Practical Heart, page 5
“Papa’s in rare frame this morning,” Cordelia observed when she had obeyed this directive.
“Does this happen to him often?” Gillian inquired.
“O, never!” Felicity answered. “Papa has the sweetest disposition!”
“Indeed?” Miss Spencer replied. “Very interesting.” The sleepy fogs into which she had escaped the night before were now beginning to clear. She relinquished them with reluctance.
“Did you sleep well, ma’am?” Cordelia asked.
“Very well, thank you.”
“I am glad to hear it,” the Viscount, who was just then entering the drawing room, informed her, “for we have a great deal to do today. The coffee, by the way, has been taken care of.”
“Excellent, your Lordship. Now what exactly is this great deal we have to do?”
“My dear ma’am” said the Viscount, in shocked accents, “have you forgot? Today is the day—the day, Miss Spencer!”
“Is it?”
“Miss Spencer, the day when Mr. Grouse expects his payment.”
“O!”
“We must find a way to evade him.”
“Is that a part of my duties?” Miss Spencer inquired gently, as the last soft shred of sleepiness floated from her mind.
“Oh, Miss Spencer,” the Viscount groaned, running his fingers through his curly hair, “I beg you will not start enumerating your duties too! I have had enough of that this morning from Mrs. Trigg.”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Gillian, recalling herself fully to consciousness at last. “I did not mean to—permit me to wake up for a moment, please. I shall soon be thinking again, I promise.”
“I await the event with impatience,” Valerian answered, and then lapsed into a silence shared by all the occupants of the room. It was broke at last by Cordelia, who had gone to the window and now announced. “Trigg is coming; we shall have our breakfast soon.”
“Huzza,” said the Viscount dispiritedly.
“Huzza, indeed,” said Gillian, who had by now recovered her customary energy. “My Lord, I take it you are concerned with the payment you owe today?”
“Yes, of course I am,” he replied irritably. “Is this an example of the celebrated ‘thinking’ we were promised a few minutes ago? Because if it is, I had rather be left alone.”
“I beg you will not be short with me, my Lord,” said Miss Spencer, though she did not sound much injured.
“Yes, of course. I apologise, ma’am. I am just—a little distracted, I suppose.”
“Indeed, my Lord. There is no need of apologies, but let us try to think together. Now, Mr. Grouse wants his money.”
“True.”
“But you have not got it.”
“Very true.”
“He will not be satisfied without it.”
“Excessively true.”
“Unless…”
“My Lord, I know you will not like this suggestion, but I think it necessary now that we return to the idea of Mr. Grouse’s daughter.”
“Mr. Grouse’s daughter,” he repeated. “Oh yes, Miss Mouse.”
“I think Miss Mouse may prove to be a very helpful concept this morning.”
“Miss Spencer, I am as always all admiration for the scope and acuity of your mind. However, I must confess that your meaning in this case entirely escapes me.”
“Perhaps you do not recall my suggestion of last evening?”
“Perhaps indeed I do not,” he agreed.
“Then I must—though I dislike it extremely—refresh your memory. It seemed to me, my Lord, that if Mr. Grouse could not recover his money, he might accept your title in its stead.”
“Is that how it seemed to you?” inquired the Viscount.
“That is precisely how it seemed to me.”
“Then I must admit, once again, that your—I am sure, very perceptive—assessment of the situation leaves me in the dark.”
“She means you could marry Miss Grouse, Papa,” Cordelia explained baldly.
“Oh, dear heaven,” the viscount exclaimed, “is that what she means?”
“I think so, Papa,” Felicity put in.
“Then she must surely have gone mad?”
“On the contrary, Papa, she looks quite sensible to me,” Cordelia pointed out.
“Then surely you must have gone mad?”
“You do not wish to marry Miss Grouse?” Felicity ventured at last.
“Wish to marry Miss Grouse? O, the mouths of babes! You see, Miss Spencer, I call upon you to witness and to understand the profundity, the exactitude, the precision of my daughter’s last remark. I do not wish to marry Miss Grouse, she supposes. She is correct, Miss Spencer. She is thoroughly correct.”
