Cotillion

Lord Dolphinton addressed himself to his cousin, briefly and to the point. ‘Mama says you are to bring Kitty to her box,’ he stated. ‘Freddy, I didn’t know you were going to bring Kitty to town, did I?’

Mr Standen, though irritated by this peremptory command, was not deaf to the note of appeal in Lord Dolphinton’s voice. ‘No, no!’ he said soothingly. ‘At least, I don’t know what you knew, Dolph, but no need to get into a taking, old fellow! Too late to bring Kit along to see my aunt now! You go back and tell her so! Bring her after the next act!’ He then turned his relative gently round, and gave him an encouraging thrust, remarking to Mr Stonehouse, as Dolphinton ambled away: ‘Seven-months’ child, y’know: daresay it accounts for it! Better go back and warn Kit!’

‘Freddy!’ said Mr Stonehouse, detaining him. ‘What is this? I m-mean, Elgin M-Marbles—Westminster Abbey—! Are you g-going to be m-married?’

‘No, no!’ Freddy said involuntarily. Recollecting himself, he added: ‘What I mean is—only betrothed! Keeping it a secret, Jasper! Family reasons!’

‘Oh!’ said Mr Stonehouse, much mystified. ‘Of c-course, if you d-don’t want it known, I shan’t s-say anything! But why—’

‘Curtain’s going up!’ interrupted Freddy desperately, retreating into his box much in the fashion of a rabbit hotly pursued by a terrier.

Ten

Considerably to their surprise, and not a little to their relief, Lady Dolphinton received the engaged couple later in the evening with a degree of affability which was as rare as it was unexpected. She was a hard-featured woman, with a predatory mouth, a smile that never reached her eyes, and an air of consequence. At no time had she been popular with her deceased husband’s relations, for she was both proud and ill-natured, insolent to persons whom she considered to be her social inferiors, tyrannical to her son, and ruthless in the methods she employed to achieve her ends. Even Lady Legerwood, always prone to take the kindliest view of everyone, could not like Augusta. In her eyes, Augusta was a bad mother, whose treatment of her dull-witted son had, she maintained, done much to increase his imbecility. She could say no worse of anyone. The younger members of the family were frightened of her when children, and avoided her when they grew up. Mr Penicuik detested her. He made very little secret of his belief that his nephew’s untimely decease might be laid at her door; and none at all of his conviction that his great-nephew’s peculiarities were directly inherited from her. He said that all the Skirlings were loose screws, adding darkly that he didn’t blame them for setting it about that old James Skirling had been drowned while fishing on a Scottish loch. No one, he said, could be expected to advertise the fact that a member of the family had to be confined in a room at the top of the house, with a couple of attendants to see that he came to no harm.

Knowing how much she must have angered the Countess by rejecting Dolphinton’s suit, Kitty went to her box in considerable trepidation, clutching Freddy’s arm tightly enough to draw from him a remonstrance. She begged pardon, and expressed the hope that her ladyship would not say anything very dreadful. He seemed surprised, and said: ‘Lord, Kit, you ain’t afraid of her?’

‘N-no. At least—yes, I am a little! I think she is an evil person! And she can say such cruel things!’

‘Go away if she does,’ said Freddy.

‘Oh, Freddy, would you dare?’ she asked, laughing a little.

‘No question of daring: easy thing to do!’

‘Freddy, she would be as mad as fire!’ said Kitty, awed by the very thought.

But the practical Mr Standen refused to be intimidated. ‘Wouldn’t make any odds to us if she was. Shouldn’t be there to see it,’ he pointed out. ‘No need to be in a quake: I won’t let her frighten you.’

This unexpected sangfroid greatly impressed Miss Charing, but she could not be sorry that it was not put to the test. They found the Countess wreathed in smiles, arch felicitations to Freddy and broad compliments to Kitty issuing smoothly from between her thin, painted lips. Kitty was even permitted to kiss her ladyship’s cheek; and learned, with incredulity, that nothing had more pleased the Countess than the news of her engagement.

