Black Sheep (28 page)

“Ought I to do so ? You’ll think me a regular zany, but I don’t perfectly understand. Who—who is Mr King?”

“He is the Master of Ceremonies at the New Assembly Rooms—the Upper Rooms, as they are often called. They hold balls and concerts there, and card-parties.”

“Balls! Oh, no, I don’t think I ought! Not
yet!
You see, it is not
quite
a year since Mr Clapham died, and although I have put off my blacks, because he never liked me to wear black, I shouldn’t care to show disrespect. I’m sure it wouldn’t be seemly for me to go to balls. Not but what I will become a subscriber, if it is the thing, which is what Mr Clapham would have wished, for
never
did he behave scaly, even when there was no good to be got by paying down his dust! So you must tell me—oh, dear, there are so many things I want to know!” She paused, and then said shyly: “I wonder—Would you care to drink tea with us in my private parlour? We should be very happy—shouldn’t we, Mrs Winkworth?” A thought seemed to occur to her; she added: “Unless of course—no, I don’t mean that! I mean—I mean, you might perhaps be engaged with your own party? Or—if you should chance to be a
married
man, we should be honoured to receive
Mrs Calverleigh too!”

“No, I’m not married,” he replied. “I shall be delighted to drink tea with you, ma’am!”

Her face brightening, she said: “Oh, then, pray come whenever you choose! This evening?”

Far too astute to jump at an invitation, he excused himself, but, after a little hesitation, allowed her to persuade him to accept one for the following evening. He fancied that he read a certain measure of approval in Mrs Winkworth’s expression, and took his leave of both ladies, feeling that a promising start had been made in his new venture.

The tea-drinking was very successful. He found her seated on one side of a small fire, dressed all in gray, with no ornaments but her pearls, and one fine diamond ring, which he judged to have sentimental associations, since she gazed at it, from time to time, with wistful fondness.

It was not at all difficult to draw her out, for she was of a chatty and confiding disposition. Her tongue might run on wheels, but he was able to gather various important pieces of information from amongst the chaff of her conversation. He learned that she had lived almost her whole life in Birmingham, until Mr Clapham had bought a house a few miles outside the town, and had bestowed it upon her, just because he knew she had always hankered after a house in the country. Well,
house
—! It was more of a Property.

“But that was Mr Clapham all over,” she said. “He was quite elderly, you know, but I was excessively attached to him.”

“So you should have been,” dryly interpolated Mrs Wink-worth. “The way he doted on you!”

“Oh, you mean to say that he spoiled me!” Mrs Clapham pouted. She threw a laughing, rueful glance at Stacy. “That’s what she is for ever telling me, unkind thing! I’m afraid it’s true; I’ve been sadly spoilt. You see, I was Papa’s only child, and my mama died when I was very young. And then, when he died, Mr Clapham was so
very
kind, settling everything for me. and looking after all my affairs, and trying to make me understand about horrid things like
Consols
,
only I never did, and I don’t think I ever shall, except that Papa had a great many of them. Business makes my head ache! So when Mr Clapham asked me to marry him I was truly thankful. Oh, he was so kind to me! He was used to say nothing was too good for me, and that after having nobody to care for so many years—for his sister who kept house for him died, and so he was the only one left-he
liked
to give me things. If ever I took a fancy to something, he would buy it, not saying a word to me, and there it would be the very next day, for a Surprise! Oh, I do wish I could show you my rubies! They are my favourite jewels, but Mrs Winkworth
would
have me lock them up in the Bank before we came to Bath, because it isn’t proper to wear coloured stones until one is out of black gloves, and she thinks they would be stolen if I kept them in a hotel.”

“My dear ma’am, how you do run on!” said Mrs Winkworth, frowning at her.

She was instantly penitent. “I never
could
learn to bite the tongue! It is very bad! Papa was used to say it ran like a fiddlestick, but Mr Clapham liked my silly bibble-babble. But you are very right: I have been boring on for ever! I won’t do so any more. Tell us about yourself, Mr Calverleigh! Do you live in London, or in the country?”

“Oh, in London—though I was bred up in the country.”