“Then do not!” said Miss Spencer agreeably. “Do not marry her at all, if your inclinations oppose it so strongly. Never marry her. In fact, I invite you most cordially not even to offer for her. But, my Lord, do not you feel that you could—since necessity demands it—indicate to Mr. Grouse that such a possibility has indeed crossed your mind? Could you not—given that you have no alternative but to go to prison—pretend to desire her company? Could not you—and I hope you will pardon my indelicacy—feign interest in Miss Grouse?”
“Oh!” said Valerian, to whom this possibility had not occurred. “Well, I do not know. Perhaps I could.”
“I am sure you could,” Cordelia said bracingly.
“Papa can do anything,” Felicity pointed out to no one in particular.
“I suppose I could,” the Viscount agreed at last, “and yet, the notion does not appeal to me strongly, by any means.”
“I trust the notion of gaol is even less attractive?” Gillian said dryly.
“Somewhat less attractive,” he assented slowly.
“Then let us all drink our coffee,” Miss Spencer recommended, as Mrs. Trigg appeared with a steaming potful, “and consider how best this is to be done.”
It was decided that an invitation should be sent immediately to Mr. and Miss Grouse, begging them to dine with the Viscount that evening. This note written and despatched, Valerian left Miss Spencer to persuade the Triggs that they not only would, but ardently wished, to prepare and serve a formal dinner that evening, and went off himself to visit Miles Lawrence.
Miss Spencer was in the attic, engaged in finding both a dining table and a feasible excuse for setting it up in the drawing room, when the doorbell groaned resoundingly and Trigg apprised her of the presence in the house of Lady Caroline Yates and her brother Courtney.
“Did you put them in the drawing room, Trigg?” she inquired urgently.
“Should I have, Miss?” said Trigg, imperfectly concealing a look of delighted mischief.
“Oh, Great Heavens!” she cried, rushing from the attic and down the stairs. “Lady Caroline,” she said when she had, rather out of breath, reached the front hall, “my Lord Yates, forgive us. I am terribly sorry. Of course you ought not to have been kept waiting here. Do come into the drawing room,” she invited, then lied fluently. “The Viscount has been meaning to turn Trigg off these five years, but there you have it: One’s servants become attached to one, do not they, and one cannot persuade them to retire. Quite frankly, Trigg is not only forgetful, he is also a little deaf, and it does make him difficult to deal with.”
Both brother and sister smiled their sweet, serious smiles and begged Miss Spencer not to be disturbed. “We only came to thank the Viscount for a delightful evening,” Courtney informed her. “I take it he is not at home?”
“No, I believe he is out, but the Misses Collins are here. Allow me—O dear, I must beg you to excuse me for a moment, for it will not do to ring for Trigg to fetch them; he simply does not hear the bell, you know.”
“Of course,” Lady Caroline agreed, and Gillian went out into the hall again, wondering as she did so at the astonishing conviction and ease of her own lies.
Cordelia and Felicity were discovered at the top of the stairway, waiting with evident curiosity to be told who was calling.
“Lady Caroline, Lord Yates,” Gillian informed them.
“Is it?” asked Felicity, breaking, to Gillian’s surprise, into a rosy blush. “Shall we go and speak to them?”
“Of course, we will, you ninnyhammer,” was Cordelia’s response. She appeared to be quite displeased with the identity of the visitors, but there was no time to speculate on her sentiments. Instead, Miss Spencer straightened their curls and escorted them back down the stairs and into the drawing room.
Within a very short time it was clear to Miss Spencer that Courtney had had an incentive in making this visit beyond simply gratifying his sister’s wishes. He was excessively polite both to Cordelia and to Gillian herself, but he had eyes for Felicity alone. She, unfortunately, hardly said good day to him before she turned her attention exclusively to Lady Caroline, with whom she seemed to have an hundred things to discuss. Courtney conversed pleasantly with Cordelia, and was careful to include Gillian in his flow of remarks, but his glance turned ever and anon to Felicity with, Miss Spencer thought privately, a lamentable lack of subtlety. Felicity, however, seemed not to have noticed, for when their guests had gone she spoke only of Lady Caroline. How pretty she was! How agreeable! Did not Cordelia find her so?
