She ran him to earth in the library, but he was not alone. Even as she spoke his name, she saw that Sir Bonamy was present, and she drew back, murmuring an apology.
Kit was standing with his hand on the back of a chair, confronting Sir Bonamy, seated on a sofa, his hands on his knees, and an expression of resignation on his countenance. Kit turned his head quickly, saying in rather an odd voice: ‘Don’t go, Cressy! Sir Bonamy knows the truth about us, and won’t object, I believe, to my disclosing to you the – unexpected news which he has just broken to me.’
‘No,’ said Sir Bonamy, preparing to heave himself to his feet. ‘No sense in objecting to it. Mark me if it ain’t all over the country before the cat can lick her ear!’
‘Pray don’t get up, sir!’ Cressy said, coming across the room to lay a restraining hand on his arm. ‘What is this news? Don’t keep me on tenterhooks, Kit! I c-can see that it is good news!’
Mr Fancot’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. He said in a measured tone: ‘Sir Bonamy informs me that my mother has accepted an offer of marriage from him.’
‘No!’ cried Cressy. ‘Is it so indeed? Oh, my dear sir, let me be the first to felicitate you!’
‘Much obliged to you! Hardly know whether I’m on my head or my heels, but I don’t need to tell you I’m the happiest man on earth! That,’ said Sir Bonamy doggedly, ‘goes without saying!’
‘Of course it does! It must seem to you like a fairy story!’
‘Ay, that’s it! Sort of thing one never thought would happen to one. What I mean is,’ he corrected himself hastily, ‘something I’d ceased to hope for!’
Kit had been looking decidedly grim, but Cressy, stealing a glance at him, was relieved to see that his ready sense of humour had been roused by the dejected picture presented by his parent’s successful suitor, softening the lines about his mouth, and bringing the laughter back into his eyes. But he said, with perfect gravity: ‘You must find it hard to realize your good fortune, sir.’
‘Yes, well, I do!’ confessed Sir Bonamy. ‘At my time of life, you know, a thing like this takes some getting used to! Yes, and another thing! I can’t but ask myself if your mother will be happy, married to me! Now, tell me, Kit! do you think she might regret it?’
‘No,’ said Kit. ‘I am very much inclined to think, sir, that you will neither of you regret it.’
‘Well, I must say, Kit, that’s very handsome of you – very handsome indeed!’ exclaimed Sir Bonamy, visibly astonished. ‘There’s no question of my regretting it, of course, but damme if I ever thought to hear you say such a thing to me! To tell you the truth, I thought you’d cut up pretty stiff!’
‘I could hardly wish for a kinder or more indulgent husband for her!’ Kit said, smiling. ‘You’ll cosset her to death!’
‘Ay, so I will! But did you wish any man to marry her?’
‘No, certainly not any man, but one who loved her, and could be trusted to take care of her, yes! What I do not wish is to see her setting up an establishment of her own – and getting her affairs into heaven only knows what sort of a tangle!’
‘No, by God!’ ejaculated Sir Bonamy. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re very right, my boy! It wouldn’t do at all! At least I shan’t have that to worry about!’
‘You won’t have anything to worry about!’ Cressy assured him. ‘Will you think me very saucy if I say that never did a knight more thoroughly deserve to win his lady than you, dear sir?’
‘No, no!’ protested Sir Bonamy, much discomposed. ‘Nonsense! Very obliging of you to say so, but no such thing! As a matter of fact, I’m a baronet.’
‘To me,’ said Cressy, avoiding Kit’s eye, ‘you have always seemed like a knight of ancient chivalry!’
‘What, one of those fellows who careered all over, looking for dragons? Well, whatever put such a silly notion as that into your head, my dear girl? Rigged out in armour, too! Why, it makes me hot only to think of it! Not the style of thing I care for at all, I promise you!’
‘Ah, you misunderstand me! It wasn’t dragons I had in mind but your unswerving faithfulness to Godmama! You have been her sworn knight throughout the years!’
