The love child, p.3
The Love Child, page 3
In spite of this superfluous activity, in spite of the interrupted character of their speech, in spite of their being only temporarily in residence here, the scene had a very tranquil and domestic look to it. Lady Stanton, an attractive (if somewhat faded) woman of forty-two, sat before her glass while her abigail combed out her long, dark hair; his lordship, an equally pleasant-appearing gentleman, strode familiarly about the chamber; their daughter, presently under discussion, would soon appear; and their son, though not now in evidence, was never entirely absent from either of his parents’ minds. The Stantons were fond and sober guardians to their children, and they held one another in affectionate esteem as well. If Lady Stanton spoke, on this occasion, with insistence, it was not so much because her husband irritated her as because she was concerned for the welfare of her daughter. This young lady’s future, as her mother now pointed out, was not nearly so securely settled as it might have been.
“We have stopped here nearly a fortnight, Walker,” Lady Stanton said after dismissing her maid for the moment, “and if Wyborn’s attentions to her now are any more particular than they were when we arrived, it is more than I can notice. That really is too bad, you know; she will soon be eighteen, and eighteen is too old to be hoping for matches that will never materialize.”
Lord Stanton considered this. “I understand you,” he answered finally, “but I do not see what there is to be done. She cannot throw herself at him, and he must know by now she has set her cap for him.”
“I am certain he knows it, but he draws neither away from her nor toward her. He stays, so far as I can discern, at exactly the same distance. It is too bad,” she repeated.
Lord Stanton had not yet replied when a knock on the door sounded and Miss Amabel Stanton came in. “Did you send for me, Mamma?” she asked, shutting the door behind her and advancing some way into the apartment. “Papa, what a sight you look!” she added, as her father came forward to salute her.
“Shooting, my dear,” he explained. “I may look disarranged, but I assure you, the birds we bagged today look a good deal worse for the encounter.”
“Did you shoot quite a lot of them?” his daughter inquired politely.
“Quite a lot! I should say so! Why there were—”
“That’s very pleasant, Papa,” his daughter cut him off gently. “What did you desire to see me about, Mamma?”
Lord Stanton sighed a little. “Your mother is concerned about the Marquess of Wyborn,” he told her. “We both are.”
“So am I, indeed,” said Amabel. Her countenance, which was round, soft, and very sweet, took on a troubled look as she seated herself on the edge of her mother’s bed. “I do try, you know,” she said as if to defend herself, “to engage his attention; but it never seems to come to much.”
“No one doubts of your trying,” her mother assured her. “We are only perplexed as to his—his intentions.”
“Does he address himself to you frequently?” Lord Stanton asked.
“More frequently, I suppose, than he does some other ladies,” Amabel replied, in her soft, pattering voice, “but he would be obliged to do that in any case, no matter who I was. The duchess always seats him next to me at table, you know.”
“Yes,” her mother rejoined thoughtfully. “It is rather good of her, I think. She knows why we accepted her invitation, and agreed to stop so long; and though she never specifically mentioned Wyborn, I knew she would see to it he came down too. She is a great diplomat, when she chuses to be.”
“Unhappily, it is not within her power to constrain him to stay forever,” Stanton observed. “Probably he only means to shoot here for a few more weeks; then he will be off, and out of our reach.”
“Did his lordship join your party today?” Lady Stanton interrupted him.
“Oh, yes; he never passes up an opportunity for sport.”
“And he said nothing to you of Amabel?” his wife pursued.
“Not a word. Amabel, when he addresses you…is he agreeable? Familiar, perhaps?”
“No more so, I fear, than any gentleman must be. I am sorry,” she added anxiously, her blue eyes clouding. “Perhaps I have no gift for capturing husbands. Perhaps he simply does not like me.”
“If he did not like you he would not have called in Mount Street so often,” said Lady Stanton, referring to their residence in London. “No, I am certain he thinks of you—”
“Only he does not know quite what to think,” Amabel finished somewhat despondently. A silence ensued, during which Lord Walker Stanton paced the room even more rapidly than he had done hitherto.
