Practical Heart, page 11
“We must not not permit it to come up,” he said flatly.
“But your lordship,” Miss Spencer insisted, “I am sure not even you can dominate an evening’s conversation so completely as to prevent it! Certainly not at a card party…”
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted. “Well then, we shall say the rest of the house is under renovation—cannot be seen—we are so sorry, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Yes,” she answered anxiously, “but it seems so unlikely—at the height of the Season, too.”
“In that case, we might say Mrs. Trigg has the ague, and cancel the evening altogether,” Valerian suggested.
But Miss Spencer did not like this, either. “It would only delay it,” she said. “I believe we shall be obliged to say it is being renovated after all…perhaps, that it has just been painted?”
“That seems quite reasonable to me,” said Sherbourne, and so the plan was adopted. The question of whether it would seem quite reasonable to the Countess of Ransford remained unanswered, of necessity, until the following evening at ten o’clock. At that hour punctually, the doorbell wheezed and groaned, and Trigg entered the drawing room to announce rather predictably: “The Earl and Countess of Ransford. Lady Caroline Yates. Lord Courtney Yates.”
Chapter IX
The Countess ran to examine the fire screen as soon as the usual greetings had been exchanged. “O, Caroline!” she cried, summoning her daughter, “only look! How exquisite it is!”
Lady Caroline had been engaged in exclaiming over Felicity’s simple blue gown, which she found charming, but she now went to her mother’s side. Felicity was at a loss for where to rest her eyes. She did not dare, yet, to look at Courtney, and had not met his glance even when they murmured “How do you do?” to one another. Now, casting about desperately for an object that might feasibly engage her attention, her eyes alit at last upon Miss Spencer, and she went up to this lady and gripped her hand rather compulsively.
“O, Gillian, may I not leave?” she asked in an urgent whisper.
“Certainly not,” said Gillian firmly. She had had the devil’s own time persuading the girls that they must come down in the first place: Cordelia had objected on the grounds that she was too weak to join the company—and she did indeed look pale and worn. Felicity, of course, had been utterly terrified at the thought of having to meet Courtney again.
“Because he despises me, Gillian,” she had explained. “I am—I am poison to him!”
For the hundredth time, Gillian tried to convince her charge that she and the Lord Yates misunderstood one another completely.
“But how do you know?” Felicity had insisted.
Miss Spencer did not feel at liberty to betray Courtney’s confidence. “You must simply believe me,” she had said, at a loss.
“I cannot,” said Felicity. She had agreed to come down only when threatened with Gillian’s strongest displeasure. “But I will not talk to him, you understand. That would be impossible, Gillian.”
“I hope you will not be so rude as to refuse to greet him!” said Miss Spencer.
“No, I suppose…” Felicity began, then paused in unhappy meditation. “I shall say good evening, but that is all.”
Cordelia had agreed to come down only when assured that no one would expect her to make conversation. Now both girls turned their imploring gazes upon Miss Spencer, so that she felt unspeakably cruel for having forced them to join the party, and obliged to say or do something excessively diverting.
“Felicity,” she said aloud, “do go and explain to her Ladyship how the fire screen was worked,” for she had discovered that the troublesome screen belonged to her younger charge. “Cordelia, come and sit by me, my dear, and we shall beg Lord Yates to tell us about Oxford, for I know you will like to hear what a public education consists of.” The girls followed these gentle commands obediently, and for a time the drawing room hummed with the quiet murmur of private conversations. At length, however, the Viscount suggested that the cards be brought out, and two parties were got up. The Earl and Countess, Valerian, and Miss Spencer made up a whist table, though Sherbourne would rather have played a game that allowed more conversation. The younger people, after a brief discussion of the merits of Speculation and Commerce, settled at last to a game of Vingt-un.
“O, but we have no fish!” cried Cordelia suddenly.
“Haven’t we, my dear?” asked her father. “What ever became of the mother-of-pearl set we had?”
