Джорджетт Хейер - The Grand Sophy

But Amabel survived the crisis. The fever began to abate; and although its ravages left her listless and emaciated, Dr. Baillie was able to assure her mother that, provided that there was no relapse, he now entertained reasonable hopes of her complete recovery. He handsomely gave Sophy much of the credit for the improvement in the little girl’s condition; and Lady Ombersley, shedding tears, said that she shuddered to think where they would any of them have been without her dearest niece.

“Well, well, she is a very capable young lady, and so too is Miss Rivenhall,” said the doctor. “While they are with Miss Amabel you may be easy, ma’am!”

Mr. Fawnhope, ushered into the room five minutes later, was the first recipient of the glad tidings, and instantly dashed off a little lyric in commemoration of Amabel’s emergence from danger. Lady Ombersley thought it particularly touching and begged to be given a copy; but since it dealt more with the pretty picture of Cecilia bending over the sickbed than with Amabel’s sufferings, it quite failed to please the person for whom it was intended. With far more gratitude did Cecilia receive an exquisite bouquet of flowers brought by Lord Charlbury for her small sister. She saw him only to thank him. He did not importune her to remain in his company, but said, upon her excusing herself immediately, “Indeed I understand! I had not hoped to have been granted even a minute of your time. It was like you to have come downstairs. If only I could be sure that I have not interrupted your too hard-earned rest!”

“No, no!” she said, scarcely able to command her voice. “I was sitting with my sister, and when your flowers were brought up to her room I could not help but run down to tell you of her delight in them. Too good, too kind! Forgive me! I must not stay!”

It had been hoped that when the invalid began to mend the constant attendance on her of her sister or her cousin might become less necessary, but it was soon found that she was too weak to be patient and became fretful if left for too long in the care of Nurse or Jane Storridge. Mr. Rivenhall, softly entering the sickroom one evening shortly after midnight, was shocked to discover not Nurse but Sophy seated by the small fire that was kept burning in the grate. She was sewing by the light of a branch of candles, but she looked up when the door opened, and smiled, and laid a finger to her lips. A screen was drawn between the candles and the bed, so that Mr. Rivenhall could only dimly perceive his sister. She seemed to be sleeping. He closed the door soundlessly and trod over to the fire, whispering, “I understood Nurse was to sit up with her at night. How is this? It is not fit for you, Sophy!”

She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and began to fold up her work. Nodding toward the door that stood ajar into the dressing room, she replied in a low tone, “Nurse is laid down upon the sofa there. Poor soul, she is knocked out! Amabel is very restless tonight, has been so all day. Don’t be alarmed! It is an excellent sign when a patient becomes peevish and hard to manage. But she has been so much in the habit of getting her own way with Nurse that she will not mind her as she should. Sit down. I am going to heat some milk for her to drink, and, if you will, you may coax her to do so when she wakes.”

“You must be tired to death!” he said.

“No, not at all. I was asleep all the afternoon,” she returned, setting a small saucepan on the hob. “Like the Duke, I can sleep at any hour! Poor Cecy can never get a wink during the day, so we have decided that she must not attempt to sit up at night.”

“You mean that you have decided it,” he said.

She only smiled and shook her head. He said no more but sat watching her as she knelt by the fire, her attention on the milk slowly heating on the hob. After a few minutes, Amabel began to stir. Almost before her feeble, plaintive cry of “Sophy!” had been uttered, Sophy had risen to her feet and moved to the bedside. Amabel was hot, thirsty, uncomfortable, and disinclined to believe that anything could do her good. To be raised, so that her pillows could be shaken and turned, made her cry; she wanted Sophy to bathe her forehead, but complained that the lavender water stung her eyes when she did so.

“Hush, you will shock your visitor if you cry!” Sophy said, smoothing her tangled curls. “Do you know there is a gentleman come to see you?”

“Charles?” Amabel asked, forgetting her woes for a moment.

“Yes, Charles, so you must let me tidy you a little, and straighten the sheets. There! Now, Charles, Miss Rivenhall will be pleased to receive you!”

She moved the screen, so that the candlelight fell on the bed, and nodded to Charles to sit down beside his sister. He did so, holding the claw like little hand in his and talking to the child in a cheerful way that succeeded in diverting her until Sophy brought a cup of milk to the bedside. The sight of this at once made her peevish. She wanted nothing; it would make her sick to swallow any milk; why would not Sophy leave her in peace?

