Джорджетт Хейер - Cotillion

When Meg kindly, but (as she pointed out to them) reprehensibly, left the betrothed couple to their own devices, later in the evening, it could not have been said that Freddy’s ingenuity was displayed to any marked degree. He explained, when asked if he had thought what was best to be done, that he had had no leisure in which to examine the problem. “Must see I haven’t, Kit! Had a great deal on my mind. Gave me a nasty jar, I can tell you, when it struck me Charlie might be coming down any day. Dashed calendar of mine don’t tell one the dates of the terms, either. Took me the better part of the day to find ‘em. And now, just as I thought all was right, I’ve got to go jauntering off to Oxford, and I daresay I shall have to do a lot of thinking when I get there. The thing is, Charlie’s a dashed clever fellow, but he ain’t got a particle of common-sense. No use asking me to get rid of the Chevalier until I come back to town. Do it then.”

“Get rid of him? But how can we, when you yourself said it would be useless to threaten to expose him unless he went away?”

“I don’t know, but very likely I shall hit on something. Well, dashed well must! He hasn’t been calling here, has he?”

“No, oh, no! But I met Olivia today, and I very much fear that it has gone deeper with her than I knew. I own that what she said astonished me! It seems as though the only thing she cares for is that Mrs. Broughty would never countenance such a match. You may imagine my surprise when I discovered that Camille’s disclosure has not shocked her, as it shocked me!”

“Daresay it wouldn’t,” responded Freddy, after giving the matter some thought. “Come to think of it, Kit, bit of an adventuress herself!”

“Freddy!”

He gave an apologetic cough, but said firmly: “No use wrapping the thing up in clean linen. I don’t say it’s her fault, but she told you herself she came to town to catch a rich husband. Well, nothing to way against that! Point is, that Broughty woman would p!ay any havey-cavey trick to bring the thing off. Unscrupulous, that’s the word!”

“SKeis, yes! But not Olivia!”

“Very likely not, because she hasn’t the wit for it. No wish to offend you, Kit, but she sounds a cork-brained girl to me. Always did! I don’t say she ain’t goodhearted, but if she’s got the sort of principles you have yourself I’d like to know where she learned ‘em!”

Kitty stared at him in a little dismay. “Must one learn to have principles?” she faltered.

“Lord, yes! Well, I put it to you, Kit! How the deuce would you know the right way to go on if you was never taught anything but the wrong way?”

She digested this for a moment in silence. “I fear there may be much in what you say,” she said reluctantly. “It has sometimes seemed to me that poor Olivia’s thoughts have not a proper direction, and I have wondered at it, for, indeed, Freddy, she is a good, kind girl! But however it may be it would, be wicked to see her thrust into marriage with such a person as Sir Henry Gosford, and make not one push to save her! And when I consider what the alternative might be, and how much I am to blame for her present distress, I feel that I must try to help her! I am persuaded you must enter into my sentiments upon this occasion!”

Mr. Standen was far from doing any such thing, but he was never one to engage in fruitless argument, so he held his peace. He perceived, however, that Miss Charing’s large charity would not permit her to abandon her unfortunate protegee, and eyed her with a good deal of misgiving.

She had risen from her chair, and was walking restlessly about the room. “Something must be done for Olivia!” she said. “She depends upon me to help her, which makes it so particularly dreadful that I cannot! And then there is poor Dolph! All this business has almost made me forget him and Hannah! What wretched work I am making of it!”

“Know what I think, Kit? Good thing if you did forget ‘em! What I mean is, very sorry for the poor fellow, but got enough on our hands without him.”

“Oh, no! When I pledged them my word I would assist them!”

Freddy sighed.

“And then there is myself!” Kitty said. “I can’t tell how it has come about, but I have done nothing of what I intended! Freddy, we must not continue in this fashion! It was very wrong of me ever to ask such a thing of you! Wrong, and so foolish that I am amazed at myself! Only see what has come of it!”

“Dash it, Kit, thought you was enjoying yourself!” said Freddy, a little hurt.

She turned impulsively towards him. “Oh, it has been the most delightful thing that ever happened to me!” she said. “I shall remember it my whole life long! I never was so happy! But it must end. On that I am resolved! We must consider what is best to be done.”

“Talk it over when I come back from Oxford,” said Freddy.

“Perhaps,” said Kitty, “the thing would be for us to quarrel.”

“No, dash it! I don’t want to quarrel with you!”