But Cordelia apparently did not find her so. Something—(no one could guess what)—had occurred to make Cordelia, ill-disposed by nature, even less complaisant than usual. She refused to say anything of Yates except that he seemed extraordinarily bashful, and she branded his sister “an insipid little chit.”
“What does ‘insipid’ mean?” Felicity inquired maddeningly; but Cordelia did not answer. Instead, she turned her back and fled, noisily, up the stairs. Gillian left them to their dispute and went down to the kitchens to plan that evening’s dinner with Mrs. Trigg.
About midway through the morning, a rather quizzical note was delivered to The Haven. It was addressed to the Viscount, but since he was still away from home Miss Spencer tore it open. “My dear Sir:” it read, “It is with at most surprise and delight which I respond to your kind invitation of this morning. Also my Father, who, like me, will be honoured to join you at your dinner. Looking forward to reknowing our acquaintance, I am your et cetera, Miss Thomasina Grouse.” Miss Spencer turned the note over to examine the seal, which was in the form of a coat of arms, embossed with the letters “TG” and nothing more. It was, all in all, most peculiar.
The Viscount, when he arrived at last, received this missive with mingled emotions. “The vulgarity!” he cried at first. “The ineffable vulgarity! I suppose by ‘at most’ she means utmost…still, it is for the best that they accepted, is not it?”
Miss Spencer assured him that it was. “We shall be obliged to serve dinner in the drawing room, you know,” she continued. “I think we shall do best not to explain it at all—simply to imply that this is the ordinary location for an intimate dinner in society. Does that sound possible?”
“Certainly. O, and you remind me, Miles has charged me with a message for you. It was…Oh yes, he commends himself to the General and volunteers for duty tonight, should he be needed.”
“Ho ho,” said Miss Spencer from between tight lips. “I think, Mr. Lawrence need not trouble himself with us this evening.”
“Do you not find him amusing?” the Viscount asked, peering at her closely through his thick lenses. “He has been of enormous assistance to us, you know.”
“I find his services,” Gillian replied slowly, “more welcome in the breach than the observance.”
“Do you! Extraordinary!” was Valerian’s reply. “I must rush off now and dress for dinner; excuse me.”
“Of course. Oh, your Lordship may wish to know that Lady Caroline and her brother called this morning.”
“This is news, indeed,” Valerian answered eagerly.
“Do you think perhaps Courtney will like to marry Cordelia? Or, is that too much to ask of the gods?”
“It is too early, surely, to speculate upon such things. If he offers for either of your daughters, however, I expect it will be Felicity.”
“Really? Did they seem to get on well, then?”
“My Lord, I believe they exchanged four words—two Good-Days and two Good-Byes. My hypothesis is based merely on the gazes he lavished upon her.”
“Oh. And did she gaze back, perhaps?”
“Not at all. She confined her looks almost entirely to Lady Caroline—which, if I may say so, bespoke a better upbringing than his moon-struck behaviour. Still, I consider the situation to be not entirely hopeless.”
The Viscount stood silently, seeming to ponder this opinion.
“My Lord,” Gillian said at last, “I suggest you go and dress. Until something more promising develops, we must focus our attention upon Miss Grouse.”
“Ah yes, Miss Mouse,” he replied, starting slightly from his musings and mounting the stairs. “I wonder how one polishes one’s boots.”
As this last remark did not seem to be addressed to her, Miss Spencer let it go by and proceeded with her own arrangements. These included the setting of the table, the procuring and lighting of some candles, a last-minute visit to the kitchens, and attendance upon the girls, who, she realized suddenly, were so self-sufficient as to require the least of her attentions instead of the most. She remembered to thank them for this as she helped them into their new gowns, and found with satisfaction that they had so far settled their misunderstanding as to offer to brush one another’s hair while she went off to dress. It was, in the event, their father who proved most troublesome: he, of course, still had no notion how to tie his cravat. He entered the drawing room some minutes before five o’clock with a helpless expression in his eyes to solicit Miss Spencer’s aid in this endeavour.