“I thought you did,” she said artlessly. “I mean to live there myself, for I’m sure I couldn’t bear to continue living at the Towers without Mr Clapham. He took me there once, and I liked it excessively. We stayed at a very comfortable hotel—I can’t remember what it was called, but Mr Clapham always stayed there when he was obliged to go to London, because he said they served the best dinners of all the hotels.”

“Then I collect it was the Clarendon.”

She clapped her hands together. “Yes, that was it! How clever of you to guess! Only I shouldn’t wish to
live
in a hotel. I mean to buy a house”

“
Hire
a house, ma’am,” corrected Mrs Winkworth.

“Well perhaps—if that’s what they do in London,” said Mrs Clapham doubtfully. She looked at Stacy. “Is it? Do you hire
your
house?

He smiled, and said, with a great air of frankness: “No, I have a lodging merely.”

“Oh!” She considered this for a moment. “I daresay a lodging is less trouble to you—being a gentleman.”

“Much less trouble!” he said, with a comical grimace.

“Yes, but—but a house of one’s own is more agreeable, I think. More homelike!”

“Not my house!” he said humorously.

“But you said you had only a lodging!”

“In London! I have a place in Berkshire: my family has owned it for generations. I daresay you know the style of thing: very historical, very inconvenient, and needs an army of servants to keep it in order. Quite beyond my touch! I’d sell it, if I could.”

“Can’t you? If you don’t wish to live in it?”

He threw up his hands in mock horror. “Sell Danescourt? My dear ma’am, never let any member of my family hear you suggest such a thing! I promise you, they would think it little short of blasphemy!”

He judged that he had said quite enough (and rather neatly, too) to impress her, and soon took his leave. Mrs Winkworth bestowed quite an approving smile upon him, which showed him that his candid avowal of his straitened circumstances had had its calculated effect on her.

Chapter XIV

The acquaintance, so promisingly begun, ripened quickly, but the difficulties foreseen by Mr Stacy Calverleigh soon began to loom large. Within the walls of the White Hart it was an easy matter to pursue his delicate courtship; outside this hostelry, it became perilous. He had known that it would be; and his forebodings were confirmed when (at her request) he escorted Mrs Clapham to the Pump Room, and instantly attracted un-welcome notice. It had been impossible to evade that public appearance. “Oh, Mr Calverleigh!” had uttered the widow, in a flutter of shyness. “
Pray
go with me! For I don’t know a soul, and that is so very uncomfortable!”

He had been obliged to accompany her, and even to introduce her to such ladies of his acquaintance as he could not avoid; but although he fancied he had carried it off pretty well (“Your la’ship must allow me to present Mis—Mrs Clapham to you. She is a stranger to Bath—putting up at the White Hart!”) he was well aware that he had become the subject for every kind of inquisitive conjecture. He realized, too late, what a gudgeon he had been to have devoted himself so exclusively to Miss Fanny Wendover, and did what he could to allay suspicion by replying to the demand of a matron, famed for her blunt manners, to be told who, pray, was this Mrs Clapham? with his engaging air of boyish candour: “I haven’t the least notion, ma’am, but
perfectly
respectable, I believe! Yes, I know what you are thinking, but I won’t have her abused! Not, perhaps, quite up to the rig, but—but excessively amiable!”

