Cressida (14 page)

“Well, I daresay it
is
a very good thing that he has gone, she said to Lady Letitia, in what she hoped was an exceedingly calm voice, “but I don’t believe we can place the least reliance upon its making any difference about Uncle Arthur’s selling Calverton Place. Uncle feels he is quite powerless to do anything at all now, since the papers have already been signed, and I am bound to say that there is nothing to be hoped for from Captain Rossiter.
He
is quite determined to hold Uncle Arthur to his bargain. ”

The look of distressed disapproval deepened upon Lady Letitia’s face.

“So
disagreeable!’’ she sighed. “I had hoped, I admit, that perhaps
your
influence, my dear—After all, Captain Rossiter
was
very fond of you once. But I daresay gentlemen forget these things more easily than we weak females do.

Cressida, who was aware of the family tradition that Lady Letitia still cherished the memory of a certain Augustus Horsham, who had figured in the single romantic interlude of her otherwise tranquil existence and had behaved very badly towards her over a wealthy jeweller’s daughter with a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, said rather shortly that in Rossiter’s case there had been very little to forget.

“Oh, but there
was,
my dear!’’ Lady Letitia said earnestly, opening her faded blue eyes very wide. “I am never mistaken in such matters, I assure you. Of course, your great-aunt Estella did not think so; indeed, she made some very cutting remarks to me at the time, I remember, and said I was a great ninnyhammer and you were well rid of the man, and that it was a mere passing fancy on his part. But I could not believe that, you see— 
not
after the way he behaved during that
most
distressing interview.”

Cressida looked at her in some astonishment, her cup poised midway to her lips.

“What
interview?” she demanded. “Surely not between you and Rossiter, Cousin Letty? But you had scarcely met him—”

“Yes, yes, I know!” Lady Letitia said, an agitated flush rising in her thin cheeks. “Exactly what I said to your great-aunt Estella at the time. I am scarcely acquainted with the man,” I said; but you
know
how insistent she could be, my dear!” She looked apologetically at Cressida. “Of course I should never have mentioned the matter to you even now,” she said, “if you weren’t 
quite
settled at last and on the verge of accepting Langmere, as I am assured by the most
reliable
sources. I have always been
so
afraid, you see, that it might not have been the right thing to do—for your happiness, that is, my dear. And then your not marrying—I have felt quite dreadful about it at times, I assure you! But now that it is all arranged between you and Lord Langmere—”

Cressida set down her cup.

“Cousin Letty,” she said, “if you do not stop talking in riddles and tell me exactly what you mean by all this, I shall go mad! What
are
you talking of?
You
had some sort of interview with Rossiter? When? At the time I was engaged to him?”

“Well, yes, my dear—but, as I’ve told you, it was only because Aunt Estella quite insisted,” Lady Letitia said, looking at her piteously. “She said Arthur really ought to do it, but that he was certain to make mice feet of the business, and, besides, she did not at all wish him to know that she intended to leave her entire fortune to you. So she said I was to do it instead, because that fool of a doctor—you
know
how she talked, my dear, though I always thought Dr. Hurley a very sensible man myself—wouldn’t permit her to do anything that might result in agitation—”

‘But what
was
it that she wanted you to say to Rossiter?” Cressida demanded, feeling by this time that she really would go mad if Lady Letitia continued to talk in this vague and entirely unsatisfactory way. “And what had it to do with her leaving her fortune to me?
Pray, 
Cousin Letty,
do
try to collect yourself and tell me the whole of this!”

Lady Letitia, obediently putting down her knife and fork, said she would do her best, though, really, she couldn’t see that it made a great deal of difference now, since it had all happened so long ago and she—that is, Cressida—was going to marry Lord Langmere.