“I should be happy to help you, my Lord,” she said, “but I really have no idea how to go about it myself.”
Valerian regarded her fretfully. “Do you think we’d better send for Miles, after all?”
But this Miss Spencer would not hear of. “Never mind,” she said suddenly, “we shall make do somehow. Sit here and I shall go round behind you, and see if I cannot arrange it after all.”
The Viscount sat obediently, if anxiously, upon a small velvet chair while Gillian fussed with the linen cravat. “It may not be perfect,” she said finally, surveying her work with a critical eye, “but I trust Mr. Grouse will not be aware of that.”
“I hope you are right,” the Viscount replied, “for I believe I hear their carriage driving up now.”
Indeed, a few moments later the doorbell uttered its sick moan and Trigg entered the drawing room to announce Mr. Thomas Grouse and Miss Thomasina Grouse. Mr. Grouse came in first, smiling his malevolent smile, and was followed by a very plain young woman some twenty-five years of age. Miss Spencer eyed her surreptitiously as Valerian performed introductions. She was, like her father, rather a round person, both in figure and in countenance. Out of her round face peered two round eyes, and a fat little mouth shaped like an O. Her complexion was sallow, her lashes pale, and all in all she seemed to substantiate the Viscount’s description of her as “colourless” very well. She bobbed rotundly to Miss Spencer, and to the girls when they had entered, and allowed Sherbourne to kiss her plump hand without a word or a blush. Then, as if they had rehearsed it, she and her father stationed themselves in front of the settee and rather rolled than sat down upon it in unison.
Felicity, Gillian found to her dismay, was staring at the pair of them in open-mouthed wonder. Though Miss Spencer regretted her young charge’s impoliteness, she had to admit it was understandable, for in addition to the Grouses’ singular pudginess, they shared this evening an extraordinary style of costume. Mr. Grouse was drenched in diamonds: an heavy stickpin in his cravat, four or five rings, and an ornate fob were but a few of his gems. His daughter was similarly adorned, but in emeralds, which dripped from her earlobes, her neck, her wrists, and her fingers like a spectacular species of seaweed. A string of these brilliants was also threaded through her hair, which was pale to begin with but now looked quite verdant. Her dress was sea-green, her slippers moss-green. Miss Spencer could not permit the unconscious cruelty of Felicity’s stare to continue any longer, and she spoke sharply to her.
“Felicity, come and sit by the fire, please,” she said, “you look rather pale, my dear.”
Felicity emerged from her trance. “O! Yes, ma’am. I am so sorry, ma’am,” she stammered, as she realized how rude she had been. “That is, may not I sit by Miss Grouse? I should like so much to become acquainted with her.”
Miss Spencer accepted this request as an attempt on Felicity’s part to do penance, and allowed her to sit where she would. Miss Grouse had, all this while, said nothing more than “How do you do” to anyone, and Miss Spencer wondered keenly what topic of conversation might draw her out. In the meantime, Valerian was discoursing energetically on the various ways there are of serving dinner.
“Then there are formal dinners, of course,” he was saying, “some of which are nearly banquets, in my opinion. These I eschew entirely, for I find them most unpleasant. No, Mr. Grouse, I know you will agree with me: An intimate table is the most attractive one, the most enjoyable, the most—how shall I say it?—comfortable. Then there is the question of what will be served. You will hardly credit it, sir, but I have sat at repasts and been served five courses and more, sir—more!—and still been assured by my hostess that this was a family dinner, a light meal, potluck! You will find no such pretension here, however. Our good Miss Spencer has prepared a menu which I promise will be both charming in its simplicity and simple in its charm.” Gillian would have liked to ponder for a moment whether this last phrase made any sense at all, but the Viscount cut short her analysis by continuing to expand his subject. “Ah—!” he cried, “nourishment, nourishment indeed. Music we know is the food of love, and poetry food for the gods, but I think tonight we shall find ourselves confronted by roast fowl, rather than either of those. Am I correct, Miss Spencer?”
“Quite correct, your Lordship,” said she. She was growing weary of this gastronomical rhapsody, and curtailed it by saying, “I believe you are mistress of your father’s household, Miss Grouse? Surely you must know what it is to plan a dinner.”