“There is nothing to do but to wait it out,” he announced finally. “It is impossible to approach a man in such a case without leaving behind the bounds of propriety.”
“Amabel could encourage some other gentleman,” Lady Stanton suggested hesitantly.
“In an attempt to make him jealous? Thank you, no. My daughter is not in so desperate a case that she need resort to machinations of that order. What the marquess regards above all, I think, is dignity. Fortunately, that is a natural trait among us; this is hardly a time to abandon the habit of decades.”
“Very well,” his wife responded, apparently neither injured nor offended. “If you are concerned with the dignity of the Stantons, however, I think you had best keep an eye on Chauncey. He is the one who most imperils it.”
“Chauncey?” Lord Stanton checked his perambulations and looked at his wife in surprise. “How?”
“How?” she echoed. “Have you failed to notice? By his preposterous infatuation with the Countess Tremini, of course. It is a perfect outrage.”
“Chauncey dangling after the contessa? Whatever for? She is twice his age and more.”
“So is my lord the marquess twice Amabel’s age,” his wife reminded him. On this Lord Stanton exchanged a glance not entirely gentle with her ladyship; there had been, once upon a time, some disagreement between them as to whether or not Amabel (if and when she married Wyborn) could ever be happy with him. Lady Stanton felt he was rather too old for her; her husband insisted this factor was superficial and insignificant. Miss Amabel, being entirely the most biddable of girls, had accepted her parents’ final decision without a murmur, but Lady Stanton continued to harbour some reserve regarding the advisability of the match. The glance between husband and wife was meaningful, though brief. When it was dropped Lady Stanton continued, “I do not think Chauncey behaves on any political motive. He is simply fascinated with her.”
“I can’t believe it,” Stanton declared.
“Watch him tonight at dinner,” she recommended with a tiny shrug. “You will believe me then.”
Lord Stanton, clearly not convinced, quitted his wife’s chamber some moments later to place himself in the competent hands of his valet. He conjured up the image, as he dressed, of the Contessa di Tremini, asking himself all the while how his son, a mere stripling of sixteen, could fancy himself in love with such an object. To do her justice, it ought to be mentioned that if one were, for example, condemned to live perpetually with an image, the Countess Tremini’s would not be at all the worst to chuse. Even Lord Stanton, conservative though he was, could not entirely dislike the figure he now invoked: though doubtless some years older, even, than his wife, the contessa appeared to have found twenty-five so pleasant and flattering an age that she declined ever to pass it, opting to remain rather in constant communication with some myserious spring of youth. Her figure was womanly to the point of voluptuousness, yet it never (as happens so frequently) grew matronly or blowsy. Her cheeks retained, as if by magic, the firm fulness and rosy tint of girlhood; her eyes, an extraordinary violet in hue, were as arresting as when they had first rested on an eligible gentleman; and her warm mouth had lost none of its allure. No wrinkle disturbed the snowy purity of her complexion; no tinge of grey dared trespass on her dark, glossy head. She was English by birth, but had dwelt so long in Italy that a soft intimation of that warmer clime had crept, as if for safekeeping, into the rich, deep inflections of her voice. Widowed these past five years, she was a demon for play; beyond that, however, Lord Stanton knew nothing against her.