“You see, my love,” she said patiently, “your great-aunt Estella was
quite
convinced that the chief reason for Captain Rossiter’s having offered for you was his belief that she would leave her fortune to you
—not
that she had the least cause to think such a thing of him, as I myself pointed out to her, since no one, even in the family, had had the faintest inkling up to that time that she intended to leave you a penny. I am sure Arthur always considered that
he
would be the heir, and I believe he borrowed a great deal of money on the strength of his expectations
—so
disagreeable for his creditors, but then I expect they were not at all the sort of men one ought to feel sorry for, because one hears such dreadful stories about moneylenders—”

“Yes, yes!” said Cressida, seeing with alarm that if Lady Letitia was not headed off she would no doubt spend the next quarter hour happily enlarging on the theme of the inhumanity of moneylenders, with copious illustrations drawn from the experiences of the unfortunate derelicts who came within the range of her charitable works. “But Rossiter—?”

“Well, yes—Captain Rossiter,” said Lady Letitia, reluctantly returning to her main subject. “I told Aunt Estella that it seemed
quite
unlikely to me that
he
could have believed you to have expectations, since no one else did; but she had taken the idea firmly in her head— you know what fancies invalids sometimes have—and nothing would do but that I should have an interview with Captain Rossiter and tell him of the arrangements she proposed to make.”

“The—
arrangements
?” Cressida asked.

“Why, yes, my dear—the testamentary arrangements,” Lady Letitia explained. “I was to tell him that you would inherit her entire fortune—except, of course, for a few minor bequests—in the event you
didn’t
marry him, but that if you
did,
she would cut you off without a shilling. And she told me to name the amount it would come to,” continued Lady Letitia, in an even lower tone than the one in which she had been speaking up to this time, “really an
enormous
sum, my love! I had had no idea, you see—she always lived so simply, quite without ostentation. And I could see that it placed Captain Rossiter in a really dreadful position. He had begun, you see, by being polite but very firm with me, and told me quite plainly that if you could not succeed in obtaining your relations’ consent to your marrying him, he was prepared to wait until you came of age. But when he learned what a sacrifice you must make to marry him— well, really, my dear, I could see that the situation presented itself to him in an entirely new light. I assure you, I quite felt for him, for it was plain that his attachment to you was genuine, and that your great-aunt’s decision had placed him in a
most
difficult position—”

Cressida made a stifled sound.

“Did you say something, my dear?” Lady Letitia enquired, peering at her across the table.

“No. I— Cressida had an odd, dazed feeling that time had rolled back seven years and she was young Cressy Calverton again, in a round gown, her hair tied with a ribbon, standing with one hip thrust out in an awkward, schoolgirl pose in the cluttered drawing room of Great-aunt Estella’s Cheltenham villa, and listening with an expression of obstinate resentment upon her face as a younger and very grave Rossiter had put before her the facts of his financial situation.

“But I didn’t understand!” she wanted to cry out. “I thought he was only trying to tell me that he didn’t want to be poor all his life because he had married a girl with no fortune! Why didn’t Great-aunt Estella tell
me
what the choice was for me? Oh, but I
know
why! Because she knew I would choose Dev, not the money, if she did, and she knew that if she left me in ignorance of the matter it would throw the whole burden upon
him
—that he must take the responsibility of choosing for me between himself and that gaudy, impossibly large fortune! And of course, whether he cared for me or not, she stood to win her game, for a fortune-hunter would never marry me if he knew I wouldn’t have a penny if he did, and a man who was in love with me—Oh, how
could
she have placed him in such a position, to have to weigh what
he 
could give me against that fortune—!”

She became aware, coming momentarily out of the whirling rush of her thoughts, that Lady Letitia was peering at her anxiously over the breakfast table.

“My love, are you sure you are feeling quite the thing this morning? You are looking very odd!” she said solicitously. “I hope it has not disturbed you, my bringing up this sad matter—”

“No, not in the least!” Cressida said, hastily collecting herself and coming back to present reality. “It is only —you see, I knew nothing of all this, Cousin Letty—I mean that you had talked to Captain Rossiter about Great-aunt Estella’s intentions. What did he—what did he say when you told him—?”