The droll look that went with this conveyed volumes, but he could not be sure that these had been read with understanding. He was thankful that Mrs Clapham’s scruples forbade her to attend any balls, and wished that these had included concerts. But Mrs Winkworth had said that concerts were unexceptionable, and he was obliged to accept, with every sign of pleasure, an invitation to accompany both ladies to one which held out, as an apparently irresistible lure, the promise of a performance, by four distinguished instrumentalists, of Mozart’s Quartet in G Minor. Mr Stacy Calverleigh was not musical, and nor, judging by the infelicitous nature of her remarks, was Mrs Clapham; but when he entered the concert-room, with the widow leaning on his arm, it seemed, to his jaundiced eyes, that not one of the Bath residents with whom he was acquainted shared his indifference to classical music. The room was packed as full as it could hold. He felt, as he escorted his ladies past the benches, to the chairs provided for such well-inlaid persons as Mrs Clapham, that the entire genteel population of Bath was present. Amongst the company, were Mrs Grayshott, with her son and daughter, and when he glanced in their direction, Stacy encountered a long, unsmiling look from Oliver. It made him rage inwardly, for he read into it contempt and condemnation. He thought that it would not be long before the insufferable puppy found the means to communicate with Fanny; and wondered if there was any fear that when she next met him she would subject him to a painful scene. He spent the better part of the evening trying to hit upon some means of detaching Mrs Clapham from Bath. It was not until they emerged from the Rooms into a mizzle of rain that a possible solution occurred to him. Then, as Mrs Clapham asked despairingly if it was
always
raining in Bath, he expressed surprise that she should not have chosen to go to Leamington Priors rather than to Bath. No doubt she must know that it was a spa enjoying notoriously good weather, and offering visitors, besides beneficial waters, every amenity, from Pleasure Gardens to Assembly Rooms as elegant as any in the country. No, Mrs Clapham, strangely enough, had never been there, for all it was so close to Birmingham. She accused him archly of wishing to be rid of her. “
That
,
ma’am, is an absurdity which neither merits, nor will obtain, notice!” he replied. “To own the truth, I have a strong notion of going there myself!”

“I wonder,” said Mrs Clapham demurely, “if drinking the waters there would do me good?”

It was as well that this question was merely rhetorical, for, never having visited the spa, he had no idea for what the Leamington Waters were held to be beneficial, and could scarcely have answered it. Nor, when he procured, on the following day, a guide book to the Principal Watering and Sea-bathing places, was he any better equipped to do so. The guide book was not reticent on the subject: it presented him with a list of the diseases for which the waters were known to be efficacious, but as these consisted of such distressing disorders as Obstinately Costive Habits, Scrofulous Tumours, White Swellings of the Knee, and Intestinal Worms, Mr Calverleigh could only hope that Mrs Clapham would not enquire more closely into the matter.

He told Mrs Winkworth that Bath was a hotbed of scandal, warning her, with his ready laugh, that it was enough for an unattached gentleman to offer his arm to a single lady for the length of a street to set all the quizzies tattling that he was dangling after her. That, he hoped, would drive a spoke in the wheel of any mischief-maker who might seek to convince her that he was a fickle and desperate flirt.

Mrs Winkworth had relented towards him, and no longer directed suspicious looks at him. She even apologized for having been, as she phrased it, a trifle starched-up when she had first made his acquaintance. “You wouldn’t wonder at it, if you knew how many burrs and downright fortune-hunters I’ve had to drive off, Mr Calverleigh,” she said. “Sometimes I wish to goodness I hadn’t agreed to live with Nancy, when Clapham died, but I’ve known her since she was a child, and I hadn’t the heart to say no to her. No more than anyone ever has had, more’s the pity! Not that she isn’t a sweet little thing, but she’d let any scamp come over her, because she hasn’t a particle of nous. And as for being fit to manage her affairs—well, there!”

“I expert her trustees will take care she doesn’t fritter away her fortune,” Stacy said.

But Mrs Winkworth replied, with a snort: “Yes, I daresay they might, if she had any!”

It appeared that Mr Clapham had died, leaving all he possessed to his beloved wife, in a Will written on an odd scrap of paper, an aberration which Mrs Winkworth ascribed partly to his having been carried off very suddenly, and partly to his besotted-ness. “ And a harder-headed man of business you’d be hard put to it to find!” she told Stacy. “Well, they say there’s no fool like an old fool, don’t they?”

Inevitably, it was Miss Butterbank who bore the news of Mrs Clapham’s arrival in Bath to Sydney Place. She was able to tell Miss Wendover how many times Mr Stacy Calverleigh had been seen in her company, how many trunks the lady had brought to Bath, and was even able to disclose, in a shocked whisper, that she had twice dined with him at the
table-d’hote
, and
that it was
said
that he took tea with her, in her private parlour, every evening.

“Which I cannot bring myself to believe!” Selina told Abby. “Not that I mean to say that poor Laura Butterbank is not a very truthful woman, but you may depend upon it she must have been misinformed.