False Colours (19 page)

Lady Denville was not far to seek, for she was coming down the stairs as Kit conducted Cressy into the main hall. She was looking a trifle harassed, but when she saw Cressy her face brightened, and she came quickly down the remaining stairs to fold the girl in a scented embrace. ‘Dearest child! I was wondering where you were, for I haven’t exchanged above two words with you!’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am! Denville took me to see your rose-garden—and was so kind as to pluck these for me! Aren’t they beautiful? The garden too, so charmingly laid out! We have nothing like it at Stavely.’

‘It
is
pretty, isn’t it?’ agreed her ladyship. ‘Such a labour as it was to make it! But I’ve never regretted it. Cressy, I must warn you that this is the
dreariest
party! It positively overpowers me to think that I should have invited you to it, poor child! What with my brother, prosing and moralizing in the most
boring
manner, and Emma growing
drabber
under one’s very eyes, and speaking like a mouse in a cheese, not to mention Ambrose, whom anyone would take for a mere April-squire—’

‘You didn’t invite me, Godmother!’ Cressy interrupted, laughing. ‘I know very well I’ve been foisted on to you! And I defy any party of which you are a member to be dreary!’

‘Yes, but I am already feeling excessively low and oppressed,’ said her ladyship. ‘And I was obliged to tell Norton to set dinner forward, because your grandmama particularly desired me not to expect her to keep late hours. So we shall dine at six, my dear—though why one should dine in daylight merely because one is in the country I have
never
understood! However, it won’t be so
very
bad, because I have ordered supper at eleven, when I do hope Lady Stavely will have retired!’

‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you that I too have relations who put me to the blush, Cressy!’ interpolated Kit.

‘Oh, dear!’ exclaimed Lady Denville, stricken. ‘Well, doesn’t it
show
you how disordered my senses are? Besides, Cressy knows that her grandmama always puts me in a quake!’

‘Of course I do!’ averred Cressy, her eyes alight with amusement. ‘Was she very twitty. ma’am? Are you at outs with me for having left her to your management? I do beg your pardon, but I thought you would contrive to smooth down her bristles much more easily if I were not present. I expect you did, too!’

‘Well, I don’t know that I did that, precisely,’ said Lady Denville, considering the matter, ‘but I must own that when I took her to her room a few minutes ago she was not so out of reason cross! I don’t mean to say that she was in high good-humour, but she very fortunately detected that the colour had faded a little from the brocade I chose for the curtains in the Blue saloon—which I never thought to be thankful for, K—Evelyn! because I had it sent from Lyons, and the cost put your father all on end. Indeed, I was quite provoked myself when I saw how sadly it had faded! But one never knows when what
seems
to have been a mistake will turn to good account: it put Lady Stavely in a
much
better humour when she was able to tell me what a peagoose I had been. Dearest Cressy, I think I should take you to your room
immediately
,
for it won’t do to keep your grandmama waiting for her dinner! They tell me you haven’t brought your maid, so I will send Rimpton to you—and
don’t
,
my love, allow her to put on airs to be interesting! I wonder sometimes why I bear with her—but she is a wonderful dresser!’

Miss Stavely, though in no doubt of Miss Rimpton’s skill, declined her condescending offices, saying that Grandmama’s Jane would do all for her that was necessary. This was not of a nature to tax the skill of an abigail who was more a nurse than a dresser, for it consisted merely of hooking up a very becoming gown of light orange crape. This was done in the Dowager’s room, and under her eye. She accorded the gown a certain measure of approval, but said that the skirt was too narrow, adding the time-honoured observation that she didn’t know what the world was coming to, when females tried to make themselves look like hop-poles. Disdaining the modern fashion of high waists and clinging skirts, she was herself attired in a stiff black silk, worn over an underdress embroidered with silver thread. A cap of starched black lace was on her hair: mittens covered her arms; and in one hand she held a fan. Unlike her granddaughter, who wore the lightest of silk sandals, she had chosen from a large collection of outmoded shoes a pair with high heels, and paste buckles. Cressy told her mischievously that the only thing wanting was a patch on her cheek.