“Does this happen to him often?” Gillian inquired.
“O, never!” Felicity answered. “Papa has the sweetest disposition!”
“Indeed?” Miss Spencer replied. “Very interesting.” The sleepy fogs into which she had escaped the night before were now beginning to clear. She relinquished them with reluctance.
“Did you sleep well, ma’am?” Cordelia asked.
“Very well, thank you.”
“I am glad to hear it,” the Viscount, who was just then entering the drawing room, informed her, “for we have a great deal to do today. The coffee, by the way, has been taken care of.”
“Excellent, your Lordship. Now what exactly is this great deal we have to do?”
“My dear ma’am” said the Viscount, in shocked accents, “have you forgot? Today is the day—the day, Miss Spencer!”
“Is it?”
“Miss Spencer, the day when Mr. Grouse expects his payment.”
“O!”
“We must find a way to evade him.”
“Is that a part of my duties?” Miss Spencer inquired gently, as the last soft shred of sleepiness floated from her mind.
“Oh, Miss Spencer,” the Viscount groaned, running his fingers through his curly hair, “I beg you will not start enumerating your duties too! I have had enough of that this morning from Mrs. Trigg.”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Gillian, recalling herself fully to consciousness at last. “I did not mean to—permit me to wake up for a moment, please. I shall soon be thinking again, I promise.”
“I await the event with impatience,” Valerian answered, and then lapsed into a silence shared by all the occupants of the room. It was broke at last by Cordelia, who had gone to the window and now announced. “Trigg is coming; we shall have our breakfast soon.”
“Huzza,” said the Viscount dispiritedly.
“Huzza, indeed,” said Gillian, who had by now recovered her customary energy. “My Lord, I take it you are concerned with the payment you owe today?”
“Yes, of course I am,” he replied irritably. “Is this an example of the celebrated ‘thinking’ we were promised a few minutes ago? Because if it is, I had rather be left alone.”
“I beg you will not be short with me, my Lord,” said Miss Spencer, though she did not sound much injured.
“Yes, of course. I apologise, ma’am. I am just—a little distracted, I suppose.”
“Indeed, my Lord. There is no need of apologies, but let us try to think together. Now, Mr. Grouse wants his money.”
“True.”
“But you have not got it.”
“Very true.”
“He will not be satisfied without it.”
“Excessively true.”
“Unless…”
“My Lord, I know you will not like this suggestion, but I think it necessary now that we return to the idea of Mr. Grouse’s daughter.”
“Mr. Grouse’s daughter,” he repeated. “Oh yes, Miss Mouse.”
“I think Miss Mouse may prove to be a very helpful concept this morning.”
“Miss Spencer, I am as always all admiration for the scope and acuity of your mind. However, I must confess that your meaning in this case entirely escapes me.”
“Perhaps you do not recall my suggestion of last evening?”
“Perhaps indeed I do not,” he agreed.
“Then I must—though I dislike it extremely—refresh your memory. It seemed to me, my Lord, that if Mr. Grouse could not recover his money, he might accept your title in its stead.”
“Is that how it seemed to you?” inquired the Viscount.
“That is precisely how it seemed to me.”
“Then I must admit, once again, that your—I am sure, very perceptive—assessment of the situation leaves me in the dark.”
“She means you could marry Miss Grouse, Papa,” Cordelia explained baldly.
“Oh, dear heaven,” the viscount exclaimed, “is that what she means?”
“I think so, Papa,” Felicity put in.
“Then she must surely have gone mad?”
“On the contrary, Papa, she looks quite sensible to me,” Cordelia pointed out.
“Then surely you must have gone mad?”
“You do not wish to marry Miss Grouse?” Felicity ventured at last.
“Wish to marry Miss Grouse? O, the mouths of babes! You see, Miss Spencer, I call upon you to witness and to understand the profundity, the exactitude, the precision of my daughter’s last remark. I do not wish to marry Miss Grouse, she supposes. She is correct, Miss Spencer. She is thoroughly correct.”