“And I am sure I could never quarrel with you, Freddy!” said Kitty warmly.

“There you are, then! No sense in it.”

“I meant only that we should pretend to quarrel.”

“Wouldn’t answer at all,” said Freddy. “Everyone knows I ain’t quarrelsome. Tell you what, Kit: good notion if we don’t tease ourselves about that tiil we’ve packed your cousin off to France. Got to pack Dolph off to Ireland, too.”

“But you said you wished I would not!”

“Oh, well!” said Freddy, in a temporizing spirit. “I’d liefer you did that than started quarrelling with me! Come to think of it, it ain’t such a bad notion. Might as well be rid of Dolph while we’re about it. Mind, I don’t dislike the poor fellow, but it ain’t what I’d choose, having a cousin who’s queer in his attic loose on the town!”

“No, indeed! Oh, dear, I cannot help wishing that you were not obliged to go to Oxford tomorrow!”

“No need to worry about that,” said Freddy kindly. “Shan’t stay above one night there, and I don’t mean to dawdle on the road. Hired a chaise-and-four. Won’t take me much above four hours to get back to town. Make an early start, and be in London by noon. No time for anything to go amiss here. Besides, no reason why anything should. Wouldn’t go if there was.”

Since Lord Buckhaven was a man of affairs, he paid for an early delivery of the post at his town-house. Consequently, Kitty found a letter addressed to her in Miss Fishguard’s spidery handwriting lying beside her plate on the breakfast— table next morning. She broke the wafer that sealed it, and opened it, but was soon knitting her brows over it. It was evident that it had been written in considerable agitation, for although the opening lines, which expressed Miss Fish— guard’s hope that her charge was in good health and continuing to find her stay in town agreeable, were perfectly legible, the writing soon became little better than a scrawl. As Miss Fishguard, in a conscientious determination to save Kitty the cost of receiving a second sheet, had crossed her lines closely, the task of deciphering the whole was very nearly impossible. After poring over it for some minutes, Kitty exclaimed: “I declare I don’t know what can be the matter with Fish! In general, she writes such a very neat hand, and here she is sending me a letter I cannot make head or tail of! I do hope Uncle Matthew has not driven her out of her wits!”

“I should think he would drive anyone out of her wits,” observed Meg, sipping her coffee. “He must be the most odious person imaginable!”

“Yes, but in her last letter Fish wrote that he was behaving quite amiably. Besides, she is really so much accustomed to his odd ways that she would not make a fuss only because he had thrown his stick at her, or something of that nature. But there can be no doubt that something is amiss, for she begs me to return so that she may tell me what has happened.”

“But. you cannot!” said Meg, putting down her cup.

“No, and she seems to feel that, for there is something here which I think is spare you for one day. That must mean you, Meg. Oh, yes! Now I see! That word, which I took to be Ladybirds, must be Lady Buckhaven! Then there is something I cannot read, and being thought a cockatrice.”

“Who?” demanded Meg. “If she means me, I think it is excessively uncivil of her, besides being unjust, for I never saw her but once in all my life!”

“Perhaps it isn’t cockatrice. Yet it certainly looks like it. However, here, on the very next line, is something about Henry VIII, so I don’t think it can be.”

“She cannot be writing to you about Henry VIII!” objected Meg.

“Well, one would think not, but you may see for yourself!” replied Kitty, showing her the sheet.

The fair head and the dark were bent over it. “I must say, it does seem to be Henry VIII,” admitted Meg. “Perhaps she is likening Uncle Matthew to him! He was very disagreeable too, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, so he was! He had rages, and cut off people’s heads. No doubt that is it! But who can this {Catherine be?”

“Katherine of Aragon!” said Meg brilliantly.

“No, I am sure it’s not Aragon. Besides, how absurd! They must have been obliged to turn one of the maids off, and hire a new one. Perhaps Uncle Matthew has taken a dislike to her. He usually does.”

“I cannot conceive why Miss Fishguard should beg you to go home only because she has engaged a new servant.”

“Oh, no, and it seems not to be that at all, for I can distinctly make out unable to write it, and, a little farther on something about my generosity. Then there is a word which looks like treason, so it can have nothing to do with this Katherine. It must be Henry VIII again, and yet—You know, Meg, I think I shall be obliged to post down to Arnside, if Freddy will be so good as to take me, when he comes back to town, for there can be no doubt that poor Fish is in great distress!”