‘Baronet,’ interpolated Kit unsteadily.
‘I’ve so often thought how lonely you must have been,’ pursued Cressy, ignoring this frivolity. ‘In that great house of yours, quite alone, and – as it must have seemed to you – with nothing to look forward to!’
‘Very true! Except that one grows accustomed, you know, and I don’t live in it alone precisely.’
‘You have servants, of course, but what do they signify? So very little!’
Sir Bonamy, who employed an enormous staff which included three cooks wholly indispensable to his comfort, thought that they signified a great deal, but refrained from saying so.
‘But now how different it will be!’
‘I know it will,’ he agreed, with a deep sigh.
‘And, oh, how you will be envied!’ she said, hastily changing her note. ‘They will be ready to murder you, all Godmama’s disappointed suitors! I can’t but laugh when I picture to myself the chagrin of certain of their number when you walk off with her from under their noses!’
It was plain that this aspect had not previously occurred to him. He considered it, puffing out his cheeks a little, as he always did when anything pleased him. ‘Yes, by Jupiter!’ he said. ‘They will be ready to murder me! The loveliest, most sought-after woman in the ton, and she chose me! A triumph that, eh? Lord, I’d give a monkey to see Louth’s face when he reads the advertisement! He’ll be ready to murder me, if you like!’ A less agreeable thought occurred to him: he said gloomily: ‘Yes, and I know of someone else who’ll be fit to cut my liver out, and that’s young Denville! I was forgetting him. Kit, if this marriage was to cause a breach between him and your mother, she’d break her heart, and I’d give her up sooner than do that!’
‘Don’t worry, sir: it won’t!’ Kit replied. ‘I can’t promise that Evelyn will take very readily to the marriage, but never fear! he’ll come round, and under no circumstances would he become estranged from Mama. That you may depend on!’
‘I daresay you know best,’ said Sir Bonamy, accepting his fate. He rose ponderously to his feet. ‘Time I went up to change my dress!’
‘We don’t change this evening, sir: General Oakenshaw drove over an hour ago to pay his respects to my mother, and she has persuaded him to remain to dine here.’
‘You don’t mean it! Why, I thought that old spider-shanks had gone to roost years ago!’ exclaimed Sir Bonamy. ‘Well, well, what a day this has been! One surprise after another! I won’t put on my evening rig, but I must change my coat, and I don’t know but what I won’t take a little rest before dinner, just to pluck me up, you know!’
‘And perhaps a cordial?’ suggested Kit.
‘No, no, I don’t want a cordial! The thing is that I’ve had a lot of excitement today, which I ain’t accustomed to, and I feel a trifle fagged! A short nap will set me to rights again!’
‘As you wish, sir,’ said Kit, holding open the door for him, and bowing him out of the room.
Shutting it again, he turned to find that Cressy had collapsed into a chair, in fits of laughter. She uttered, between gusts: ‘Oh, Kit! Oh, Kit! I thought I should die! Poor Sir Bonamy!’
‘You and your knights!’ he said.
That sent her into a fresh paroxysm. ‘Baronets!’ she wailed. ‘Wretch that you are! That was nearly my undoing! Oh, don’t make me laugh any more! It positively hurts!’ She mopped her eyes. ‘But it will be a happy marriage, won’t it? When he has accustomed himself to the idea?’
‘I should think it might well be, if he can be brought up to the scratch. What I want to know, my love, is whether this was one of Mama’s nacky notions, or yours? Out with it, now!’
‘Kit
, how can you suppose that I would venture to suggest to Godmama that she should marry Sir Bonamy, or anyone else?’
‘I don’t. But I strongly suspect that it was you who put the idea into her head! Well?’
Her mirth ceased. ‘Not quite that. I own, however, that it did spring from something I said, and that I hoped it might. Are you vexed with me?’
