Althea (10 page)

From across the room Tracy Calendar drawled, “It sounds
delightful, Pendarly. Perhaps you could make up a party of those of us present
who might wish to go. I imagine Miss Fforyding and Mr. Tidd would enjoy it immensely.”
His tone was dry, and he ignored the ashen color of Pendarly’s face, and the
indignant stare from Althea. Lord Fforyding, altogether unaware of these
currents, announced that he himself would be more than delighted to go, and, if
it was agreeable, would bring Miss Westleid to accompany the party. Maria said
on her part that it sounded dreadfully dull, but if her dearest Ally wished to
go, then go she must.

“But, ma’am, think of the disservice you do when you deprive
us of your company,” Calendar protested unheatedly. “We counted upon you to
lend us your dignity.”

“I thank you for the thought, sir, but I am truly as
indifferent a traveler as you might find, and could derive no satisfaction from
driving for three hours in total for a picnic that might easily be held in
Richmond. Perhaps someone can suggest another who will play your chaperone,”
Maria said, a little miffed to be imputed with dignity.

After some minutes Jonathan Tidd shyly offered the name of
his aunt as a possibility. Since no one was acquainted with Miss Agatha Tidd,
this suggestion was hallooed in several corners as being brilliant, and Mr.
Tidd was earnestly entreated to secure his aunt’s company for the party. The
Tuesday of the coming week was settled upon as eminently suitable for everyone
— everyone being Lord Fforyding, who in some way had become the organizer of
the excursion. Althea was certain by this time that Sir Tracy was as little
pleased by the party as she, and that Mr. Pendarly was regretting the
overturning of his plans and their corruption to the general use.

It had been arranged that all the travelers would meet at
Lord Fforyding’s house, and somehow it was Tracy Calendar and not Edward
Pendarly who appointed himself to deliver Althea there. He arrived just a
little later than agreed, so that Althea had had ample time to complete her
toilette. Banders, watching her mistress arrange the ribbons of her bonnet in
the most suitable way, said that she would never have thought to see little
Miss Ally become such a town damsel that it took her ten minutes to decide
between one carriage dress and another. The delay and the effort were, to
Althea’s eyes, rewarded by the pleasing image in the mirror: she looked
comfortable but not in the least dowdy, her honey-colored dress and spencer
being of just such a cut as to set her figure to best advantage. After a brief
farewell to Maria, still groggy in the darkness of her room, Althea descended
to meet Sir Tracy in the hallway.

Calendar was unusually taciturn, barely uttering a good morning
as he handed her into the curricle. Althea was not put off by his manner, and
as the gentleman vouchsafed no explanation, she asked for none and they rode in
silence to Fforyding House.

Outside the building the group was gathering: Lord Fforyding
and Sophia, Miss Caroline Westleid, Edward Pendarly, Jonathan Tidd and his
aunt, Miss Agatha Tidd, who was to lend the party her dignity. Except that
“dignity” was not a word one would associate with Miss Tidd, who gave every
indication of being a clutching, overdressed, romantic old maid. Sir Tracy and
Althea immediately found themselves in the midst of a great to-do over who
should travel with whom. As a result, it appeared that no one was greatly in
charity with anyone else. Miss Tidd, in fact, was the bone of contention;
having taken Lord Fforyding in considerable fancy, she strenuously objected to
riding with anyone else. To this suggestion Lord Fforyding, with his flancée
standing near, was heard to mutter darkly that he’d be damned if he’d ride to
Danning with those two moon calves Sophia and her Tidd, as well as that
overdressed bear leader with the rabbity face. Even one so oblivious to other
people’s sensibilities as Miss Tidd had to realize that she would only be the
cause of misery if she persisted in her planning; besides, she discovered that
young Mr. Pendarly was really much more conciliatory than Lord Fforyding. She
cast him such a glance of forsakeness that he could not but say, with almost
passable gallantry, that he would drive her. With pleasure.

Althea and Calendar were informed of the driving
arrangements. If Sir Tracy, standing with closed mouth and silent eyes near his
phaeton, thought anything about the situation, he was mercifully quiet, and not
even a sardonic eyebrow gave him away.