“Well, my dear, he was very much taken-aback, of course, as well he might be,” Lady Letitia said seriously. “Really, as I told you, I quite felt for him, for I could see that it placed him in a dreadful dilemma. As I said to Aunt Estella afterwards, I was persuaded that his attachment for you was genuine; but of course no gentleman with the slightest degree of principle would have pressed his suit under such circumstances. And he quite agreed with Aunt Estella’s position that
you
should be kept in ignorance of the situation, as the matter was of far too great an importance to be left to a girl of eighteen to decide—”

“And so you all decided for me—you, Dev, Great-aunt Estella—that inheriting a fortune would make me far, far happier than being married to him!” Cressida burst out, suddenly unable to contain all the bitterness inside her any longer. “The three of you—Oh, I could 
kill
you all!”

She got up from the table so impetuously that it tottered and the saltcellar fell over. Lady Letitia stared at her in piteous alarm.

“But, my love—dearest Cressy—you
are
happy! You are going to marry Lord Langmere!” she bleated.

It
can’t
make a difference to you
now
—!”

“Well, it does!” Cressida said fiercely. “It was
my
life you were deciding, all of you—Great-aunt Estella playing God with her fortune, Dev being noble—
Dev! 
I’m sure it was the only time in his life—”

Much to Lady Letitia’s discomposure, she gave the table another push, as if she would have liked to up-end it entirely and send plates and cups flying, and walked out of the room.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” whispered Lady Letitia, and began to cry.

As for Cressida, she seized a broad-brimmed hat, tied the ribbons beneath her chin with angry energy, and went out to walk off the agitation into which Lady Letitia’s revelations had flung her.

It was a fine May morning, bright with sunshine and gay with a bird-song, but she might have been walking through a tunnel in which she could not see her hand before her face for all the impression the surrounding landscape made upon her. It was as if her whole life, and particularly that part of it in which Rossiter had played a role, had suddenly turned topsy-turvy, so that she saw it all from a startling new perspective. Rossiter
had
cared for her then; the confrontation he had provoked with her had indeed, as she had always suspected, had the purpose of leading her to break off their engagement, but for a motive quite different from the one she had been attributing to him all these years. He had been thinking of her, not of himself, acting from chivalry—“for the first and only time in his life!” she thought vengefully. “If only he had
told
me, allowed
me
to decide—!”

But of course he had known very well, she was forced to acknowledge, what her decision would have been if he had done so. She was eighteen, and head-over-ears in love; a fortune, no matter how awe-inspiringly splendid a one, would have meant nothing to her then. But afterwards—? she could imagine Rossiter thinking. Afterwards, when she had had a taste of genteel poverty as the wife of a marching soldier, when she was older, wiser, and realised what she had thrown away—? Of course, not being a coxcomb, he would have had doubts that the happiness he was able to bring her would appear sufficient compensation to her then for what she had so hastily given up.

And so, she thought bitterly, he had stepped out of her life, leaving her with her legacy of disillusionment and the opportunity to become the immensely rich Miss Calverton, who would certainly be sought after by the most eligible
partis
in the realm. And for himself—?

She suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the lane down which she had been unseeingly walking. There were no trees overhead here, and she became aware abruptly of a dazzle of yellow morning sunlight almost blinding her as she stood facing the east and the ascending sun. But no blinder now, she thought, than she had been these past several weeks.
Why
had he come back to England,
why
had he so persistently appeared to seek her out,
why
had he first begun calling in Mount Street? “I believe I recall hearing that you were engaged to a viscount when I visited England briefly several years ago, ” he had said on the occasion of their first meeting in Octavius Mayr’s office. He had come back then—in the hope of a reconciliation? It might have been. And, finding her engaged to another man, he had gone off again.

And now she, still angry and bitter even after seven years, had done her best to drive him away from her again from the moment they had first come together so unexpectedly on that morning in Octavius Mayr’s office. She had been brittle and cool and condescending, had refused so much as to dance with him, had turned every overture he had made to her into a challenge to battle—