Джорджетт Хейер - The Nonesuch

In the event, when she was ushered into the parlour, Ancilla found Patience alone. She was busy with some white work, hemming a seam with the tiniest of stitches, but she gladly laid it aside when she saw Ancilla. She was quite as eager to discuss the Nonesuch as Charlotte, but being a very well brought-up girl she was much less precipitate, and spent as much as five minutes talking on indifferent topics before saying: “I must tell you that we have had such an interesting visitor this morning, Miss Trent. Papa took him to see the Church: I wonder, did you meet him there?”

“Sir Waldo? Yes, we did. Indeed, we walked back together, all four of us, and parted at the gate. Your papa went off with him then to the stables.”

“Oh, yes! He rode over to call on Papa, and then Papa brought him in to introduce him to Mama and me, and he was with us for quite half-an-hour. What did you think of him? Were you surprised? I own, I was—and Mama too, I think! All the gentlemen have been talking so much about his being such an out-and-out Corinthian that I had pictured something quite different—though I’ve never seen a Corinthian, of course. You have, I expect: is that what they are really like? Do you think he is one?”

“There can be no doubt he is: a very famous one! As for whether all Corinthians are like him, I can’t tell, for I was never acquainted with one.”

Patience said shyly: “I fancy you don’t care for that set, and I must say I never thought I should either, for one hears such things about them! But he is not in the least what I had imagined! Not proud, or—or what Dick calls a dashing blade! He was so easy, and unaffected, and well-informed; and he seems to feel just as he ought about serious matters: he and Papa talked a little of the dreadful hardships the poor people have been suffering, and I could see how pleased Papa was with him. What did you think of him, Miss Trent?”

“Oh, a diamond of the first water!” replied Ancilla promptly. “His air, one of decided fashion; his manners most polished; his address—perfection!”

Patience looked at her. “You didn’t like him?”

“On the contrary! I thought him very amiable.”

“Ah, that signifies that you think his manners amiable, but not—not his disposition!”

“My dear Miss Chartley, I know nothing about his disposition!”

“No, but—Oh, I think I must tell you! It can’t be wrong to do so! Sir Waldo hasn’t mentioned the matter, even to Papa, and we believe he would as lief it were not known, because he told Wedmore that Mr Calver had privately desired him, when the precise state of his affairs should have been ascertained, to make provision for his old servants. Even Papa doesn’t believe Mr Calver did anything of the sort! The Wedmores are to have a pension which will make them comfortable beyond anything they had hoped for: Mrs Wedmore came to tell Honeywick yesterday! You may imagine how much she was overcome—how thankful!”

“Indeed! I am very glad to know that Sir Waldo has done what he should.”

“Yes, and of course it was expected that he would. You may say that he is so wealthy that it means no more to him than it would mean to me to give a penny to a beggar, but what strikes one so particularly is the manner of it. It was done with a delicacy that shows Sir Waldo to be a man of sensibility, not above considering what must have been the feelings of two such faithful people when they discovered how little their service had been valued!”

Ancilla acknowledged it; but murmured wickedly: “He has won your heart, I see! He has great address!”

“Oh, no!” cried Patience, quite shocked. “How can you—? Oh, you are funning, but indeed you should not! I hope my heart is not so easily won!”

Ancilla smiled at her. “I hope it may not be—and certainly not by a Corinthian! Don’t look distressed! I was only funning, of course: I don’t fear for you!”

Recovering her complexion. Patience said: “We shall none of us have time to lose our hearts: he doesn’t mean to settle at Broom Hall, you know.”

“I should suppose not: he would find it very slow. Does he mean to sell the place?”

“We don’t know. He didn’t tell us what he means to do; and, naturally, one would not ask prying questions.” She looked up, as her mother came into the room, and smiled, saying: “I have been telling Miss Trent how agreeable we think Sir Waldo Hawkridge, Mama; gossiping, you will say!”

“I suppose we all gossip about him,” Mrs Chartley replied, shaking hands with Ancilla. “How do you do, Miss Trent? Yes, I must own that I was very pleasantly surprised in Sir Waldo. After the tales we have heard about the Nonesuch I had not expected to find that this Tulip of the Ton , instead of being a great coxcomb, is a man who wants neither sense nor feeling. I thought his manners particularly good, too: he has an air of well-bred ease, and no pretension—and as for his leading our sons astray, nonsense! I hope they may copy him! Indeed, I find myself regretting that Dick is at school, for he would be all the better for a little polish!”

“Town bronze, ma’am? Oh, no!” Ancilla protested.

“Oh, not a la modality! I meant only that it would do him a great deal of good to perceive that a man may be sporting-mad without advertising the circumstance.”

She said no more about Sir Waldo, and Ancilla made no attempt to bring the conversation back to him. His name was not mentioned again until Charlotte, seated beside her in the phaeton, uttered in awed accents: “Well! To think we should have been the first to meet Sir Waldo, and to talk to him! Oh, Miss Trent, wasn’t it nuts for us?”

Ancilla burst out laughing, but protested as well. “Charlotte! Do you wish to see me turned off without a character, you abominable girl? Nuts for us ,indeed!”

“As though Mama would! No, but wasn’t it? Tiffany will be as angry as a wasp!”

Knowing that it would be useless to expect Charlotte to refrain from exulting over her cousin, Ancilla held her peace. She was justified by the result: Tiffany received the news with indifference; for while Charlotte had been making the acquaintance of the Nonesuch she had met and dazzled Lord Lindeth.

Whether the encounter had been by accident or by her own design was a point she left undisclosed. She had refused to accompany her cousin and governess that morning, voting the object of the expedition slow work, and declaring that nothing would prevail upon her to sit bodkin in a carriage designed to carry no more than two persons. Instead, she had had her pretty bay mare saddled, and had ridden out alone, declining the escort of the groom expressly hired to attend her. Since there was nothing unusual about this he made no attempt to dissuade her from conduct unbefitting her years and station, merely remarking to Courtenay’s groom that one of these days, mark his words, Miss would be brought home with her neck broke, ramming her horses along the way she did, and thinking herself at home to a peg, which the lord knew she wasn’t.

The latter part of this criticism Tiffany would have much resented; but she would have been rather pleased than annoyed at the accusation of ramming her horses along, which she considered to be exactly the style to be expected of one who took pride in being a hard-goer. Accustomed, as a little girl, to career all over the countryside on her pony, she had not as yet learnt to accept chaperonage; and although she was willing to ride with Courtenay, or with Ancilla, she found the presence of her groom irksome, and dispensed with it whenever she could. On this occasion she had an excellent reason for doing so: the Squire had let fall the information that young Lord Lindeth was going to fish the stream that ran through the grounds of the Manor; and Tiffany, by no means reconciled to her exclusion from Mrs Mickleby’s dinner party, had every intention of making his acquaintance. Miss Trent might be right in thinking that the party would not suit her, but even less did it suit her to be the last lady of consequence in the neighbourhood to meet the distinguished newcomers. No more than her aunt did she doubt that Mrs Mickleby’s omission of her name from the elegant dinner-card sent to Mrs Underhill sprang from a jealous fear that her own two daughters would be cast into the shade by the appearance on the scene of an accredited beauty. Well! Mrs Mickleby, no doubt hopeful that Mary or Caroline would contrive to attract the interest of a titled gentleman, should discover that one at least of her exalted guests was in no mood to make either of these damsels the object of his gallantry. Lord Lindeth, if the beautiful Miss Wield could contrive it, was going to think the party very flat, when he looked in vain for her amongst the guests.