‘Patches went out of fashion before you were born!’ replied the Dowager crushingly. ‘You may go now, Jane. No, give me my cane—the ebony one! Yes, that will do. And tell William to come up directly to support me down those slippery stairs!’ She turned to survey Cressy, as the door closed behind the placid attendant. ‘And where have you been, miss?’ she demanded.

‘Walking in the rose-garden with Lord Denville, ma’am,’ said Cressy, undismayed by the sharpness of the question.

‘H’m!’ My lady scrutinized her own rouged countenance in the looking-glass, picked up a down puff with her twisted fingers, and gave her cheeks a further dusting of powder. ‘Never thought to ask if
I
wanted your company!’

‘I knew that you didn’t, Grandmama,’ responded Cressy, quizzing her intrepidly. ‘You told me not to hang about you, unless I wished to fret you to flinders, which, I promise you, I don’t! Furthermore, dear ma’am, I couldn’t suppose that when you had Lady Denville to take care of you there was the smallest need for me to remain at your side.’

‘Amabel Denville is nothing but a pretty widgeon!’ declared the Dowager roundly. ‘She always was, and she always will be!’ She glared at her own reflection, her jaws working. ‘One of these days she’ll be like me: an old bag of bones! But I’ll tell you this, girl! If any of my daughters had possessed a tenth part of her charm I’d have thanked God for it! Help me out of this chair! I ought to be in my bed, with a basin of gruel, but I’ll come down to dinner, and if I feel able for it I’ll have a game of backgammon with Cosmo Cliffe afterwards. But I dare say I shan’t: I’m too old for all this junketing about the country! I only trust that if I’m carried off you’ll remember it was for your sake I came here!’

This malevolent speech did not augur well, nor did the Dowager’s mood grow more propitious until the party went in to dinner, when she became very much more mellow. For this her hosts had Mr Dawlish to thank. Not for nothing did this genius command an extortionate wage: he knew quite as well what to offer a very old lady as how to serve up a grand dinner of two full courses, consisting of half-a-dozen removes and upwards of thirty side dishes. The Dowager, revived by a soup made with fresh peas, allowed herself to be persuaded to try a morsel of turbot; followed this up with several morsels of a delicate fawn, roasted whole, and served with a chevreuil sauce; and ended her repast with a dish of asparagus, cut and delivered by the kitchen-gardener a bare ten minutes before Mr Dawlish was ready to cook it. This was so succulent that she was moved to compliment Kit on his cook. She informed him, in her forthright fashion, that she had eaten too much, and would probably be unable to close her eyes all night; but it was noticeable that when she left the dining-room she did so without assistance, and with a remarkable diminution of her previous decrepitude.

Although Kit had been willing enough to concede that Cosmo might entertain the Dowager by plying card-games with her, he had been quite unable to picture her enduring with even the appearance of complaisance his aunt’s flat platitudes. Great was his astonishment, therefore, when, following his uncle and cousin into the drawing-room some time later, he found these two ladies seated side by side on the sofa, and engaged in interested converse. Since Lady Denville had had a card-table set up at the far end of the long room, and lost no time in sweeping the three younger members of the party to it, to play, under her aegis, such frivolous games as suggested themselves to her, it was not until he paid his mama a goodnight visit that Kit learned the reason for this sudden and extraordinary friendship. Nothing, declared her ladyship, had ever been more fortunate! Poor Emma, during the course of a very boring anecdote, had let fall a Name, which had instantly made Lady Stavely prick up her ears. After exhaustive discussion, which had appeared to Lady Denville to range over most of the noble houses in the country, and a fair proportion of the landed gentry, it had been established, to both ladies’ satisfaction, that they were in some way related.

‘But pray don’t ask me how, dearest!’ begged Lady Denville. ‘I can’t
tell
you how many cousins, and marriages, and mere connexions were dragged in: you cannot conceive how tedious! But it has led to that terrible old woman’s taking a fancy to Emma, and I have every hope that we shall be able to fob her off on to your aunt!’

