Georgette Heyer - Sylvester

Even as her spirits sank under these reflections Phoebe remembered Tom, who was coming to see her this evening. Hope began to flower; she began to weave plans; and became so absorbed in these that she forgot she had been ordered to attend Lady Marlow in her room as soon as she was dressed, and instead made her way to the gallery in which it was the bleak custom of the family to assemble before dinner.

Sylvester was in the gallery, alone, and glancing through the pages of a periodical. He was standing in front of the fire, which was burning sluggishly, and every now and then gave forth a plume of smoke. He was dressed with his usual quiet elegance in a black coat and pantaloons, and a plain white waistcoat. A single fob hung at his waist, a single diamond glinted from between the folds of his neck-cloth, and one ring, his heavy signet, adorned his hand. He adopted none of the extravagances of the dandy set, but his air was one of decided fashion, and the exquisite cut of his coat made Phoebe feel more than ordinarily dowdy.

She was startled to find him in the gallery, and checked on the threshold, exclaiming involuntarily: ‘Oh-!’

He looked up in faint surprise. After a moment he put the periodical down, and said pleasantly: ‘It’s a bad guest, is it not, who comes down before his host? Let me draw a chair to the fire for you! It is smoking a trifle, but not enough, I am sure, to signify.’

The acid note was faint, but it did not escape her. She came reluctantly down the gallery, saying as she seated herself in the chair he had pulled forward: ‘All the chimneys smoke at Austerby when the wind is in the northeast.’

Having received abundant evidence of the truth of this statement in the bedchamber allotted to him, he did not question it, merely replying: ‘Indeed? Every house has its peculiarities, I fancy.’

‘Do none of the chimneys smoke in your house?’ she asked.

‘I believe they were used to, but it was found possible to remedy the fault,’ he said, conveniently forgetting how often in exasperation at finding the hall at Chance dense with smoke, he had sworn to replace its mediaeval fireplace with a modern grate.

‘How fortunate!’ remarked Phoebe.

Silence fell. Miss Marlow sat gazing abstractedly at a Buhl cabinet; and his grace of Salford, unaccustomed to such treatment, eyed her in gathering resentment. He was much inclined to pick up the newspaper again, and was only deterred from doing so by the reflection that disgust at her want of conduct was no excuse for lowering his own standard of good manners. He said in the voice of one trying to set a bashful schoolgirl at her ease: ‘Your father tells me, Miss Marlow, that you are a notable horsewoman.’

‘Does he?’ she responded. ‘Well, he told us that you showed him the way with the Heythrop.’

He glanced quickly down at her, but decided, after an instant, that this remark sprang from inanity. ‘I imagine I need not tell you that I did no such thing!’

‘Oh, no! I am very sure you did not,’ she said.

He almost jumped; and being now convinced that this seeming gaucherie was deliberate began to feel as much interested as he was ruffled. Perhaps there was rather more to this little provincial than he had supposed, though why she should utter malicious remarks he was at a loss to understand. It was coming it too strong if she was piqued by his failure to recall on what occasion he had danced with her: did she think he could remember every insignificant girl with whom he had been obliged to stand up for one country dance? And what the devil did she mean by relapsing again into indifferent silence? He tried a new tack: ‘It is now your turn, Miss Marlow, to start a topic for conversation!’

She withdrew her gaze from the cabinet, and directed it at him for a dispassionate moment. ‘I haven’t any conversation,’ she said.

He hardly knew whether to be diverted or vexed; he was certainly intrigued, and had just decided that although he had not the remotest intention of offering for this outrageous girl, it might not be unamusing to discover what (if anything) lay behind her odd manners when Lady Marlow came into the gallery. Finding her guest there before her she pointed out to him that he was in advance of the hour, which nettled him into replying: ‘You must blame the wind for being in the northeast, ma’am.’

The shaft went wide. ‘You mistake, Duke: no blame attaches to your being so early. Indeed, I consider it a good fault! My daughter has been entertaining you, I see. What have you been talking of together, I wonder?’

‘We can scarcely be said to have talked of anything,’ replied Sylvester. ‘Miss Marlow informs me that she has no conversation.’

He glanced at Phoebe as he spoke, and encountered such a burning look of reproach that he repented, and tried to mend matters by adding with a laugh: ‘In point of fact, ma’am, Miss Marlow entered the room a bare minute before yourself, so we have had little opportunity to converse.’

‘My daughter-in-law is shy,’ said Lady Marlow, with a look at Phoebe which promised signal vengeance presently.

It occurred to Sylvester that after her first start of surprise Phoebe had not appeared to be at all shy. He remembered that Lady Ingham had said she was not just in the ordinary style, and wondered if there might be something more in her than he had as yet detected. Since she was making no effort to engage his interest he concluded that she did not know that he had come to Austerby to look her over. That made it fairly safe to try whether he could charm her out of her farouche behaviour. He smiled at her, and said: ‘I must hope, then, that she will not be too shy to converse with me when we are a little better acquainted.’

