The love child, p.9
The Love Child, page 9
“Oh, no, sir,” said Amabel Stanton, frightened lest the imposing gentleman on whom her hopes (one might almost say, despairs) were pinned should suppose ill health was a part of her inheritance. “She is quite as strong now as ever—very strong. We are very strong,” she hastened to add.
They sat together in the Rose Saloon, alone. There had been others before: after dinner a number of the company had gathered there to discuss the most recent news from London, the results of the day’s shooting, and to make up parties for amusements. Little by little they had removed themselves to other parts of the castle—first the love-stricken Stickneys, then the Contessa di Tremini, then Septimus Faust. Amabel had held her breath at each departure, praying more and more fervently that somehow, by whatever miracle or act of God, Lord Wyborn would decline to join each departing group until only he and she remained. Her suspense mounted: now only Mr. Hightower was left with them. Would he never go? Did he even think of going? Perhaps he meant to stop there all night. It certainly seemed to Miss Stanton that he had been there an age already, making desultory conversation with Wyborn and herself, and humming just audibly while he tapped the arms of his chair. Go, go! She hardly dared stir herself, fearful that even the suggestion of restlessness might cause Wyborn to leave the saloon. Helpless, she glared at Ralph when he was not looking at her and smiled feebly when he glanced her way. Surely there was no other gentleman in the world so thick-skulled as he. Could he not see how urgent it was that she be alone with Wyborn? Was he blind, or an idiot? At last, eons (it seemed) since dinner, Mr. Ralph Hightower bethought himself of billiards, and rose. “I rather think I’ll join Sir Isaac and the others,” said he. “Care to join me, Wyborn?”
Ah, no! Not all this waiting for nothing! please, please decline to join him. She fairly squirmed while Hightower lingered.
“Thank you,” said Lord Wyborn, and took the longest pause anyone ever had taken before he continued, “but no. One can tire even of billiards, and I believe I’ve had sufficient for now.”
Miss Amabel Stanton felt she would shriek for joy (she did not, though). Her relief was overwhelming—but then a new tension began. Now she was alone with him; he had chosen to be with her; it could not have been accident. What would he say to her, and she to him? Ought she to address him first, or wait? If she did the former he might think her forward; if the latter, dull. Her breath became laboured and irregular; it seemed terribly stultifying in the beautifully hung saloon. She thought of her vinaigrette, and would have liked a whiff very much, but that would look so odd. She did nothing but wait, and endeavour to maintain a semblance of calm.
And now finally he had spoke. He had asked her a question—a rather bland question, it was true, but that was far better than if he had suggested they join the others in the drawing-room. And she had answered, and apparently he was not totally disgusted with her yet. Poor Amabel felt her entire family depending on her to marry Wyborn; it was not that they had no money, or no position of their own, but Lord Wyborn had been chosen for her, pointed out to her: it was the first, the only thing her parents had ever asked of her, and she felt she must die if she failed. If only his lordship would offer for her!
“You are fortunate,” announced the remarkable, eligible man. “Ill health is a great burden upon a family.”
Amabel’s soft, round face strove mightily to match Wyborn’s serious expression. “Oh, indeed—a very great burden! I should never dream of being ill,” she added absurdly, in her eagerness to please him.
“I am certain you would not,” said he.
There was a silence. “Oh, never,” she repeated faintly.
“Your father shoots very well,” said Wyborn at last. “Your father is an excellent shot. An excellent man.”
“So he is, indeed. I am of the same opinion. One must be.”
“Certainly you must. He is your father.”
“Precisely! He is my father.”
“Miss Stanton,” the earl began, breaking off to clear his throat loudly and rising from his chair.
(Dear God, don’t let him leave! thought she.)
“Miss Stanton,” he repeated, stationing himself near the mantelpiece and regarding her steadily. He was a very large man, with dark hair turning to silver at the temples, a raw complexion, and an alarmingly concentrated light in his heavy-lidded green eyes. “Miss Stanton,” he pronounced once more.
