Джорджетт Хейер - Black Sheep

“As bad as that?”

“Yes, damn you! Besides—I don’t want to sell it!”

“Why not? You told me you hated it!”

“Yes, but it means something. Gives one consequence. Place in the country, you know: Calverleigh of Danescourt! No substance without it—bellows to mend with me!”

“It appears to be bellows to mend with you already,” said his uncle caustically.

Mr Stacy Calverleigh, having slept off the result of his potations, awoke, far into the following day, with only the haziest recollections of what might have passed between himself and his uncle. So much did he plume himself on his ability to drink all other men under the table that he ascribed the circumstance of his having been put to bed by the boots to the vile quality of the brandy supplied by the White Hart; and when he encountered Mr Miles Calverleigh in Milsom Street, two days later, he laughingly apologized for it, and for its effect upon himself, describing this as having been rendered a trifle above oar. He spoke gaily, but under his insouciance there lurked a fear that he might have been betrayed into indiscretion. He said that he hoped he had not talked a great deal of nonsense, and was reassured by his uncle’s palpable lack of interest He then ventured to express the hope that Miles would not betray him to the ladies in Sydney Place, saying: “I should find myself in the briars if Miss Abigail even suspected that I do, now and then, have a cup too much!”

“What a good thing you’ve warned me not to do so!” responded Miles sardonically. “Entertaining females with accounts of jug-bitten maunderings is one of my favourite pastimes.”

He left Stacy with one of his careless nods, and strode on down the street, bound for the Pump Room. Here he found all the Wendovers: Abby listening with an expression of courteous interest to one of General Exford’s anecdotes; Fanny making one of a group of lively young persons; and Selina, with Miss Butter-bank in close attendance, receiving the congratulations of her friends on her emergence from seclusion. After an amused glance in Abby’s direction, Miles made his way towards Selina, greeting her with the ease of long friendship, and saying, with his attractive smile: “I shan’t ask you how you do, ma’am: to enquire after a lady’s health implies that she is not in her best looks. Besides, I can see that you are in high bloom.”

She had watched his approach rather doubtfully, but she was by no means impervious to flattery, or to his elusive charm, and she returned the smile, even though she deprecated his compliment, saying: “Good gracious, sir, at my age one doesn’t talk of being in high bloom! That is quite a thing of the past—not that I ever was—I mean, no more than passable!”

“Oh, my dear Miss Wendover, how can you say so?” exclaimed Miss Butterbank, throwing up her hands, “ Such a farradiddle I declare I never heard! But you are always so modest! I must positively beg Mr Calverleigh to turn a deaf ear to you!”

Since he was at that moment asking Mrs Leavening how she had prospered that morning in her search for lodgings, he had no difficulty in obeying this behest. The only difficulty he experienced was how to extricate himself from a discussion of all the merits, and demerits, of the several sets of apartments Mrs Leavening had inspected. But having agreed with Selina that Axford Buildings were situated in a horrid part of the town, and with Mrs Leavening that Gay Street was too steep for elderly persons, he laughed, and disclosed with disarming candour that he knew nothing of either locality. “But I believe people speak well of Marlborough Buildings,” he offered. “Unless you would perhaps prefer the peace and quiet of Belmont?”

“Belmont?” said Selina incredulously. “But that would never do! It is uphill all the way! You can’t be serious!”

“Of course he isn’t, my dear!” said Mrs Leavening, chuckling. “He hasn’t the least notion where it is. Now, have you, sir?”

“Not the least! I shall make it my business to find out, however, and I’ll tell you this evening, ma’am,” he promised.

He then bowed slightly, and walked away. Selina, taking umbrage at the suggestion that there was any part of Bath with which she was not fully acquainted, exclaimed: “Well, I must say I think him a very odd creature! One might have supposed—not that I know him at all well, and one shouldn’t judge anyone on a angle morning-visit, even in his riding-dress, which I cannot like—though Abby assures me he won’t dine with us in it—but his manners are very strange and abrupt!”

“Oh, he is certainly an original, but so droll!” said Mrs Leavening. “We like him very much, you know, and find nothing in his manners to disgust us.”

“Exactly what I have been saying to dear Miss Wendover!” interpolated Miss Butterbank. “Anyone of whom Miss Abby approves cannot be other than gentlemanlike!”

“Yes, but it is not at all the thing for her to be going to the play in his company. At least, it doesn’t suit my sense of propriety, though no doubt my notions are antiquated, and, of course, Abby is not a girl, precisely, but to talk as if she was on the shell is a great piece of nonsense!”

Mrs Leavening agreed to this, but as her husband came up at that moment Selina did not tell her old friend that Abby, not content with accompanying Mr Calverleigh to the theatre, had actually invited him to dine in Sydney Place.

This bold stroke had quite overset Selina. The news that Mr Calverleigh had been so kind as to invite Abby to go to the play she had received placidly enough, if with a little surprise: it seemed very odd that a single gentleman should get up a party, but no doubt he wished to return the hospitality of such ladies as Mrs Grayshott, and Lady Weaverham. Were the Ancrums going as well?

Abby was tempted, for a craven moment, to return a noncommittal answer, but she overcame the impulse, and replied in an airy tone: “Oh, it is not a party! Do you think I ought not to have accepted ? I did hesitate, but at my age it is surely not improper? Besides, the play is The Venetian Outlaw, which I particularly want to see! From some cause or another I never have seen it, you know: once I was ill, when it was put on here, and once I was away from home; but you went to see it twice, didn’t you ? And were in raptures!”