The party, with the Fforyding barouche in the lead, moved
out onto the street. Once free of the worst of city traffic, however, the
curricles gained the lead on the barouche. Mr. Pendarly’s phaeton was kept to a
sedate pace for the benefit of Miss Tidd, who loudly professed to be vastly
frightened by fast vehicles and large dogs. Calendar, under no such
restrictions, took his vehicle into the distance ahead of the others.

Althea had been philosophical about driving to Danning with
Sir Tracy; at times the devotion of Mr. Pendarly wore a little thin, and when
she looked for a spark of kindred humor in him, it seemed she was always
disappointed. Even so, after fifteen minutes of deepest silence from her host
she felt it behooved her to break that silence, however vulgarly she might have
to do so.

“Do you know that you have a peculiar knack of putting me
out of countenance? Every time I see you there is sure to develop some
uncomfortable lapse in the conversation. This is the longest I have known you
to maintain it: I am very impressed by your fortitude, but could we not talk
now? Here I am, ready to hang upon your every word — ready to toad-eat you, if
necessary!
I
daren’t say a word for fear of sounding missish; it is
dreadfully taxing upon a woman of my age.” Althea sighed artistically and,
after a moment or two, Calendar’s face lit with a reluctant but very real
smile.

“I suppose I shall have to humbly beg your pardon. Though
you know that you have something of the same effect on me: I hold my tongue for
fear you will think me merely a mindless coxcomb, which I know is your
abomination. If I were to say to you, for example, that that particular shade
of brown — or is it yellow? — is calculated to a nicety to flatter your hair
and your eyes, would you not scorn my frippery remarks? So rather than endure
ignominy, I will keep my silence.”

“You cannot mean to tell me that you have been silent this
while for fear of me. My brother would say that that is coming it much too
strong — and so say I. We could speak of something aside from the color of my
spencer without the least danger of my disliking your conversation — unless you
should happen to lapse into Spanish coin again, which I trust you will spare
me. I am not against a little rational conversation, you know, and I should
hope that you have some thoughts on
some
subject.”

“I suppose we could speak of literature, but that would only
go on long enough to disclose that we both love Cowper, detest Pope, never read
novels, and there you are! We would dive into abysmal silence again.” Tracy’s
tone was mocking, but if he was prepared to be in an evil temper, then Althea
was prepared to quarrel him out of it.

“You speak very freely of my preferences. The only statement
you have made that I can fully agree with is that our silence is abysmal. As
for your digest of a lady’s literary taste, I loathe Cowper, think Pope almost
as bad, read novels frequently, and have a scandalous preference for Sterne and
Fielding over Mrs. Radcliffe and her ilk. Make what you will of that.”

“This is mere defiance!” Tracy smiled. “You cannot be so
different from the others of your sex as to truly hold those opinions. It would
spoil a theory that I formulated with a friend one night over a bottle —
several bottles — of his port: that all women below the age of thirty were born
with the same taste in all the arts. You only deny it to annoy me.”

“Not to annoy but to uphold the honor of my sex — and my own
honor as well. But what of the women over thirty? How do you account for them?
In any case, at least I read novels and admit my crime, whereas most people
take
Clarissa Harlow
or
The Castle of Otranto
off to read in a
closet somewhere, and then virtuously decry novels — wishing all the while to
be Emily St. Aubert or the wicked Montoni. Novels are a great deal of fun,”
Althea said solemnly. “At least if your taste runs to the scandalous — as Mary
says mine does. Lord, but I scandalized her enough with laughing over the name
of her hairstyle — Sappho. I explained who that worthy lady was, and Mary
begged me never again to tell anyone that I even read Greek, let alone that I
had read such a poet.” Althea could feel Tracy’s eyes upon her in a look of
mild astonishment.

“Have I shocked you now? I had thought you were above being
shocked by such a one as I. I suppose I might as well have admitted out and out
to being a bluestocking. It is all the fault of living so deep in the country,
you see. I had nothing to do but study and keep my father’s house — I even
persuaded the dominie to teach me Greek and Latin when I was quite small. Maria
would be furious if she knew that I had exposed my guilty secret to you.”