“My lord?” she dared to answer.
“Miss Stanton, I have taken the liberty of hoping—albeit silently—that you might do me the honour to become my wife.” Ah! there it was! Yet he continued to speak.
“Your beauty, your gentleness, your fond obedience to your parents all recommend themselves to me. Moreover, I am satisfied to reflect that an alliance between the house of Wyborn and your own family is not altogether incongruous. On your mother’s side you are a Baddesleigh, and though I have not the happiness of being acquainted with the earl your grandfather, I know the name to be ancient and impeccable. Your father, of course—as we agreed even now—is an excellent gentleman. I have hesitated to address him on this subject as yet—otherwise than obliquely, I mean—until I might broach it to you. If you will permit me to hope, I will discuss the matter with him; if you chuse to disappoint me at once, however, it will be as if I had never suggested it. Can you give me an answer now? I am not afraid to wait, though naturally to be kept in suspense would be painful.”
Could she give him an answer? Amabel was not the least taken in by his pretensions to ignorance: he knew what her answer would be, and knew also her father’s certain acquiescence. It seemed awfully flat merely to say yes—but then it had been a flat proposal, too. She tried to think of a pretty speech.
“My very good sir,” she commenced, not daring to look at him, “you do me a most valuable honour. Perhaps I ought to blush, or hesitate, but I would not for the world subject you to needless discomfort. I will be most happy to become your wife—if, as you say, my father has no objections.”
It was unpleasant for her to maintain this charade but she assured herself it would soon be over. The chief point was that he had offered for her, and she had accepted: now it was but a question of formalities. Her thoughts, heady with relief, were interrupted by Lord Wyborn’s coming toward her from the fireplace and reaching for her hand.
She gave it him. “My dear Miss Stanton,” he said, kissing it lightly and making a shallow bow, “you give me great joy. Let us hope every future question between us will be determined with so much accord and candour.”
He had straightened himself again and stood looking at her as if for some sort of response.
“Indeed,” was all she could think to say. “Let us hope so.”
In a little while they separated, she to apprise her mother of the long-awaited good tidings, he to seek out her father. Little more had been said between them, and certainly nothing more done. The question had been asked, answered, settled. Neither lady nor gentleman had smiled once during the entire interview.
Meantime, a great deal of smiling was being done in a smallish apartment not far away, an apartment known as the study—although no one, it seemed, ever pursued any scholarly researches there. The smiles belonged half to the master of the castle, half to Lotta Chilton. They had met after tea in the Oval Saloon, where Lady Henrietta Helms was playing a very precise rendition of an air by Mozart, and had departed (one after the other) as if by tacit agreement, to meet again in the apartment mentioned above. Lotta had left first, and sat, when the duke came in, once again engaged with her filagree. She made no pretence, however, of being surprised at his having followed her out from the Oval Saloon. Rather she looked up and smiled, nodding to his slight bow, and proceeded with her work in silence, as if it were as natural as could be that Karr and she should share the pleasures of a cosy fire and an unhurried, unnecessary conversation.
“Your fingers work busily,” Karr remarked after a time, “but not so busily as your mind, I sometimes think.” His brown eyes rested upon her, deep with interest and bright with curiosity.
She favoured him with a rather mysterious smile, saying nothing.
“I was only pretending to make an observation, you know,” he took up again. “Really I was asking you a question.”
“I know you were,” she replied serenely.
“Won’t you tell me?”
“Whether my mind is so well employed as my hands?” she said. “I never tell secrets unless I am certain of a comparable return.”
“My hands being utterly idle, I hope it would be superfluous to inform you I am thinking faster than they are moving.”
“I said a comparable return, not an identical one,” she pointed out. “You are inquiring into my character; I should like leave to inquire into yours.”
“You have leave, Miss Chilton.”
“Very well, then: yes, I may say I think a good deal more industriously than I thread beads. My mind is never at rest, and only very rarely occupied by less than three subjects. Also, I hear music.”