If it was no great hardship to summon up the contessa in imagination, it was certainly not painful to behold her in reality. Lord Stanton, along with the rest of the numerous party by this time assembled at Grasmere, had the happiness to do precisely this some half an hour after his conversation with his wife and daughter, when the duchess received her guests in a vast, square drawing-room and prepared them to go in to dinner. Lady Rowena di Tremini entered—one might have suspected, on purpose—last of all the visitors; thus her entrance and appearance were the easier to observe. She flew rather than walked in, seemingly borne on some capricious, compelling breeze, and hastened at once to toss dazzling smiles on everyone and everything. The brilliance of her smile was matched, though not exceeded, by the brilliance of the emeralds which everywhere adorned her. A cut stone glinted from her throat, from the raven thicknesses of her hair, from the third finger of an elegant, flawless hand. She wore their glory with perfect unconsciousness, allowing the gems to sparkle and glow in what light they might catch, declining, as it were, to know them. Her rich green velvet gown, on the other hand, was evidently not so proud: it knew the emeralds intimately, complemented them marvellously, whispered to them in low, familiar tones. Yet this striking conspiracy among her ornaments did nothing to distract from the (presumably) less artificial attractions of the contessa: the light of her eyes rivalled triumphantly the light of all else, and the grace of her every movement held sway supremely.
“Good evening, my dear Karr—Your Grace,” she breathed and curtsied; “Miss Chilton, you are prettier than ever—“ (Miss Chilton had continued to dine with the guests, to the astonishment of a few of them, for all the world as if she were one herself)—“you must tell me some time how you manage your complexion. Miss Cawley, Lord Cawley,” she went on, moving away from her hostess, “I am delighted to see you looking so well. We must have some whist tonight, Lord Cawley, I really insist on it. Ah, and Mr. Faust, my most intriguing friend,” she concluded, alighting finally near Septimus; “your bow is the most gallant in England. How do you do it, I wonder, without bursting into laughter?”
“You consider my bow ridiculous?” Mr. Faust inquired, without resentment.
“I consider it—satirical,” she corrected. “It is so deep.”
“It is the same; you consign it to the realm of the amusing.”
“If wit is amusing, yes. I deem your bow to be witty.”
“In the tradition of high comedy,” he pursued, “or low?”
“In the tradition of sarcasm,” said she.
“In that case, my most honoured friend, I must accuse you of contradicting yourself. You say my bow is deep; you say my bow is sarcastic. This, dear countess, is entirely impossible: what is deep cannot be sarcastic, nor what is sarcastic, deep. I must beg you to clarify your remarks.”
“My remarks would not be in need of clarification if you did not, yourself, insist on confusing them.” The contessa lifted a luxuriantly plumed fan from her side and spread it out before her. She was a shrewd woman, but she did not excell in such banter as this. She needed a moment to think. “Mr. Faust,” she said at last, “I will set you a riddle.”
“I adore a riddle,” said he.
“All the better. But I must caution you, I have reason to believe you will find this one difficult.”
“Lay on, MacCountess.”
“What, Mr. Faust, is both deep and sarcastic?”
“Is that the riddle?” he asked, disappointed.
“That is the riddle. And if you can give me no better answer than my own, you must admit it to be your bow, sir.”
“Stop a moment,” he said, as he saw her preparing to rise. “Your ladyship sets me a puzzle indeed, but I believe I have an answer.”
“Have you? How very tiresome of you.”
“Your ladyship did not tell me I must not be tiresome.”
“I will take care to do so in the future,” she smiled. “Quickly, what is your answer? The duchess is beckoning to me.”
“His Grace the duke, is the answer,” said Septimus Faust. “His Grace is both things.”
The Countess Tremini laughed, but she reproved her interlocutor, “Mr. Faust, I said what—not who. Karr is not an object, but a person.”
“Ah!” he cried, casting a pointed and amused glance at Miss Lotta Chilton—who, in turn, was gazing on the duke. “That depends entirely on who observes him. For you, madame, he is a person; for others…he may be anything we chuse.”
“Mr. Faust,” said the other, rising at last, “you are a wicked man. I like a wicked man, but your insinuations are too oblique for me. I must go to the duchess; pray excuse me.”