Cordelia glared at Sherbourne, who suddenly remembered that they had been obliged to sell the mother-of-pearl counters in order to pay for their dinner one evening. “O dear!” he said, colouring up slightly, “we must have left them at Catteroyes. But never mind—pins will serve as well.”
“Pins, Papa?” said Felicity, distressed at having to make do.
“Yes indeed, my dear,” he exclaimed gaily. “Run and fetch your workbasket; the Earl and Countess will understand.”
“Yes, of course we do,” the Countess agreed hurriedly, and with sincerity. “How clever you are to think of it, Valerian.”
“I shall be glad to fetch your workbox for you, Miss Felicity,” Courtney offered gravely.
“O no!” cried Felicity, doubly horrified at the prospect of his Lordship’s doing her a favour and at the possibility of his seeing the rest of The Haven. “I shall—you should never find it, I assure you. It is—excuse me,” and ran off, blushing with confusion. Courtney was left to bow at her fleeing figure.
Gillian saw her opportunity and took it. “She is distressed,” she explained, “because several of the other rooms are now being renovated; they do look a fright!”
“O,” the Countess interjected. “I am so disappointed to hear it. I had looked forward to making a tour of the house. I protest; I have not seen it in years.”
“I am so very sorry,” said Gillian, smiling a warm, apologetic smile. “Perhaps when the redecoration has been completed…”
“O yes, if you please,” the Countess took up. “And do you know, I was thinking the other day—I have not seen Catteroyes in ages! Is it still as elegant as it always was?”
“O yes,” the Viscount assured her. “In fact, it is precisely because we are so accustomed to the graciousness of Catteroyes that I decided to redo The Haven; it was becoming quite shabby, you know.”
“Surely not,” the Countess objected politely. “Such a lovely house! O and Valerian,” she continued, sweetly resolved to maintain a gentle flow of conversation, “do you know, I realized I have no notion why Catteroyes is called so? What does it mean?”
Valerian smiled, for she had touched upon one of his favourite subjects. “It is for the four kings who are supposed to have stopped there,” he began to explain, “the quatres rois—Catteroyes, do you see?”
“How delightful! Then it is very old, I suppose. Which kings were they?”
Felicity reentered, her workbasket in her hands, as her father acquainted the Countess with the legend attached to their country home. Miss Spencer supervised the distribution of the pins and the cards, and arranged for the company to be seated comfortably. She would have liked to sit with the younger people, for she knew both girls would feel she had deserted them, but there seemed no way to accomplish this. She suggested that Lord Yates might prefer to play at whist, but this the Viscount would not hear of, telling her that he longed most sincerely to see her stratagems applied to that game.
The room subsided shortly into a near silence, broken only by the whist-players’ official remarks and the Vingt-un players’ stilted ones. None of the young people was actually interested in the game, Cordelia being too sulky, Felicity too ashamed, Courtney too interested in the latter lady, and his sister too intimidated by the former to concentrate much upon their hands. The pins proved difficult to use, as they had a habit of rolling about, off the table and into other people’s piles. At last Gillian fetched her own work-case and Cordelia’s, and gave each player a pincushion or a bit of cloth on which to keep his counters. Unfortunately, this simple remedy to a trifling trouble soon precipitated disaster.
Felicity, despite her distraction, had been taking nearly every rubber, twice acquiring exactly twenty-one points and several times winning entirely by accident, since she tended to sum up the pips incorrectly. Cordelia remarked, rather unkindly, as Felicity took her nine or tenth pin from the center of the table, “It is tiring, this game; so much of it depends on chance.”
Felicity, in the midst of the act of sticking the pin in her cushion, looked up, an injured expression in her eyes. “I suppose it is largely luck,” she began, but she was interrupted by a sharp, involuntary yelp from Lord Yates, who sat next to her.
