Джорджетт Хейер - Black Sheep

“Well, no one but you can hear me,” Abby pointed out. “And all I said was—”

“I know nothing about that class of person!” interrupted Selina hastily.

“No, nor do I,” said Abby, on a note of regret. “Except what I’ve read, of course, and that diverting man who came to a ball the Ashendens gave—oh, years ago! Papa said he would not permit a daughter of his to stand up for as much as one dance with such a fellow as that,only I had already done so, and very agreeable it was! I don’t know that he was a libertine, but I do know that he was a shocking flirt—and not because Rowland told me so! In that consequential way of his, which made him look just like Papa—you know!”

It was evident that whatever Miss Wendover might have known she was determined to forget. Summoning to her aid all the authority of her years, she said, in a voice of the gravest reproof: “Must I remind you, Abigail, that dear Rowland is dead?”

“No, and you need not remind me that he was our eldest brother either. Or call me by that detestable name! Whatever else I might forgive Papa, that I never could! Abigail! Mashams and maidservants!”

“Some people think it a charming name!” said Selina, casting an arch look at her. “One of them is Canon Pinfold, who thinks you are charming too! He says that it is from the Hebrew, and means father rejoiced.”

After a stunned moment, her unregenerate sister went into a peal of laughter. It was several minutes before she could do more than wail: “Papa c-can’t have kn-known that! He w-wan-ted another son!” and when she did manage to stop laughing Selina’s look of pained reproach very nearly set her off again.

She bit her lip, and said, a little shakily: “Don’t mind me! You know what I am! And what in the world has all this to do with Fanny? Selina, I realize that you have a decided tendre for Calverleigh, but if he were the biggest prize on the matrimonial mart I still should not like it! Good God, do you wish her to plunge into marriage with the first man she has met who is neither middle aged nor a youth she has known since he was a schoolboy? At seventeen!”

“I told her she was too young to be talking of having formed a lasting attachment,” answered Selina, thrown upon the defensive again. “Yes, and I said that her uncle would never countenance it, and that she must put it out of her mind!”

This effectively banished any lingering desire in Abby to giggle. She exclaimed: “You didn’t! Oh, Selina, I wish you had not!”

“You wish I had not?” echoed Selina, her voice as much as her countenance betraying her bewilderment. “But you have just said—”

“Yes, yes, but don’t you see—” Abby interrupted, only to break off her sentence abruptly, as she realized the folly of expecting Selina to perceive what was so obvious to her own intelligence. She continued, in a gentler voice: “I am afraid that it may have put up her back—roused the independence of spirit which you have so often deplored. Yes, I know that you think she ought to submit meekly to the decrees of her guardian, but recollect that she hasn’t been reared as we were, to regard the lightest pronouncement of a parent—or an aunt!—as something it would be sacrilege to question, and unthinkable to disobey!”

Roused to indignation, Selina retorted: “Well, I must say, Abby! For you to talk in such a way, when you never showed the least respect for Papa’s judgment—! And when I recall how often you came to cuffs with him, casting dear Mama and me into agonies of apprehension—Well! Not, dearest,” she added hastily, “that I mean to say that you ever actually disobeyed Papa, for that I know you didn’t!”

“No,” agreed Abby, in a flattened tone. “A very poor honey, wasn’t I?”

The mournful note startled Miss Wendover, but in a very few seconds she realized that it had its origin in fatigue, aggravated by anxiety. It was incumbent upon her to divert poor Abby’s mind, and with this amiable intention she first told her, with an indulgent laugh, that she was a naughty puss; and then launched into a recital of the various events which had lately occurred in Bath. Her rambling discourse embraced such topics as what her new doctor said about Russian Vapour Baths; how eagerly dear Mrs Grayshott was awaiting the return of her son from India—if the poor young man survived the voyage, so ill as he had been in that horrid country; how much she was obliged to poor Laura Butterbank, who had spared no pains to cheer and support her during Abby’s absence, coming every day to sit with her, and always so chatty and companionable, besides being charmed to execute any little commission in the town. But at this point she broke off, to accuse her sister of not listening to a word she said.

Abby had indeed been allowing the gentle stream of inanities to flow past her, but at this reproach she recalled her thoughts, and said: “Yes, I am! Mrs Grayshott—Miss Butterbank! I’m glad she bore you company while I was away—since Fanny seems not to have done so!”

“Good gracious, Abby, how you do take one up! No one could have been more attentive, the sweet child that she is! But with so much of her time occupied by her music-lessons, and the Italian class, besides having so many of her friends living here, who are for ever inviting her to join them for a country walk, or some picnic-party—perfectly unexceptionable!—I’m sure it is not to be wondered at—I mean, when Laura gave me the pleasure of her company every day there was no reason why Fanny should have stayed at home, and very selfish it would have been in me to have asked it of her! Yes, and most unnatural it would be if she didn’t wish to be with girls of her own age!”

“True! Or even with the fascinating Calverleigh!”

“Now, Abby—”

“Well, it would be,” said Abby candidly. “Any girl would prefer the company of a taking young man to that of her aunt! But it won’t do, Selina.”

“I am persuaded that when you have made his acquaintance—not that I would for a moment encourage her—oh, dear how very affecting it is! You will have to tell her, for I know I could never bring myself to do so!”