‘I don’t know. No, of course I’m not, but – Cressy, is she doing this for Evelyn’s sake?’
‘Not entirely. I think for her own as much as his. I can’t tell you what passed between us, for what she said to me was in confidence. I will only tell you that I found her in great distress, and discovered that she meant to – oh, to make a perfectly dreadful sacrifice for Evelyn! – and that when I left her she was wearing her mischief-look! Kit, I do most sincerely believe that she will be happy! She is very fond of Sir Bonamy, you know, and always on comfortable terms with him! And above all she must not live alone! You yourself said so. You had her quite incurable extravagance in mind, but what has been very much in my mind is my conviction that she would be miserably unhappy.’
‘Yes, I feel that too. But what of Ripple? You wouldn’t describe him as radiant, would you?’
She laughed. ‘Well, perhaps not radiant, precisely! Now don’t set me off again, I implore you! The thing is that he has been perfectly content with his lot for years, and has suddenly realized – I think! – that he doesn’t in the least wish to change it! It must have been a great shock to him, but he will very soon become reconciled to the idea, for he does dote on her, you know! He will be very proud of her, too, and positively revel in squandering enormous sums on her. Oh, dear, look at the time! I must go, or I shall be late for dinner! Kit, who is this General Godmama has invited to dine with us? I wish she had not, for there is something else I must tell you. I have broken it to Grandmama that you are not Denville.’
‘Good God! You have been busy, haven’t you? I thought it was agreed that that should be left to me to do?’
She shook her head. ‘Believe me, Kit, it wouldn’t have answered!’
He lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘Wouldn’t it? Am I to understand that your efforts have been crowned by success?’
‘Well, I don’t know – and I must own that nothing could be more unfortunate than this General!’ she said seriously. ‘It is bound to put her out of temper, to be obliged to keep her tongue between her teeth all the evening, for you may depend upon it she will have decided just how she means to rattle you down. However, there’s no denying that she has a pronounced tendre for you, and I am very hopeful that if you can but hit upon a scheme to bring us all off from this mingle-mangle without anyone’s knowing what really happened she will be very much inclined to relent.’
‘I should think she might well!’
She looked inquiringly at him. ‘I must own that it seems very difficult to me, but I wondered if you have already some such scheme in your mind? Have you?’
‘Frankly, my loved one, no!’
‘Oh!’ she said, slightly dashed. ‘I must admit that it has me at a standstill, but I did think that perhaps you might have discovered just how to do the trick neatly!’
‘I can see you did,’ he replied, regarding her in rueful amusement. ‘Believe me, adorable, it is only with the utmost reluctance that I shatter an illusion so flattering to myself! But, sooner or later, the truth will out! Better, I daresay, to make a clean breast of it immediately! Cressy, my darling, if your mind is set on becoming the wife of a brilliant diplomatist, cry off at once! For I must confess to you that I too am wholly at a standstill!’
Her gravity melted into laughter. ‘Oh, Kit, you detestable creature! How dare you think me such a widgeon as to cherish illusions? I know that you’ll do the trick!’
Mr Fancot, having dealt suitably with this moving declaration of his loved one’s faith in his superior intellect, said affably, still holding her in his arms: ‘To be sure I shall! After all, I have twenty minutes to consider the problem before we sit down to dinner, haven’t I? As for the task of breaking the news of Mama’s approaching nuptials to Eve – not to mention cajoling him into accepting it with at least the semblance of complaisance! – twenty seconds, I daresay, will be time enough for me!’
Miss Stavely, a gurgle of laughter in her throat, but blatant adoration in her eyes, said: ‘More than enough – my darling, my darling!’