Tracy was making a definite attempt to control his
amusement. “Why would that infuriate your sister so?” he asked gravely.

“After all the care she had lavished upon me? Maria is not
in the least bookish, and has the greatest horror that I will be thought so,
since I do read a book on occasion.” Calendar unmistakably grinned. Althea was
pleased enough by the results of her fatal confession to continue amusing him
with the details of her transformation. “Mary’s greatest fear is that I should
flaunt my — my dreadful deficiency at large,” she said airily.

“What dreadful deficiency?”

“A deficiency of maidenly ignorance. She has said that when
I am married, I may be as learned as I please, although she could see no point
to it. But knowledge is unconscionable in a single lady, and so until such time
as some hapless man shall take responsibility for my foibles, I am to appear as
sweet and senseless as Mary herself.” Althea laughed ruefully. “And all to
catch some poor witless fellow so I may continue to study! All those years at
Hook Well there was no need for the quadrille and the waltz and knowing how to
discourage an overly amorous gentleman — if I should ever run into such! — for
Papa never let me farther than the town of Hooking. I suppose there was no
practical use for Greek or German either, but I have to read: knitting and
keeping stock of the preserves do not fill up an ordinary day, unless one is a
very
slow
knitter or stock-keeper.”

“And so your sister undertook to educate you in all these
sadly neglected points in your education? I thought you danced very nicely.”

“And so I do now, but a month ago! It is all due to the work
of a Signore Francesco, teacher of the dance. A splendid master whom Maria
pressed upon me with the direst threats. And she instructed me in flirtation,
court manners, the rules of Society — why, almost all the schoolroom nonsense I
ignored when I
was
in the schoolroom. I cannot wonder that with all the
rules she has to remember she often cannot talk correctly.”

“But tell me, how does one discourage the attentions of an
overly amorous gentleman? Just in case I ever need to know such a valuable
piece of information.”

“I could not be so unfair to the rest of my sex as to give
secrets to one of the enemy camp!” This broke through the last vestige of Sir
Tracy’s composure. He abruptly drew the curricle to the side of the road, and
burst into a whoop of laughter, to the distress of his cattle and the interest
of a farmer steering a dog cart in the other direction. When he had somewhat
recovered, he calmed his horses and replaced the beaver hat that had fallen
behind him at the first of his laughter.

“You are serious in telling me that your sister subjected
you to these ninnyish teachings? Lessons in flirtation? I thought every woman
was born with that lesson engraved upon her heart!”

“Like literary taste?” Althea suggested.

“Confess that the whole is some fancy’s flight you have
conceived to amuse me from my sullens.”

“You admit that you are blue-deviled! I thought so. But I
cannot confess what is not so. Maria was most scrupulous in her teaching, and
although I have ignored most of it, I cannot but be grateful for some of it.
Who knows what impropriety I might have committed had she not explained the
rules of Almack’s to me, for instance. I might have tried to gain admission
after eleven, or, some such equally dire crime.”

“You might, I collect, have had the temerity to wear
pantaloons —” Tracy began.

“Instead of knee breeches,” Althea triumphed. “Just what I
told Mary, only she was vastly scandalized, and begged me never to say such a
thing in company. I cannot thank you enough for relieving me of the necessity —
there can, of course, be no objection to
your
saying such a thing.”
Tracy sternly controlled himself and asked meekly what other gems Althea had
garnered at her sister’s knee.

“Of the rules of things, not much more than that. She did
give me the credit for being a good student, and able to pick up much from what
I saw others doing. But when Banders — my maid, and my mother’s before me —
when she arrived in town, it nearly began all again. She treats me as the
veriest babe, which I certainly am not at the advanced age of three and twenty.
When I come in from a drive or a ball she is sure to ask if I remembered to
make my curtsy to such a one. Oh, please do tell me if I ever should forget to
make my curtsy to you, for I should hate to be backward in civility.”

“Well, ma’am,” Calendar said at length, “I know now that you
dislike Cowper and Pope, read novels, and are undergoing, I make no doubt for
the second time, the exigencies of the schoolroom.”