With this she moved away from him, leaving him (as he often was) reflective. But if he thought on the contessa, he was not the only one. The Honourable Chauncey Stanton—with a fixity even his father could not ignore—had indeed kept his blue eyes fastened upon her ladyship from the moment of her entrance into the drawing-room. He took no pains to conceal his stare, nor the admiration within it. Perhaps he felt his youth (and his consequent ineligibility) excused him; perhaps he forgot to think of concealing it. In either case, he stood alone in a corner, heedless of the people nearer to him, dropping a steady and hopelessly enamoured regard on the unsuspecting contessa. Master Chauncey was at an unenviable stage in human development. He was awkward, and gangling, and the skin on his upper lip showed that dark downiness which heralds, rather unbeautifully, an incipient entry into full manhood. I am sorry to record that the mouth beneath this significant lip was, though its owner knew it not, just perceptibly agape. If dignity were an invariable mark of the Stantons, this boy was not his mother’s son.
Dinner was a gorgeous affair. Grasmere Castle was equipped with a variety of plate and porcelain so extensive that no setting was repeated, on the duchess’s table, within a given fortnight. Tonight the dishes, blue and green in colour, floral in design, and embellished with a silver tracery, were graced (as the courses and removes followed one another) with a number of the pheasants we have previously heard of, a collection of other fowl, a soup reputed to be Russian in origin, boiled rice and potatoes, vegetables, ragoût à la Françoise, fricandeau, saddle of mutton, roast beef, boiled turkey with celery sauce, all manner of sweets, creams, and fruits—in short, such a collection of viands and delicacies as is not too often met with. Twenty-five sat to dinner, a like number attending them. Burgundy, Champagne, and Hermitage flowed bountifully into and from Her Grace’s crystal goblets, hinting at what plenitude should serve the gentlemen when the ladies had departed…and yet, in spite of this wonderful array, so pleasing to every sense, my lord Stanton had eyes and ideas only for his son.
The behaviour he observed in that young man was not pleasant to him. Chauncey might be callow, but he was devoted: neither meat nor drink could distract him from his self-appointed vigil. Though he sat at some distance from the contessa, his eyes never left her (which steadfastness, combined with the superabundance of sauces and red wines, had an unfortunate effect on his white cravat). By the time the ladies withdrew from the table, Lord Stanton had already framed the opening paragraph of the lecture he meant to read his son. It would be impressive, and very sober, oratory.
Lady Stanton, meanwhile, received the honour of the Contessa di Tremini’s conversation when the ladies had regained the drawing-room. The countess had shown little interest in her previously (the countess as a rule favoured gentlemen over her own sex), and she had no clear idea why the more beautiful lady chose, on this particular occasion, to sit so very near to her; however, it was not in her nature to tax her mind with questions overmuch, and she merely concluded that the contessa must have her reasons. In this she was correct: the contessa had a perfectly logical reason—to wit, the fawn settee on which Lady Stanton had seated herself was the only piece of furniture in the room whose colour neither swallowed up nor blazed against the green of her gown. This reason, as the reader will have perceived, was entirely trivial; the conversation which ensued between the two women appears, no doubt, equally trifling—and yet a part of it unquestionably belongs to our story.
The countess began it. “Lady Stanton,” said she, smiling beautifully, “am I right in believing that lovely young girl belongs to you?” With the faintest movement of her fan she indicated Miss Stanton, who sat with a few of the younger ladies near the fire.
“She is my daughter,” Lady Stanton returned, also smiling.
“Ah, she is very pretty,” said the contessa. “One can scarcely credit your being her mother—you look too young.”
“I am quite old enough, I assure you,” the other said pleasantly; she did not share the countess’s vanity with regard to age. “I have a son too; perhaps you have noticed him. He has certainly noticed you.”
“A son as well?” the contessa echoed, as if this were another wonder. In a way, it did surprise her: childless herself, and with no great love of infants, Lady di Tremini was constantly astonished at the number of women with patience enough to raise children. “Which gentleman is he? Where did he sit at dinner?”
Lady Stanton told her, but the countess failed to recollect him. “I fear it would quite break his heart to hear you say so,” Lady Stanton told her, with a gentle laugh. “He admires you most ardently.”