“I hope you don’t mean to be so unkind as to refuse it, when I have come especially to hold the cup for you,” Charles said, taking it from his cousin. “A cup with roses on it, too! Now, where had you this? I am sure I do not recognize it!”

“Cecilia gave it to me for my very own,” Amabel replied. “But I don’t wish for any milk. It is the middle of the night, not the proper time for drinking milk!”

“I hope Charles has admired your real roses,” said Sophy, sitting down on the edge of the bed and raising Amabel to rest against her shoulder. “We are so jealous, Charles, Cecy and I! Amabel has such a fine beau that we are cast quite into the shade. Only look at the bouquet he brought her!”

“Charlbury?” he said, smiling.

“Yes, but I like your posy best,” Amabel said. 

“Of course you do,” said Sophy. “So take a sip of the milk he is offering you. I must tell you that a gentleman’s feelings are very easily wounded, my dear, and that, you know, would never do!”

“Very true,” Charles corroborated. “I shall be thinking that you have a greater regard for Charlbury than for me, and that will very likely make me fall into a melancholy.”

That made her laugh weakly, and so, between nonsense and coaxing, she was persuaded to drink nearly all the milk. Sophy laid her gently down again, but nothing would do but that both Charles and Sophy should stay beside her.

“Yes, but no more talking,” Sophy said. “I am going to tell you about another of my adventures, and if you interrupt me I shall lose the thread.”

“Oh, yes, tell about the time you were lost in the Pyrenees!” begged Amabel drowsily.

Sophy did so, her voice sinking as the little girl’s eyelids began to droop. Mr. Rivenhall sat still and silent on the other side of the bed, watching his sister. Presently Amabel’s deeper breathing betrayed that she slept. Sophy’s voice ceased; she looked up and met Mr. Rivenhall’s eyes. He was staring at her, as though a thought, blinding in its novelty, had occurred to him. Her gaze remained steady, a little questioning. He rose abruptly, half stretched out his hand but let it fall again, and, turning, went quickly out of the room.

UPON THE following day, Sophy did not encounter her cousin. He visited Amabel at an hour when he knew Sophy to be resting and was not at home to dinner. Lady Ombersley feared that something had occurred to vex him, for although his manner toward her was unfailingly patient, and he abated none of his solicitude for her comfort, his brow was clouded, and he replied to many of her remarks quite, at random. He submitted, however, to the penance of a hand at cribbage with her; and when the game was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Fawnhope, with a copy of his poem for Lady Ombersley and a posy of moss roses for Cecilia, he was sufficiently master of himself to greet the visitor, if not with enthusiasm, at least with civility.

Mr. Fawnhope, having written some thirty lines of his tragedy the previous day, with which he was not dissatisfied, was in a complaisant humor, neither chasing an elusive epithet nor brooding over an infelicitous line. He said everything that was proper, and, when all inquiries into the invalid’s condition were exhausted, conversed on various topics so much like a sensible man that Mr. Rivenhall himself quite in charity with him and was only driven from the room by Lady Ombersley’s request to the poet to read aloud to her his lyric on Amabel’s deliverance from danger. Even this abominable affectation could not wholly dissipate the kindlier feelings with which he regarded Mr. Fawnhope, whose continued visits to the house gave him a better opinion of the poet than was at all deserved. Cecilia could have told him that Mr. Fawnhope’s intrepidity sprang more from a sublime unconsciousness of the risk of infection than from any deliberate heroism, but since she was not in the habit of discussing her lover with her brother he continued in a happy state of ignorance, himself too practical a man to comprehend the density of the veil in which a poet could wrap himself.

He never again visited the sickroom at a moment when he might expect to find his cousin there, and when they met “at the dinner table, his manner toward her was so curt as to border on the brusque. Cecilia, knowing how very much obliged to Sophy he thought himself, was astonished, and more than once pressed her cousin to tell her whether they had quarreled. But Sophy would only shake her head and look mischievous.

Amabel continued to mend, although slowly, and with many setbacks and all the irrational fidgets of a convalescent. For twelve hours nothing would do for her but to have Jacko brought to her room. Only Sophy’s forcible representations prevented Mr. Rivenhall from posting down to Ombersley Court to bring back the indispensable monkey, so anxious was he that nothing should be allowed to retard his little sister’s recovery, But Tina, hitherto excluded, to her great indignation, from attendance on his mistress in the sickroom, made an excellent substitute for Jacko, and was only too content to curl up on the quilt under Amabel’s caressing hand.