10

Lady Denville’s hope was to some extent realized. Either because of the remote relationship between herself and Mrs Cliffe, or because the Dowager perceived in that biddable lady an excellent substitute for her daughter Clara, she chose to honour her with her approval, and lost no time in inducting her into the duties of companion-in-chief. Somewhat to Lady Denville’s surprise, Poor Emma was perfectly willing to assume these. They were not, in fact, as arduous as might have been supposed, since the Dowager never left her bedchamber till noon, and admitted no one into it except her abigail; retired to it two hours before dinner; and spent the evening playing whist, or piquet, or backgammon with such members of the party as she considered to be worthy opponents, or partners. Mrs Cliffe was not numbered amongst these; and until the arrival of Sir Bonamy Ripple, three days after the rest of the guests had assembled, it was Kit who occupied the fourth place at the whist-table. He was a sound, if not a brilliant player, and once he had grasped the difference between long whist, which the Dowager preferred, and short, to which, as a member of the younger generation, he was accustomed, she had no serious fault to find with him. But as Lady Denville’s play was divided between flashes of brilliance, and strange lapses (due, as she unacceptably explained to the Dowager, to her having been thinking of something else at just that moment), it was soon tacitly decided that she and her son should be perpetual partners against the Dowager and Cosmo Cliffe.

Emma’s new duties, therefore, consisted merely of bearing the Dowager company during her unoccupied moments, and going with her, every fine afternoon, for a sedate drive round the neighbouring countryside; and as this regimen exactly suited her disposition no one felt her to be an object for compassion.

Ambrose, still fired with the hope of becoming a notable shot, spent every morning with the head gamekeeper, a longsuffering individual, who confided to Kit that if he succeeded in teaching Mr Ambrose to hit a barn-door at a range of twelve yards it would be more than he bargained for.

This, since Cosmo spent the better part of the day either perusing the London papers in the library, or prowling about the estate, asking shrewd questions of bailiffs and farmers, and reporting detected extravagance to Kit, left Kit with the charge of entertaining Miss Stavely. On sunny days, they rode together, or played at battledore and shuttlecock; when it rained they played billiards, or sat in comfortable talk; once, at her request, he took her to the long picture-gallery, regaling her with an irreverent history of his ancestors, many of whose portraits lined the walls. She entered into the spirit of this, and capped with aplomb his top-lofty boast of a recusant priest (in the collateral) with an account of the Stavely who had blotted the escutcheon by having journeyed so far into Dun territory that he had seen nothing for it but to take to the High Toby.

Kit, acknowledging the superior distinction of this anecdote, wished to know if this enterprising scion had succeeded in making his fortune; but Miss Stavely informed him, with what he told her was odious pretension, that it was generally believed that her interesting forebear had perished on the scaffold, under the cognomen of Gentleman Dick.

‘That’s good,’ he admitted. ‘But take a look at old Ginger-hackle here! One of my great-great-uncles, and said to have murdered his first wife. Here she is, beside him!’

‘Well,’ said Cressy, subjecting the portrait of a languishing female to a thoughtful scrutiny, ‘I shouldn’t wonder at it if he did. Anyone can see that she was one of those complaining women, for ever having the vapours, or dissolving into floods of tears. And I have little doubt that that red head of his denotes an uncertain temper.’

But the picture which held Miss Stavely’s interest longest was the Hoppner portrait of the Fancot twins, executed when they were schoolboys. ‘How very alike you are!’ she remarked, studying more closely than Kit appreciated what was held to have been one of Hoppner’s best likenesses. ‘There
is
a difference, when one looks more particularly into it. Your hair is brighter, and your brother is a trifle taller than you are. Something in the expressions, too ....’

‘Do you think so? The seeming difference in height is merely the way in which we were posed, I fancy. As for the expression, the picture was never thought to be one of Hoppner’s happier works,’ said Kit, ruthlessly sacrificing the deceased artist’s reputation, ‘Come and look at Lawrence’s portrait of my mother!’

She allowed herself to be drawn onward; but she cast another glance at the Hoppner before she left the gallery, and one surreptitious but searching one at Kit’s profile. She said nothing, however, either then, or rather later, when the Dowager delivered herself of the opinion that Lord Brumby had wronged his elder nephew.