Twenty-one
Dinner at Ravenhurst, that evening, was not destined to be ranked amongst Lady Denville’s more successful parties. She, indeed, deriving consolation from the reflection that no one for whose opinion she cared a rush would ever know anything about it, sparkled with all her usual brilliance; but her harassed son showed signs of preoccupation; Miss Stavely was in a quake; the Dowager, too long-headed to denounce, in the presence of a stranger, the irreclaimable hedge-bird seated beside her, at the head of the table, was understandably filled with a thwarted rage which caused her to snap the nose off anyone so unwise as to address her; and General Oakenshaw was revolted by the discovery that his ancient rival (whom he variously stigmatized as a chawbacon, a bag-pudding, a ludicrously fat Bartholomew baby, and a contemptible barber’s block) was not only an honoured guest at Ravenhurst, but was apparently on terms of the most regrettable intimacy with his hostess.
The only person, in fact, who enjoyed the party was Sir Bonamy Ripple.
He had joined the rest of the company without the smallest expectation of enjoyment. The recuperative nap to which he had pinned his faith had been denied him: he had been unable to close his eyes; and he arose from his uneasy couch feeling as blue as megrim, and much inclined to suspect that he had received notice to quit. But when he entered the saloon in which the remaining members of the party were gathered his sinking spirits revived. Lady Denville, ravishingly beautiful in a golden satin gown, came towards him, bewitching him with her lovely smile, and murmuring, as she held out her hands to him: ‘Bonamy, my dear!’
‘Amabel!’ he breathed. ‘Well, upon my word! Exquisite, my pretty! Exquisite!’
‘Truly? Then I’m satisfied! No one is a better judge than you of what becomes me!’
He was so much overcome by this tribute that words failed him, and he was obliged to content himself with kissing both her hands. Straightening himself from a bow which caused his Cumberland corset to creak ominously, he became aware of General Oakenshaw, and realized, with immense satisfaction, that that distinguished gentleman was observing this passage with blatant revulsion. From that moment his subsequent enjoyment of the evening was assured. Raising his quizzing-glass to his eye, he ejaculated: ‘God bless my soul! Oakenshaw!’ Then allowing his quizzing-glass to fall, he surged forward, holding out his hand and saying, with an apologetic air which deceived no one: ‘My dear sir! You must forgive me for not immediately recognizing you! But when one begins to grow old, you know, one’s memory fails! How many years is it since I last had the pleasure of shaking your hand? Ah, well! best not inquire too closely into that, eh?’
‘My memory has not failed!’ countered the General. ‘I recognized you the instant you came into the room! Still as fat as a flawn, I perceive!’
‘No, no, my dear old friend!’ said Sir Bonamy, with unabated joviality. ‘It is like your kind heart to say so, but I am much fatter than that! But you haven’t changed a jot! Now I look at you more closely I see that you are still the same old – what was it they used to call you? Sheep-biter! No, no, what am I thinking of? That wasn’t it! Spider-shanks! Ay, how could I have forgotten? Spider-shanks!’
This interchange, while it wonderfully refreshed Sir Bonamy, afforded no pleasure at all to anyone else, with the possible exception of the Dowager. She, indeed, uttered a sharp crack of laughter, but whether this arose from amusement, or from an unamiable wish to vent her spleen on someone, whether she was acquainted with him, or (as happened to be the case) had nev
er met him before in her life, was doubtful.
By the time dinner came to an end, even Lady Denville, whose delightful insouciance had been maintained, without apparent effort, throughout the meal, felt that the sooner her courtly but ancient admirer took his departure the better it would be for everyone; and she issued a softly spoken direction to Norton to bring in the tea-tray not a moment later than half-past eight. Since Cressy had been unable to warn her that the Dowager was in possession of her guilty secret, she was unprepared to meet the attack mounted against her by that formidable octogenarian the instant the door of the Long Drawing-room had been shut, and made no attempt to defend herself. All she did was to bow her shining head before the storm, saying wretchedly: ‘I know, I know, but indeed I never meant to cause so much trouble! It was my fault – all of it! Say what you like to me, ma’am, but pray, pray don’t lay the blame at poor Kit’s door!’