“That is Lady Henrietta,” he said, with the very faintest hint of irony.
“I meant, I hear music whether Lady Henrietta is playing or not. Generally, in fact, more music when she is not.”
“Ah, you are unkind!”
“Do you believe me to be so?” she asked, with a fresh smile—this one broader and yet even more mysterious than the last. The candle-light lit up her fine eyes and transparent complexion; it glinted in the thicknesses of her plaited hair and fell on her bare white shoulders.
Karr hesitated. “Not everyone is so musical as you. Lady Henrietta’s proficiency cost her great efforts.”
“And I think she ought to be rewarded for those efforts,” Lotta said promptly; “but I do not think we ought to be punished for them.”
“Ah, you are unkind,” he repeated, with new emphasis.
Miss Chilton put her work aside and fixed him with a clear eye. “Your Grace,” she said, “do you enjoy Lady Henrietta’s playing?”
Again, he paused. “No. Not particularly.”
“And has anything I have said been otherwise than true?” she pursued.
He thought. “No,” he agreed reluctantly.
“Then why do you take me to task? Lady Henrietta is a very worthy person: she is not in need of my kindness, nor have I any need to be cruel to her. My remarks regarded her playing only, which we have both admitted to be not to our tastes. I am not unkind; I am only frank. Harsh, if you like.”
“I shouldn’t like that at all.”
“No more should I.” She took up her filagree again and said nothing for some moments. “It is time for my question,” she said at length; “I have earned it.”
“I will answer it, so it be comparable to mine.”
“It will be. I should like to know, Your Grace, how you enjoy being the Duke of Karr? Is it a boon or a burden? We are told in church—at least I was—not to envy the great, for their lot is as onerous as ours. Is it?”
“Damme, I wish I had asked you a more difficult question!” he exclaimed. “This is hardly fair.”
“Will you cry craven, then?”
“No, I won’t, Miss Chilton,” he said, standing on these words and advancing a little ways toward her. He quite towered over her in this attitude, and his strong chin looked very firm indeed. “You are extremely inquisitive, aren’t you?” he asked.
“My answer first,” she stipulated. “If I like it, perhaps we shall have another exchange of queries.”
“Indeed. To be the Duke of Karr, since you ask, is both a boon and a burden. It is like everything else in this world, neither entirely pleasure nor entirely pain. It is like, as a wit would say, a woman.”
“It is like, as I should reply to that hypothetical wit, a man. Fortunately, there are no wits here.”
“Certainly I haven’t any,” he murmured.
“But how is it good, and how ill? You don’t go into particulars,” she objected, returning to her question.
“Did you?”
“There are all too many points of interrogation in this little talk,” she complained after a minute. “It is beginning to sound like a court of law.”
“At the risk of exacerbating the situation, may I ask you if I have told you yet how utterly exquisite you are? If I did not, it was gross oversight.”
Lotta began to colour, at first slowly, then very rapidly. “Thank you,” she said, working furiously at her filagree.
“Ah, if I had known you turned from a compliment—! You are like a flower that closes when the sun burns too brightly.”
She was genuinely embarrassed, but she contrived to speak lightly in spite of it. “You, then, are the sun?”
“Miss Chilton, you are unkind!” he exclaimed for the third time.
“I thought I had dissuaded you of that,” she said, looking up and beginning to feel more comfortable. “If I am unkind, you are obstinate.”
“To that I must plead guilty. If I did not confess it, my mother would prove it for you. All the evidence is on her side, I fear.”
Lotta held his gaze with her own for a long minute, as if balancing between saying something and holding her peace. She weighed, judged, spoke at last. “Lady Henrietta?” she hazarded finally.
His firm mouth tightened at the suggestion, and he stared at her just as fixedly as she had at him. Finally he nodded. “My mother is nearly in despair.”
“Think of Lady Henrietta’s mother!” she laughed.