But by the time he rose from the dinner table all desire to become better acquainted with Phoebe had left him, and the only thing he did desire was an excuse to leave Austerby not later than the following morning. As he sat through an interminable dinner, enduring on one side a monologue delivered by his hostess, at her most consequential, on such topics of interest as the defections of the latest incumbent of the Parish, the excellence of the Bishop, the decay of modern manners, and the customs obtaining in her dear father’s household; and on the other a series of sporting recollections from his host, the look of the satyr became ever more strongly marked on his countenance. Never had he been subjected to such treatment as he was meeting with at Austerby! When he accepted invitations to stay with friends he knew that he would find himself one of a party composed of agreeable persons, with whom he was well acquainted; and that every form of sport or amusement would be provided for their entertainment. One hunted, or one shot; and if the weather became inclement one played at whist, and billiards, took part in theatricals, danced at impromptu balls, and flirted desperately with the prettiest of the ladies. That was how he entertained his own guests: so much the way of his world that it never occurred to him that quite a number of the hostesses who secured him for their parties put forth their best efforts to entertain him royally. But when he found himself the sole guest at Austerby, had been promised by his host an evening’s whist with two obscure country gentlemen; and, by his hostess, the felicity of meeting the Bishop of Bath and Wells, it occurred to him forcibly that in making no proper provision for his entertainment Lord Marlow had been guilty of a social solecism.

He had been received by a hostess who seemed to think she was conferring a high treat upon him. He was contemptuous of flattery, he disliked toadeaters, he did not consciously expect to be welcomed with distinction, but to be met with condescension was a new experience which set him instantly on his high ropes.

His bedchamber was rendered untenable by the smoke which gushed from the chimney; the water in the brass ewer had been tepid, so that his valet had had to fetch a fresh supply from the kitchens; the eldest daughter of the house had uttered no more than half a dozen sentences since they had entered the dining room; and although Lord Marlow’s wines were good, the dinner set before the company was as commonplace as it was long drawn-out.

By the time Lord Marlow, promising some rubbers of piquet later in the evening, took him to join the ladies in the drawing room, he had resigned himself to boredom; but when the first object to meet his gaze, upon entering the room, was a grim female, dressed in black bombasine and seated bolt upright in a chair slightly drawn back from the circle round the fire, he realized that he had grossly underestimated the horrors that lay before him. Besides the grim female two schoolgirls had joined the party, the elder a bouncing young woman with a high complexion, and her father’s rather protuberant blue eyes; the younger a sallow girl too bashful to speak above a whisper or without blushing fierily from neck to brow. Lady Marlow made them both known to him, but ignored the claims of the grim lady to a share of his civility. He concluded that she must be the governess; and instantly determined to show his hostess what he thought of her insufferable manners. He favoured Miss Battery with a slight bow, and his most pleasant smile, and directed at Lady Marlow an inquiring look she was unable to ignore.

‘Oh-! My daughters’ governess,’ she said shortly. ‘Pray come to the fire, Duke!’

Sylvester, choosing instead a chair rather nearer to Miss Battery than to the fireside party, addressed a civil remark to her. She answered it with composure, but gruffly, looking at him with unnerving fixity.

Lord Marlow, always very easy and good-natured with his dependants, then added to his wife’s displeasure by saying: ‘Ah, Miss Battery! I have not seen you since I came home! How do you go on? But I need not ask: you are always well!’

That gave Sylvester the opportunity to ask her if she were related to a family of the same name living in Norfolk. She replied: ‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. Never heard of them until your grace mentioned them.’

As the family had no existence outside his imagination this was not surprising; but his question seemed to have broken the ice: Miss Battery, appearing slightly mollified, disclosed that she came from Hertfordshire.

Lady Marlow, breaking rudely in on this, said loudly that she had no doubt the Duke would enjoy a little music, and waved Phoebe towards the pianoforte.

Phoebe was an indifferent performer, but as neither her father nor Lady Marlow was at all musical they were perfectly satisfied, as long as she did not falter, or play any unmistakably wrong notes. Sylvester was not musical either, but he had been used to listen to the first musicians of the day, and thought he had never heard anyone play with less taste or feeling. He could only be thankful that she did not play the harp; but when, in response to some affectionate urging from her father, she sang an old ballad in a small, wooden voice he was much inclined to think that even a harp might have been preferable.

At half-past eight the schoolroom party withdrew, and after half an hour’s desultory conversation the tea tray was brought in. Sylvester saw the end of his purgatory, and so it was. Punctually at half-past nine Lady Marlow informed him that they kept early hours at Austerby, bade him a formal goodnight, and went away, with Phoebe following in her wake. As they mounted the stairs she said complacently that the evening had gone off very well. She added that although she feared the Duke was a man of fashion, she was on the whole pleased with him. ‘Your father informs me that hunting will be out of the question tomorrow,’ she observed. ‘If it should not be snowing I shall suggest to Salford that he might like to walk with you and your sisters. Miss Battery will accompany you, of course, but I shall tell her she may fall behind, with the girls, and give her a hint at the same time not to be putting herself forward, as I was excessively surprised to see her doing this evening.’

This programme, which, a few hours earlier, would have appalled her, Phoebe listened to with a calm born of her fixed resolve to be gone from Austerby long before it could be put into execution. Parting from Lady Marlow at the head of the stairs she went away to her bedchamber, knowing that both Susan and Miss Battery would come to her there, and that it would consequently be dangerous to repair to the morning room before she had received these visitors.

Susan was soon got rid of; but Miss Battery, who followed her, showed a disposition to linger. Seating herself at the foot of the bed, and tucking her hands into the sleeves of her thick woollen dressing gown, she told Phoebe that she thought she had done Sylvester less than justice.