“Then do not!” said Miss Spencer agreeably. “Do not marry her at all, if your inclinations oppose it so strongly. Never marry her. In fact, I invite you most cordially not even to offer for her. But, my Lord, do not you feel that you could—since necessity demands it—indicate to Mr. Grouse that such a possibility has indeed crossed your mind? Could you not—given that you have no alternative but to go to prison—pretend to desire her company? Could not you—and I hope you will pardon my indelicacy—feign interest in Miss Grouse?”
“Oh!” said Valerian, to whom this possibility had not occurred. “Well, I do not know. Perhaps I could.”
“I am sure you could,” Cordelia said bracingly.
“Papa can do anything,” Felicity pointed out to no one in particular.
“I suppose I could,” the Viscount agreed at last, “and yet, the notion does not appeal to me strongly, by any means.”
“I trust the notion of gaol is even less attractive?” Gillian said dryly.
“Somewhat less attractive,” he assented slowly.
“Then let us all drink our coffee,” Miss Spencer recommended, as Mrs. Trigg appeared with a steaming potful, “and consider how best this is to be done.”
It was decided that an invitation should be sent immediately to Mr. and Miss Grouse, begging them to dine with the Viscount that evening. This note written and despatched, Valerian left Miss Spencer to persuade the Triggs that they not only would, but ardently wished, to prepare and serve a formal dinner that evening, and went off himself to visit Miles Lawrence.
Miss Spencer was in the attic, engaged in finding both a dining table and a feasible excuse for setting it up in the drawing room, when the doorbell groaned resoundingly and Trigg apprised her of the presence in the house of Lady Caroline Yates and her brother Courtney.
“Did you put them in the drawing room, Trigg?” she inquired urgently.
“Should I have, Miss?” said Trigg, imperfectly concealing a look of delighted mischief.
“Oh, Great Heavens!” she cried, rushing from the attic and down the stairs. “Lady Caroline,” she said when she had, rather out of breath, reached the front hall, “my Lord Yates, forgive us. I am terribly sorry. Of course you ought not to have been kept waiting here. Do come into the drawing room,” she invited, then lied fluently. “The Viscount has been meaning to turn Trigg off these five years, but there you have it: One’s servants become attached to one, do not they, and one cannot persuade them to retire. Quite frankly, Trigg is not only forgetful, he is also a little deaf, and it does make him difficult to deal with.”
Both brother and sister smiled their sweet, serious smiles and begged Miss Spencer not to be disturbed. “We only came to thank the Viscount for a delightful evening,” Courtney informed her. “I take it he is not at home?”
“No, I believe he is out, but the Misses Collins are here. Allow me—O dear, I must beg you to excuse me for a moment, for it will not do to ring for Trigg to fetch them; he simply does not hear the bell, you know.”
“Of course,” Lady Caroline agreed, and Gillian went out into the hall again, wondering as she did so at the astonishing conviction and ease of her own lies.
Cordelia and Felicity were discovered at the top of the stairway, waiting with evident curiosity to be told who was calling.
“Lady Caroline, Lord Yates,” Gillian informed them.
“Is it?” asked Felicity, breaking, to Gillian’s surprise, into a rosy blush. “Shall we go and speak to them?”
“Of course, we will, you ninnyhammer,” was Cordelia’s response. She appeared to be quite displeased with the identity of the visitors, but there was no time to speculate on her sentiments. Instead, Miss Spencer straightened their curls and escorted them back down the stairs and into the drawing room.
Within a very short time it was clear to Miss Spencer that Courtney had had an incentive in making this visit beyond simply gratifying his sister’s wishes. He was excessively polite both to Cordelia and to Gillian herself, but he had eyes for Felicity alone. She, unfortunately, hardly said good day to him before she turned her attention exclusively to Lady Caroline, with whom she seemed to have an hundred things to discuss. Courtney conversed pleasantly with Cordelia, and was careful to include Gillian in his flow of remarks, but his glance turned ever and anon to Felicity with, Miss Spencer thought privately, a lamentable lack of subtlety. Felicity, however, seemed not to have noticed, for when their guests had gone she spoke only of Lady Caroline. How pretty she was! How agreeable! Did not Cordelia find her so?