“You are at liberty to take it lightly, but I assure you the situation grows graver every day. Twice I have been on the point of addressing Lord Marland,” he commenced, and checked himself suddenly.
“You feel you have said too much.”
“Much too much.”
“So do I,” she agreed, and sat wordless for a while.
“But when it comes to that—” he began, looking at her bent head, her white shoulders, the sheen on her blue satin gown—“I am in need of a confidant,” he ended at last. He started to walk the length of the room, turned as he reached one panelled wall and headed back again to the other.
“You may rely on my discretion,” she said. “I have been accused of many things—unkindness, most recently—but never of indiscretion.”
“Yes, but…it isn’t as if I couldn’t talk to Longstreth, or Remington—or any of them. All my intimates are here; even an older man might answer the purpose; more experience, you know…”
“But those are men,” she said quietly. “You need a woman.”
He paused in his pacing and looked at her strangely. “Yes, come to think of it, I do. I’m not certain why it is, but I do.”
“Then talk to me,” she suggested, still softly, but with a sensible intonation. “I know most of it anyway.”
“Doubtless,” he returned. “It is no wonder your eyes are so very, very large. You must see many things with them.”
“I see you are not happy about the future Her Grace anticipates for you.”
“Then you see more than Lord Marland,” he said, almost bitterly. “He, I sometimes think, has already written and franked the announcement for the Gazette. He only waits to send it away.”
“And your offering for his daughter is a mere technicality,” she guessed.
“Precisely.” Karr stalked the room moodily now, his aspect more meditative than she had ever seen it.
“It is a very reasonable match,” Lotta pointed out judiciously.
“Yes, it is a very reasonable match. And Lady Henrietta is a very good woman, a gracious woman, a gentlewoman in manner and rank. Marland was a friend to my father long before I was born, and the connexion would make my mother very glad. It is a very reasonable match,” he repeated, then added abruptly (and rather loudly), “but I don’t want a reasonable match!”
“Of course you do not.”
“Of course?” he echoed. “Why of course? By rights I ought to—after all, it is all for my own happiness and comfort, for the sake of my name and my children. I am too old, don’t you see, to be pouting and rebelling, like a school-room miss who does not care for to dance with her childhood playmate.”
“You are very hard on yourself.”
“It is my duty to be hard on myself.”
“It is no one’s duty to be harder than is necessary,” said Lotta Chilton. “It is only a formula for unhappiness.”
He glanced at her, puzzled. “Then you think I ought to disappoint Marland—after all that has been done, and is expected?”
“I did not say that,” she replied swiftly. “I said only that it is foolish to do what is disagreeable simply on the principle that what is disagreeable must be right. I might observe, however,” she continued after a moment, “that you speak in terms of disappointing Lord Marland. Do you not fear to disappoint Lady Henrietta?”
“Oh, Lady Henrietta—” he spat out, as if in disgust, then looked at her with as much surprise as if it had been she who said it. “Heyday, what am I saying?”
“I’m not certain,” she answered. “What are you saying?”
“I can’t feel that way about her,” he exclaimed, aghast.
“Can’t you?”
“Can I?” He turned away from her once more and paced about, knocking a doubled fist against the panelled wall as a ruder man might strike his own head. “Things do not seem to be growing any clearer,” he stated at last, returning to the chair he had originally occupied.
“It depends on what you wished to see.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” he said.
“Suppose you were looking for a painting,” she suggested, “in a dark hallway. You have an idea where the picture hangs; you hold up your candle and pass through the corridor. When you reach the spot where you expect to find it, you hold up the taper to the frame—only to find that it encloses, not the picture, but a mirror. Imagine how baffling it might be to encounter your own image of a sudden, rather than the portrait you expected. It would seem almost as if nothing had been illuminated—since what was illuminated was not what you wished to see.”
He sighed. “Miss Chilton, you are becoming distinctly philosophical,” he said, sounding almost annoyed. “I had hoped you would be practical.”