“O, my dear sir! O, good Heavens,” cried Felicity, as she realized that she had stuck her pin into his Lordship’s hand instead of into the cushion. Tears started to her eyes instantly and she leapt from the table, upsetting all the cards, and ran blindly from the drawing room.
The unhappy Yates stood up, too, and was in the act of saying, “It is nothing at all. Look, it is not even bleeding. I did not mean to cry out—” when the drawing room doors slammed behind Felicity. He stood still for a moment, looking at all the company, then said, “I beg you will excuse me,” and left the room rather abruptly. “Miss Collins!” he called, catching sight of her blue skirt as it disappeared at the top of the staircase. “Miss Collins, please,” he repeated, rushing headlong up the stairs. His only thought was to save her from embarrassment; the fact that he was about to enter a young lady’s sitting room did not occur to him. “Miss Collins,” he said a third and final time, as he found her, crumpled in a chair and sobbing, “please, listen to me.”
“O no!” Felicity wailed, burying her face in her hands, too distraught to do otherwise. “O no!”
“My dear ma’am,” he said, reaching helplessly for her hands, “I am not even hurt! I beg you will look. You have done no harm; I promise you have not.”
“Please,” said she, when she could say anything at all, “O, please, go away.”
“But not while you are so unhappy,” he objected, kneeling so as to look into her face. “I beg you will look at me, Miss Collins,” he said, smiling his sweet, serious smile. “I have come to make you feel better! Don’t cry, I can’t bear it.”
She peeped up for a moment, revealing reddened eyes and tearstreaked cheeks. Her golden curls had tumbled all round her face, and Courtney longed to reach for her, to comfort her. Suddenly, though, he became aware of his surroundings. “But this is abominable!” he said, before he had time to think.
“Do you live here? Is this your room?”
Felicity nodded her head and bowed it again almost to her lap, this time in even greater shame.
“But this cannot be,” Courtney exclaimed. “It is so—shabby, so poor! You have no fire, no curtains on the bed, no—my dear girl, does not your father care for you?” And his voice became fierce with a desire to protect his beloved.
Felicity was terrified at this change in tone. Not daring to lift her face, she said brokenly, “He cannot; he is too poor.” Her words, since she appeared to be addressing her knees, came out muffled and slurred; Lord Yates did not understand them.
“What is this?” he demanded, placing a hand upon her head at last and still speaking with the new fierceness. “Tell me again.”
Felicity felt as if she were miles and miles away from her family; she had never felt so lonely and frightened in her life. She thought of her father and sister, safe in the drawing room, but they seemed as far away as if there were an ocean separating them from her. She forced herself to repeat what she had said. “Papa cannot; we have no money.”
The fierceness in Lord Yates’s breast subsided into a numbed confusion. “Cannot?” he echoed. “But I always understood—that is, I thought your father was a man of fortune!”
Felicity shook her head mutely, but with energy.
“This is monstrous,” Courtney declared. “How long has this been going on?” It never once occurred to him that perhaps he ought not to inquire so particularly into the Viscount’s affairs; he was conscious only of Felicity, and how she had been obliged to live.
“Always,” she whispered, feeling that her every word was treason to her father. “We have always been poor—at least, since I can remember.” She was somewhat calmer, only breaking now and then into a long, choking sob.
“It is appalling,” said Courtney, largely to himself.
“I had no notion, I assure you—” but at this point he was interrupted by the entrance of Miss Spencer. It had taken her some time to follow them from the drawing room, for she had spent several moments debating what to say when she found them. It would be an awkward situation at best, she concluded, before excusing herself to the company and marching dutifully up the stairs.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, hesitating in the doorway, “I thought perhaps Felicity had taken ill again.” She approached the chair her charge sat in, while Courtney backed off uncomfortably. “Are you feeling well, my dear?”
It struck his Lordship, for the first time, that he had no business being where he was. “I pray you will excuse me,” he said, colouring and addressing himself to Miss Spencer. “I followed Miss Collins up the stairs without thinking—I did not mean…”
“It is quite understandable,” Gillian replied, smiling. She was trying to recover the sympathy that had been between them during their private tête-à-tête so many weeks before.
