew much more than the other Mr Trevor: they had been talking about coal-gas, and the transmission of power by compressed air; so that doubt was laid to rest, leaving her with only one serious anxiety: Felix’s health.
This was a very real anxiety, and would not be allayed until Sir William Knighton had seen Felix. He was better, certainly, but far from well yet. He flagged quickly, became too easily excited — even, she suspected, a little feverish — and his normally sunny disposition had given place to irritability, and occasional fretfulness.
“I expect it is just that he doesn’t feel in high force yet, and that he will be better in the country, but I can’t help feeling anxious,” she told Alverstoke.
“No, and you can’t think of anything else, can you, Frederica?”
“I suppose I can’t,” she confessed. “I do try to!”
“Do you feel that you may be able to — without trying — if Knighton gives you a comfortable report?” he enquired.
“Oh, what an unspeakable relief that would be! Yes, of course I shall!”
“I’m glad,” he said cryptically. “I feel pretty confident that he will, and I trust it won’t be long delayed!”
“He is coming to us on Thursday, before noon.”
“Good! So, then, am I!” said his lordship. “After noon!”
“Of course!” she twinkled. “No need to tell me that! I only wish he may not arrive to find Felix at his very worst, but I’m much afraid that he will. Felix is already out of reason cross about it — declares he is in prime twig, and won’t let any doctor maul him! — and he won’t at all relish being made to stay in his bed until Sir William has examined him! Oh, well! If he becomes outrageous, I shall ask Harry to try if he can divert him!”
But when, on Thursday morning, Frederica, with a recalcitrant brother on her hands and various household duties left undischarged, desired Buddle to send Harry up to Felix’s room, Buddle said that he rather thought Mr Harry must have gone out.
“Oh!” said Frederica, rather blankly. She hesitated, wondering whether to send for Charis. But as Charis had chosen this, out of all other mornings, for a display of affliction, weeping over the tea-cups, and refusing all sustenance at the breakfast table, she decided against it.
“I fancy he must have taken Miss Charis out for an airing, ma’am, for she is not in the drawing-room,” volunteered Buddle.
Frederica’s brow cleared. She had been nursing some uncharitable thoughts about Harry — so careless as to go off to amuse himself when his little brother was to be examined by one of the first physicians of the day! — but she realized at once that she had been doing him an injustice: he was clearly trying to be helpful, by taking Charis off her hands! She said: “Ah, very likely! Never mind: I’ll go up to Master Jessamy’s room.”
She found Jessamy immersed in his books, but he agreed at once to try what he could do to entertain Felix; and, when she apologized for disturbing him, said, with one of his darkling looks: “It is time one of us did something to help you!” He then stalked out of the room, with Lufra at his heels.
Touched by this outburst, Frederica called after him that it wouldn’t be for long, since Sir William might be expected at any minute; and went downstairs, to discuss with her housekeeper the various things that must be done to set the house in order before they left it.
She had not far to go. Mrs Hurley, a stout woman, having toiled upstairs from the basement in search of her, had halted on the first floor, to recover her breath before attempting to mount the next flight.
“Oh, Hurley, you shouldn’t have come up all those stairs!” Frederica said. “I was on my way down to you!”
“No, ma’am, I know I shouldn’t, not with my palpitations,” said Mrs Hurley. “But I thought it my duty to let you know at once!”
This time-worn phrase, which in general heralded the disclosure of a very minor household disaster, did not strike dismay into Frederica’s bosom. She said: “Oh, dear! Is something amiss? Come into the drawing-room, and tell me about it!”
“Dear knows, Miss Frederica,” said Mrs Hurley, following her into the room, “I wouldn’t trouble you with it, with all the trouble you have to worrit you already, if I didn’t feel in my bones that you’d wish to be told immediately.”
Broken china! thought Frederica.
“But,” pursued Mrs Hurley, “the instant Jemima brought it to me, her only being able to read print — and not much of that either — I said to myself: ‘Doctor or no doctor, Miss Frederica must see this at once!’ Which is what it’s my belief you weren’t meant to do, ma’am. And nor you would have if I hadn’t sent Jemima up to Miss Charis’s room to take down the curtains to be washed, for the room was swept and the bed made while Miss Charis was at her breakfast, so that there was no reason for her to think anyone would go into it again this morning.”
“Miss Charis?” F
rederica said sharply.
“Miss Charis,” corroborated Mrs Hurley. “There was this, laying on the dressing-table, and Jemima, thinking it was a letter for the post, brought it down to me. It’s for you, Miss Frederica.”
“For me —!” Frederica almost snatched it out of the housekeeper’s hand.
“And Miss Charis’s brush and comb aren’t on the table, nor the bottle of scent you gave her, ma’am, nor anything that should be on it,” pronounced the voice of doom inexorably.
Frederica paid no heed, for the information was unnecessary. The letter in her hand had evidently been written under the stress of strong emotion. It was freely blotched with tears, and largely illegible, but its opening sentence stood out boldly.
Dearest, ever-dearest Frederica, Charis had written, with painstaking care, By the time you read this I shall be married, and many miles away.
After that, the writing deteriorated into a wild scrawl, as though Charis, having made this promising beginning, had not known how to continue, and had finally dashed off the rest in a hurry.
But the beginning was all that mattered to Frederica. She stood staring at the words until they danced before her eyes, unable, in the first moments of sickening shock, to believe their incredible message.
Mrs Hurley’s hand on her arm recalled her to her senses. “Do you sit down, Miss Frederica, my dear!” Mrs Hurley said. “I’ll fetch you up a glass of wine directly: no need to tell Buddle!”
“No, no, I don’t want a glass of wine! I must think — I must think!”
She allowed herself to be pushed into a chair, and tried to decipher the rest of the letter. It seemed to consist entirely of pleas for forgiveness, mingled with assurances that only desperation could have driven the writer to take so dreadful a step. At first glance, Charis appeared to have subscribed herself, Your wicked Charis; but closer scrutiny revealed that the word was not wicked, but wretched. Frederica thought bitterly that wicked more exactly described her sister.
She raised her eyes to Mrs Hurley’s face. “Hurley — I don’t know what can be done — if anything, but say nothing of this, I beg of you!”
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