“Dearest, it isn’t so dreadful that you need fall into affliction! It’s certainly unfortunate, and I wish with all my heart that she might have been spared such a painful disappointment, but she’ll recover from it. As for forbidding her to see Calverleigh, or telling her the things that are said of him, I’m not such a widgeon! She would fly to his defence! But if he were to draw off? Not compelled to do so, but because he discovered her to be not such a rich plum as he had supposed ? She might suffer a little unhappiness, but not for long. She’s not the girl to wear the willow for a mere flirt!” She added thoughtfully: “And she couldn’t, under those circumstances, fancy herself to be a star-crossed lover, could she ? I do feel that that should be avoided at all costs, for although I’ve never been star-crossed myself I can readily perceive how romantic it would be. Selina, I never knew Fanny’s mother at all well, but you must have done so. Was she high-spirited, like Fanny? Rather too dashing, perhaps, to suit the Wendover notions of propriety?”

“Celia? Good gracious, no!” replied Selina. “She was very pretty—quite lovely, when she was a girl, but she went off sadly, which I do hope and pray Fanny won’t, because she is very like her in countenance,and Mama always was used to say that fair beauties seldom wear well. But Fanny isn’t in the least like her in disposition! She has so much liveliness, and poor Celia was a very quiet, shy girl, and most persuadable! What makes you ask me about her?”

“Something James said. I wasn’t paying much heed, but it was something about Fanny’s too close resemblance to her mother. And then he stopped short, and when I asked him what he meant he fobbed me off, saying that Fanny was as foolish as her mother. But I didn’t think he did mean that, and nor did Mary. She remembers more than I do, of course, and she tells me that you elder ones always thought that something had happened—some indiscretion, perhaps—”

“I never thought any such thing!” intervened Selina firmly. “And if I had I should have considered it most improper to have pried into it! If Mama had wished me to know anything about it, she would have told me!”

“So there was something!” said Abby. “A skeleton in our respectable cupboard! I wish I could know what it was! But I daresay it would prove to be no more than the skeleton of a mouse.”

Not long after eleven o’clock that evening, a gentle tap on the door of Abby’s bedchamber was followed immediately by the entrance of Miss Fanny Wendover, who first peeped cautiously into the room, and then, when she saw her aunt seated at the dressing-table, uttered a joyful squeak, and ran to fling herself into the arms held out to her, exclaiming: “You aren’t in bed and asleep! I told Grimston you wouldn’t be! Oh, how glad I am to see you again! how much I’ve missed you, dear, dear Abby!”

It would not have surprised Abby if she had been greeted with reserve, even with the wary, half-defiant manner of one expectant of censure and ready to defend herself; but there was no trace of consciousness in the welcome accorded her, and nothing but affection in the beautiful eyes which, as Fanny sank down at her feet, clasping her hands, were raised so innocently to hers.

“It’s horrid without you!” Fanny said, giving her hands a squeeze. “You can’t think!”

Abby bent to drop a kiss on her check, but said with mock sympathy: “My poor darling! So strict and unkind as Aunt Selina has been! I feared it would be so.”

“That’s what I’ve missed so much!” Fanny said, with a ripple of mirth. “I am most sincerely attached to Aunt Selina, but—but she is not a great jokesmith, is she? And not a bit corky!”

“I shouldn’t think so,” responded Abby cautiously. “Not that I know what corky means, but it sounds very unlike Selina—and, I may add, sadly unlike the language to be expected of a girl of genteel upbringing!”

That made Fanny’s eyes dance. “Yes—slang! It means—oh, bright, and lively! Like you!”

“Does it indeed? I collect you mean to pay me a handsome compliment, but if ever you dare to attach such an epithet to me again, Fanny, I shall—I shall—well, I don’t yet know what I shall do, but you may depend upon it that it will be something terrible! Corky! Good God!”

“I won’t,” Fanny promised. “Now, do, do be serious, beloved! I have so much to tell you. Something of—of the first importance.”

Abby knew a craven impulse to fob her off, but subdued it, saying in what she hoped was not a hollow voice: “No, have you? Then I will engage to be perfectly serious. What is it?”

Fanny directed a searching look at her. “Didn’t Aunt Selina—or Uncle James, perhaps—tell you about—about Mr Calverleigh?”

“About Mr—? Oh! Is he the London smart you’ve slain with one dart from your eyes? To be sure they did, and very diverting I thought them! That is to say,” she corrected herself, in a ludicrously severe tone, “that of course they are very right in thinking you to be far too young to be setting up a flirt! Most forward of you, my love—quite improper!”

She won no answering gleam. “It isn’t like that,” Fanny said. “From the very first moment that we met—” She paused, and drew a long breath. “We loved one another!” she blurted out.

Abby had not expected such an open avowal, and could think of nothing to say but that it sounded like a fairy-tale, which was not at all what she ought to have said, as she realized an instant later.

Raising glowing eyes to her face, Fanny said simply: “Yes, it is just like that! Oh, I knew you would understand, dearest! Even though you haven’t yet met him! And when you do meet him—oh, you will dote on him! I only wish you may not cut me out!”

Abby accorded this sally the tribute of a smile, but recommended her ecstatic niece not to be a pea-goose.

“Oh, I was only funning!” Fanny assured her. “The thing is that he isn’t a silly boy, like Jack Weaverham, or Charlie Ruscombe, or—or Peter Trevisian, but a man of the world, and much older than I am, which makes it so particularly gratifying—no, I don’t mean that!—so wonderful that in spite of having been on the town, as they say, for years and years he never met anyone with whom he wished to form a lasting connection until he came to Bath, and met me!” Overcome by this reflection, she buried her face in Abby’s lap, saying, in muffled accents: “And he must have met much prettier girls than I am—don’t you think?”