“On the contrary, it is inexcusably rude,” he said seriously, his classically moulded lips refusing to respond to her smile. “An hundred apologies would not suffice.” He started to remove himself from the room.
“My Lord, stop a moment, I beg,” Gillian called after him. “I think—I know you must be astonished to find The Haven in this condition, but I pray you will say nothing of it to anyone until you and I have spoke about it.”
The firm, courteous set of Courtney’s features appeared to alter slightly, but he only said, “Of course, I shall be happy to oblige you,” and bowed briefly before retiring.
He found his mother hovering on the doorsill of the drawing room. The rest of the company, too, stood in various attitudes of hesitance and anxiety. “Is she well?” asked the Countess, distractedly fingering her paruree. Her sweet face expressed a sincere motherly concern.
“She is—a trifle ill,” he said. “Miss Spencer is seeing to her now.”
“Do you suppose it was the vapours?” persisted the Countess.
Her son took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
“You need not be concerned, Mother,” he said. “I promise you there is no need.”
“Perhaps she will like me to go up to her?” Lady Caroline suggested timidly.
“Not at all,” Courtney replied, somewhat hastily. “I am sure she will be with us again in a moment.”
But Gillian, who entered as he spoke these words, had a different tale to tell. “Felicity is—a little overset. She told me she has had another of her headaches all day, and I suppose the accident was the last straw.”
“But Felicity does not have headaches!” Cordelia objected. “She has always been as healthy as a horse.”
Gillian continued as if she had not heard Cordelia. “She begs you to accept her most profound apologies, and hopes she did not hurt you, Lord Yates—”
“Not in the least,” he interrupted courteously.
“And she asks to be excused to all the company. Now, shall we continue with our cards?”
But the Countess felt that it was time to leave. “It has been a lovely evening, truly, but it is getting rather late, and Caroline has not been to bed before two this se’ennight and more,” she explained. “Anyway, I am sure you will wish to attend to poor Felicity.”
Miss Spencer strove again to reassure her of Felicity’s health, but she accepted the Countess’s excuses graciously and had to admit, once they had left, that she had been glad to see them go. She stayed for a while in the drawing room, before going up to her younger charge, to reveal the full details of the catastrophe to the Viscount and Cordelia.
“And all over a mere pin-prick!” Cordelia exclaimed in exasperation when she had done. “Lord Yates will be certain to tell his father what he saw; it is too much to expect him not to.”
“He did give his word he would not,” Gillian pointed out.
“Yes, but—even if it is only he who knows, the damage has been done.”
“Miss Spencer,” Valerian interrupted, “you do not think Courtney had been meaning to offer for Felicity?”
“So much has passed, I hardly know what his intentions could be any more. I suppose it is possible…”
“Damnation!” exploded the Viscount. “Pardon me, but it is really too vexatious. Ransford is simply swimming in money, you know; it would be the perfect solution. Is there nothing we can do?”
“Perhaps,” Gillian commenced doubtfully, “if I can speak to both of them—one at a time, of course—I could contrive a sort of meeting…so that they would at least have an opportunity of discussing their feelings.”
“I suppose, Father,” Cordelia said slowly, “that if Lord Yates were to offer for Felicity, you would accept?”
“With the greatest joy in the world,” said his Lordship, forgetting how unfair this answer might appear to Cordelia.
He remembered when she burst out angrily, “Indeed! I have always suspected it! You would do anything—for that ninnyhammer—but for me…when Lord Vaughn offered—” She broke off, sobbing loudly, and rushed from the room.
“Try to be kind to Felicity,” Miss Spencer adjured her as she flew past, but she did not expect her words to have much effect. And indeed, Cordelia called back over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs, “I won’t.” Miss Spencer, feeling more than slightly irritated, excused herself to the Viscount and went upstairs.
