Джорджетт Хейер: Sprig Muslin

At this point, her helpmate thought it time to intervene. Gareth was beginning to look vexed. A charming fellow, Gary, with as sweet a temper as any man alive, but it was not to be expected that he would bear with complaisance his sister’s strictures on the lady whom he had chosen to be his bride. Why, from amongst all the females only too ready to receive the addresses of a handsome baronet of birth and fortune, he should have selected Hester Theale, who had retired after several unsuccessful seasons to make way for her more marriageable sisters, was certainly a baffling problem, but not one into which Warren thought it seemly to enquire. He therefore cast an admonitory look at his wife, and said: “Lady Hester! I am not particularly acquainted with her, but I believe her to be an unexceptionable young woman. Brancaster accepted your offer, of course.”

“Accepted it?” said Beatrix, emerging from her handkerchief. “Jumped at it, you mean! I imagine he must have swooned from the shock!”

“I wish you will be quiet!” said Warren, exasperated by this intransigent behaviour. “Depend upon it, Gary knows what will suit him better than you can! He is not a schoolboy, but a man of five-and-thirty. No doubt Lady Hester will make him an amiable wife.”

“No doubt!” retorted Beatrix. “Amiable, and a dead bore! No, Warren, I will not hush! When I think of all the pretty and lovely girls who have done their best to attach him, and he tells me that he has offered for an insipid female who had neither fortune nor any extraordinary degree of beauty, besides being stupidly shy and dowdy, I—oh, I could go into strong hysterics!”

“Well, if you do, Trixie, I give you fair warning that I shall empty over you the largest jug of water I can find!” responded her brother with unimpaired cordiality. “Now, don’t be such a goose, my dear! You are putting poor Warren to the blush.”

She sprang up, and grasped the lapels of his exquisitely cut coat of blue superfine, giving him a shake, and looking up into his smiling eyes with the tears still drowning her own. “Gary, you do not love her, nor she you! I have never seen the least sign that she regards you even with partiality. Only tell me what she has to offer you!”

His hands came up to cover hers, removing them from his lapels, and holding them in a strong clasp. “I love you dearly, Trixie, but I can’t permit you to crumple this coat, you know. Weston made it for me: one of his triumphs, don’t you think?” He hesitated, seeing that she was not to be diverted; and then said, slightly pressing her hands: “Don’t you understand? I had thought that you would. You have told me so many times that it is my duty to marry—and, indeed, I know it is, if the name is not to die with me, which I think would be a pity. If Arthur were alive—but since Salamanca I’ve known that I can’t continue all my days in single bliss. So—!”

“Yes, yes, but why this female, Gary?” she demanded. “She has nothing!”

“On the contrary, she has breeding, and good manners, and, as Warren has said, an amiable disposition. I hope I have as much to offer her, and I wish that I had more. But I have not.”

The tears sprang to her eyes again, and spilled over. “Oh, my dearest brother, still? It is more than seven years since—”

“Yes, more than seven years,” he interrupted. “Don’t cry, Trixie! I assure you I don’t grieve any longer, or even think of Clarissa, except now and then, when something occurs which perhaps brings her to my memory. But I have never fallen in love again. Not with any of the delightful girls you have been so obliging as to cast in my way! I believe I could never feel for another what I once felt for Clarissa, so it seems to me that to be making a bid for the sort of girl you would wish me to marry would be a shabby thing to do. I have a fortune large enough to make me an eligible suitor, and I daresay the Stockwells would give their consent, were I to offer for Miss Alice—”

“Indeed they would! And Alice is disposed to have a tendre for you, which you must have perceived. So, why— ? ”

“Well, for that very reason, perhaps. Such a beautiful and spirited girl is worthy of so much more than I could give her. Lady Hester, on the other hand—” He broke off, the ready laughter springing to his eyes. “What a wretch you are, Trix! You are forcing me to say such things as must make me sound like the veriest coxcomb!”

“What you mean,” said Beatrix ruthlessly, “is that Lady Hester is too insipid to like anyone!”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort. She is shy, but I don’t think her insipid. Indeed, I have sometimes suspected that if she were not for ever being snubbed by her father, and her quite odious sisters, she would show that she has a lively sense of the ridiculous. Let us say, merely, that she has not a romantic disposition! And as I must surely be considered to be beyond the age of romance, I believe that with mutual liking to help us we may be tolerably comfortable together. Her situation now is unhappy, which encourages me to hope that she may look favourably upon my proposal.”

Mrs. Wetherby uttered a scornful exclamation, and even her stolid spouse blinked. That he rated his very obvious attractions low was one of the things one liked in Gary, but this was coming it a trifle too strong. “No doubt of that,” Warren said dryly. “May as well wish you happy at once, Gary—which I’m sure I hope you will be. Not but what—However, it is no business of mine! You know best what will suit you.”

It was not to be expected that Mrs. Wetherby could bring herself to agree with this pronouncement; but she appeared to realize the futility of further argument, and beyond prophesying disaster she said no more until she was alone with her husband. She had then a great deal to say, which he bore with great patience, entering no caveat until she said bitterly: “How any man who had been betrothed to Clarissa Lincombe could offer for Hester Theale is something I shall never understand—nor anyone else, I daresay!”

At this point, Warren’s brow wrinkled, and he said in a dubious tone: “Well, I don’t know.”

“I should think not, indeed! Only consider how lovely Clarissa was, and how gay, and how spirited, and then picture to yourself Lady Hester!”

“Yes, but that ain’t what I meant,” replied Warren. “I’m not saying Clarissa wasn’t a regular out-and-outer, because the lord knows she was, but, if you ask me, she had too much spirit!”

Beatrix stared at him. “I never heard you say so before!”

“Haven’t said it before. Not the sort of thing I should say when Gary was betrothed to her, and no use saying it when the poor girl was dead. But what I thought was that she was devilish headstrong, and would have led Gary a pretty dance.”

Beatrix opened her mouth to refute this heresy, and shut it again.

“The fact is, my dear,” pursued her lord, “you were in such high gig because it was your brother who won her that you could never see a fault in her. Mind, I’m not saying that it wasn’t a triumph, because it was. When I think of all the fellows she had dangling after her—lord, she could have been a duchess if she’d wanted! Yeovil begged her three times to marry him: told me so himself, at her funeral. Come to think of it, it was the only piece of good sense she ever showed, preferring Gary to Yeovil,” he added thoughtfully.

“I know she was often a little wild, but so very sweet, and with such engaging ways! I am persuaded she would have learnt to mind Gary, for she did most sincerely love him!”

“She didn’t love him enough to mind him when he forbade her to drive those grays of his,” said Warren grimly. “Flouted him the instant his back was turned, and broke her neck into the bargain. Well, I was devilish sorry for Gary, but I don’t mind owning to you, Trix, that I thought he was better out of the affair than he knew.”