But Cordelia apparently did not find her so. Something—(no one could guess what)—had occurred to make Cordelia, ill-disposed by nature, even less complaisant than usual. She refused to say anything of Yates except that he seemed extraordinarily bashful, and she branded his sister “an insipid little chit.”
“What does ‘insipid’ mean?” Felicity inquired maddeningly; but Cordelia did not answer. Instead, she turned her back and fled, noisily, up the stairs. Gillian left them to their dispute and went down to the kitchens to plan that evening’s dinner with Mrs. Trigg.
About midway through the morning, a rather quizzical note was delivered to The Haven. It was addressed to the Viscount, but since he was still away from home Miss Spencer tore it open. “My dear Sir:” it read, “It is with at most surprise and delight which I respond to your kind invitation of this morning. Also my Father, who, like me, will be honoured to join you at your dinner. Looking forward to reknowing our acquaintance, I am your et cetera, Miss Thomasina Grouse.” Miss Spencer turned the note over to examine the seal, which was in the form of a coat of arms, embossed with the letters “TG” and nothing more. It was, all in all, most peculiar.
The Viscount, when he arrived at last, received this missive with mingled emotions. “The vulgarity!” he cried at first. “The ineffable vulgarity! I suppose by ‘at most’ she means utmost…still, it is for the best that they accepted, is not it?”
Miss Spencer assured him that it was. “We shall be obliged to serve dinner in the drawing room, you know,” she continued. “I think we shall do best not to explain it at all—simply to imply that this is the ordinary location for an intimate dinner in society. Does that sound possible?”
“Certainly. O, and you remind me, Miles has charged me with a message for you. It was…Oh yes, he commends himself to the General and volunteers for duty tonight, should he be needed.”
“Ho ho,” said Miss Spencer from between tight lips. “I think, Mr. Lawrence need not trouble himself with us this evening.”
“Do you not find him amusing?” the Viscount asked, peering at her closely through his thick lenses. “He has been of enormous assistance to us, you know.”
“I find his services,” Gillian replied slowly, “more welcome in the breach than the observance.”
“Do you! Extraordinary!” was Valerian’s reply. “I must rush off now and dress for dinner; excuse me.”
“Of course. Oh, your Lordship may wish to know that Lady Caroline and her brother called this morning.”
“This is news, indeed,” Valerian answered eagerly.
“Do you think perhaps Courtney will like to marry Cordelia? Or, is that too much to ask of the gods?”
“It is too early, surely, to speculate upon such things. If he offers for either of your daughters, however, I expect it will be Felicity.”
“Really? Did they seem to get on well, then?”
“My Lord, I believe they exchanged four words—two Good-Days and two Good-Byes. My hypothesis is based merely on the gazes he lavished upon her.”
“Oh. And did she gaze back, perhaps?”
“Not at all. She confined her looks almost entirely to Lady Caroline—which, if I may say so, bespoke a better upbringing than his moon-struck behaviour. Still, I consider the situation to be not entirely hopeless.”
The Viscount stood silently, seeming to ponder this opinion.
“My Lord,” Gillian said at last, “I suggest you go and dress. Until something more promising develops, we must focus our attention upon Miss Grouse.”
“Ah yes, Miss Mouse,” he replied, starting slightly from his musings and mounting the stairs. “I wonder how one polishes one’s boots.”
As this last remark did not seem to be addressed to her, Miss Spencer let it go by and proceeded with her own arrangements. These included the setting of the table, the procuring and lighting of some candles, a last-minute visit to the kitchens, and attendance upon the girls, who, she realized suddenly, were so self-sufficient as to require the least of her attentions instead of the most. She remembered to thank them for this as she helped them into their new gowns, and found with satisfaction that they had so far settled their misunderstanding as to offer to brush one another’s hair while she went off to dress. It was, in the event, their father who proved most troublesome: he, of course, still had no notion how to tie his cravat. He entered the drawing room some minutes before five o’clock with a helpless expression in his eyes to solicit Miss Spencer’s aid in this endeavour.
“I should be happy to help you, my Lord,” she said, “but I really have no idea how to go about it myself.”