“Yes, but not with a gentleman!”Selina said, scandalized. “Once,I went with dear Mama, only you were too young then; and the second time Lady Trevisian invited me—or was that the third time? Yes, because the second time was when George and Mary were with us, and you had a putrid sore throat, and so could not go with us!”

“This time I am determined not to have a putrid sore throat!”

“No, indeed! I hope you will not! But Mr Calverleigh must invite some others as well! I wonder he shouldn’t have done so. It argues a want of conduct in him, for it is not at all the thing, and India cannot be held to excuse it, because there are no theatres there—at least, I shouldn’t think there would be, should you?

“No, dear. So naturally Mr Calverleigh couldn’t know that he was doing anything at all out of the way, poor man! As for telling him that he must invite others as well as me, I hope you don’t expect me to do so! That would indeed be improper! And, really, Selina, what possible objection can there be to my going to the play under the escort of a middle-aged man? Here, too, where I am well known, and shall no doubt meet many of our friends in the theatre!”

“It will make you look so—so particular, dearest! You would never do so in London! Of course, Bath is a different matter, but worse! Only think how disagreeable it would be if people said you were encouraging Mr Calverleigh to dangle after you!”

This thought had already occurred to Abby, causing her to hover on the brink of excusing herself from the engagement; and had Selina said no more she might possibly have done so. But Selina’s evil genius prompted her to utter fatal words. “I am persuaded that James would tell you to cry off, Abby!”

“Are you indeed?” retorted Abby, instantly showing hackle. “Well, that settles the matter! I shall do no such thing! Oh, Selina, pray don’t fly into a great fuss! If you are afraid of what the quizzes may say, you have only to tell them that since you don’t yet venture out in the evening Mr Calverleigh very kindly offered to act as your deputy. And once it becomes known that he dined with us here, before escorting me to the theatre—”

“Nothing—nothing!—would prevail upon me to do anything so unbecoming as to invite a single gentleman to dine with us!” declared Selina, with unwonted vigour.

“No, dear, but you are not obliged to do so,” said Abby mischievously. “I’ve done it for you!”

“Abby!” gasped Selina, turning pale with dismay. “Asked a man to dine with us alone? You can’t be serious! Never have we done such a thing! Except, of course, James, which is a very different matter!”

“Very different!” agreed Abby. “Mr Calverleigh may be an oddity, but he’s not a dreadful bore!”

“I was never so mortified!” moaned Selina. “So brass-faced of you, as though you knew no better, and exactly what dear Papa deplored, and what he would say to it, if he were alive, which I am devoutly thankful he is not, I shudder to think!”

It had taken time, patience, and much tact to reconcile Selina but in the end she consented to entertain Mr Miles Calverleigh, persuaded by the horrid suspicion that if she refused to do so her highty-tighty young sister was quite capable of setting the town in an uproar by dining with him at York House. She had then devoted the better part of the afternoon to the composition of a formal invitation, written in her beautiful copper-plate, and combining to a nicety condescension with gracious civility. Mr Miles Calverleigh responded to this missive with commendable promptness, in a brief but well-expressed note, which conveyed to Selina’s mind the impression that he had invited her sister to go with him to the play in a spirit of avuncular philanthropy. She was thus able to meet him in the Pump Room with a modicum of complaisance; and although, when he left her side, he joined the group round Abby, she had no apprehension of danger. It was not at all remarkable that he should show a preference for her: a great many gentlemen did so; but if it had been suggested to Selina that Abby was quite as strongly attracted to him as he to her she would have thought it not so much remarkable as absurd. Abby enjoyed light flirtations, but Selina had almost ceased to hope that she would ever discover amongst her suitors one who was endowed with all the perfections she apparently demanded.

They were certainly not to be found in Mr Miles Calverleigh, with his swarthy countenance, his casual manners, and his deplorable want of address.

Nor was Abby apprehensive that in pursuing her acquaintance with him she might be running into danger. She was by no means sure that she liked him. He was amusing, and she enjoyed his company; but he frequently put her quite out of temper, besides shocking her by his unconcerned repudiation of any of the virtues indispensable in a man of principle. He was undoubtedly what her brother-in-law succinctly described as a loose screw, and so hopelessly ineligible that it never so much as crossed her mind that in him she had met her fate. Nor did it occur to her that in encouraging his advances she was influenced by anything other than the hope that she might be able to persuade him to send his nephew to the rightabout. He had refused unequivocally to meddle, but the hope persisted, and, with it, the growing conviction that if he wished to bring Stacy’s schemes to fiddlestick’s end he would know just how it could be done. To inspire him with such a wish was clearly her duty; if it had been suggested to her that her duty, in this instance, had assumed an unusually agreeable aspect, she would have acknowledged readily that it was fortunate that she did not find Mr Calverleigh repellent; but she would have been much amused by a further suggestion that she was rapidly losing her heart to a black sheep.

So she was able to greet him, when he descended upon her in the Pump Room, with calm friendliness; and when he presently detached her from her circle, inviting her, with his customary lack of finesse, to take a stroll about the Room, in the accepted manner of those who made the Promenade their daily business, she was perfectly willing to walk off with him.