While his mother was overwhelming Kitty with her goodwill, Dolphinton, having acquired a grip on Freddy’s coat, was subjecting it to a series of tugs. Freddy, a wary eye on his aunt, was at first unconscious of this attempt to attract his attention, but when the tugs became imperative they attracted it to rather more purpose that Lord Dolphinton desired. ‘Stop it, Dolph!’ he said indignantly. ‘First time I’ve had this coat on, and between the pair of you, you and Kit—’ He paused, meeting his cousin’s anguished look of entreaty, and said: ‘Oh, very well! What’s the matter, old fellow?’

‘Never told me you was bringing Kitty to town!’ said Dolphinton imploringly.

‘Of course I didn’t! Why should I?’ replied Freddy.

‘He never told me!’ said Dolphinton, addressing his parent.

She laughed, but in a way (as Miss Charing later told Mr Standen) that boded ill for him. ‘Good God, Foster, what is that to the purpose? I wish you will strive to be a little less foolish! And so you a

re staying with dear Margaret, Kitty? Such a sweet creature, but perhaps not quite the person to take care of you! Naughty girl! Why did you not come to me? I am sure, if I have begged poor Uncle Matthew once to send you to me for a season, I have done so fifty times! I promise you, I grudge you to Margaret! It was always the wish of my heart to bring out a daughter!’

She rattled on in this style until it became time for them to return to their own box, her eyes flickering all the while from Kitty’s face to Freddy’s, and back again. She enquired solicitously after Mr Penicuik, after the Legerwoods, after Mr Westruther, whom she had not seen for an age: could it be that he was still out of town? She wanted to know if Kitty was being tolerably well entertained in London: did Meg mean to procure a voucher for her, admitting her to Almack’s? Had Freddy taken her driving in Hyde Park? But this was something Kitty must grant Dolphinton the pleasure of doing! She must know that he was an excellent whip: drove the prettiest turn-out. ‘You must take Kitty up beside you one afternoon, Foster: you will like to do that, I know!’

‘Like to do that,’ he repeated obediently, but looking so miserable that Kitty was hard put to it to refrain from laughing.

‘And, I must say,’ she told Freddy, once they were out of earshot, ‘I hope he does not offer to take me, for I am persuaded he would overturn me!’

‘No, there you’re wrong,’ replied Freddy. ‘Wouldn’t think it, but he’s a first-rate fiddler. Bruising rider too, if ever he had the chance! She don’t let him hunt, but we had him down to stay in Leicestershire once. Never saw the poor fellow so happy! Dashed if he didn’t lay his leg over the ugliest customer m’father ever had in the stables! Brute went like a lamb with him, what’s more. You’d be quite safe. Not that I think he’ll take you: looked devilish blue, didn’t he?’

She agreed, but, knowing the Countess, she was not surprised when he came to pay a morning-call in Berkeley Square the following day, escorting that determined lady. The Countess, graciously embracing her niece, had come to congratulate her on her situation. She had been calling in Mount Street, to enquire after the invalids, and had learnt from her dearest sister that Meg was increasing. But her ungrateful niece, observing with amazement the affability she showed towards Miss Charing, thought that she had come rather to ingratiate herself with a girl whose adoption by Mr Penicuik she had deplored for years. She heard Dolphinton, acting under his mother’s goad, make an assignation to take Kitty for a drive in the Park that very afternoon, and was quite at a loss to understand the meaning of these strange tactics. ‘For what,’ she argued, when these unwelcome visitors had left the house, ‘can she hope to achieve, when she is apprized of your engagement to Freddy? I perfectly understand how greatly she must have wished you to marry Dolph, when my uncle made you his heiress, for Mama says that his estates are much embarrassed, and she, you know, is shockingly expensive! Did you remark the furs she was wearing? I could not but stare, and wonder how she contrived to rig herself out so handsomely on a jointure which Mama says cannot have been large!’

‘Well, she does not!’ said Kitty. ‘Poor Dolph is so foolish that you may depend upon it that it is she who still holds his purse-strings! That is what Uncle Matthew says, at all events; and also that there is nothing amiss but what a little management and economy might well set to rights. Though I am bound to own,’ she added conscientiously, ‘that that is just what Uncle Matthew would say!’

Meg laughed, but said: ‘It may be so, yet still I don’t see why she should think it worth while to encourage Dolph to take you driving!’

‘“Encourage!” Poor Dolph! She compelled him!’ exclaimed Kitty, unable to suppress a giggle.