Valerian regarded her fretfully. “Do you think we’d better send for Miles, after all?”
But this Miss Spencer would not hear of. “Never mind,” she said suddenly, “we shall make do somehow. Sit here and I shall go round behind you, and see if I cannot arrange it after all.”
The Viscount sat obediently, if anxiously, upon a small velvet chair while Gillian fussed with the linen cravat. “It may not be perfect,” she said finally, surveying her work with a critical eye, “but I trust Mr. Grouse will not be aware of that.”
“I hope you are right,” the Viscount replied, “for I believe I hear their carriage driving up now.”
Indeed, a few moments later the doorbell uttered its sick moan and Trigg entered the drawing room to announce Mr. Thomas Grouse and Miss Thomasina Grouse. Mr. Grouse came in first, smiling his malevolent smile, and was followed by a very plain young woman some twenty-five years of age. Miss Spencer eyed her surreptitiously as Valerian performed introductions. She was, like her father, rather a round person, both in figure and in countenance. Out of her round face peered two round eyes, and a fat little mouth shaped like an O. Her complexion was sallow, her lashes pale, and all in all she seemed to substantiate the Viscount’s description of her as “colourless” very well. She bobbed rotundly to Miss Spencer, and to the girls when they had entered, and allowed Sherbourne to kiss her plump hand without a word or a blush. Then, as if they had rehearsed it, she and her father stationed themselves in front of the settee and rather rolled than sat down upon it in unison.
Felicity, Gillian found to her dismay, was staring at the pair of them in open-mouthed wonder. Though Miss Spencer regretted her young charge’s impoliteness, she had to admit it was understandable, for in addition to the Grouses’ singular pudginess, they shared this evening an extraordinary style of costume. Mr. Grouse was drenched in diamonds: an heavy stickpin in his cravat, four or five rings, and an ornate fob were but a few of his gems. His daughter was similarly adorned, but in emeralds, which dripped from her earlobes, her neck, her wrists, and her fingers like a spectacular species of seaweed. A string of these brilliants was also threaded through her hair, which was pale to begin with but now looked quite verdant. Her dress was sea-green, her slippers moss-green. Miss Spencer could not permit the unconscious cruelty of Felicity’s stare to continue any longer, and she spoke sharply to her.
“Felicity, come and sit by the fire, please,” she said, “you look rather pale, my dear.”
Felicity emerged from her trance. “O! Yes, ma’am. I am so sorry, ma’am,” she stammered, as she realized how rude she had been. “That is, may not I sit by Miss Grouse? I should like so much to become acquainted with her.”
Miss Spencer accepted this request as an attempt on Felicity’s part to do penance, and allowed her to sit where she would. Miss Grouse had, all this while, said nothing more than “How do you do” to anyone, and Miss Spencer wondered keenly what topic of conversation might draw her out. In the meantime, Valerian was discoursing energetically on the various ways there are of serving dinner.
“Then there are formal dinners, of course,” he was saying, “some of which are nearly banquets, in my opinion. These I eschew entirely, for I find them most unpleasant. No, Mr. Grouse, I know you will agree with me: An intimate table is the most attractive one, the most enjoyable, the most—how shall I say it?—comfortable. Then there is the question of what will be served. You will hardly credit it, sir, but I have sat at repasts and been served five courses and more, sir—more!—and still been assured by my hostess that this was a family dinner, a light meal, potluck! You will find no such pretension here, however. Our good Miss Spencer has prepared a menu which I promise will be both charming in its simplicity and simple in its charm.” Gillian would have liked to ponder for a moment whether this last phrase made any sense at all, but the Viscount cut short her analysis by continuing to expand his subject. “Ah—!” he cried, “nourishment, nourishment indeed. Music we know is the food of love, and poetry food for the gods, but I think tonight we shall find ourselves confronted by roast fowl, rather than either of those. Am I correct, Miss Spencer?”
“Quite correct, your Lordship,” said she. She was growing weary of this gastronomical rhapsody, and curtailed it by saying, “I believe you are mistress of your father’s household, Miss Grouse? Surely you must know what it is to plan a dinner.”
