False Colours

‘Thank you, sir! But the credit goes to my mother,’ said Kit.

‘Very true! Very true! Wonderful woman! Never anyone like her, my boy!’ said Sir Bonamy, gustily sighing. He heaved himself round in his chair, groping in his pocket for his snuff-box. ‘In such high beauty, too! Doesn’t look a day older than when I first clapped eyes on her. Before your time, that was!’

Kit, recalling one of Fimber’s repeated admonitions, produced the snuff-box which had been placed by that worthy in his own pocket, opened it, and offered it to Sir Bonamy, saying: ‘Will you try some of my sort, sir?’

He knew immediately that in some way he had erred. Sir Bonamy’s unnervingly expressionless gaze remained riveted to the snuff-box for several seconds, before travelling upwards to his face. It remained fixed for several more seconds, but Sir Bonamy only said: ‘A pretty box, that. Purchased it in Paris, didn’t you, when you went there to meet your brother once?’

‘I believe I did,’ acknowledged Kit, not a muscle quivering in his face.

Sir Bonamy helped himself to a pinch. ‘One of Bernier’s,’ he said. ‘You showed it to me when you came home.’

He had, apparently, no further observations to make; but when, much later, he visited Kit in the huge room which was traditionally the bedchamber occupied by the Earls of Denville, Kit’s dismay was not attended by surprise. Fimber had just eased him out of his coat; but Sir Bonamy had already escaped from the restriction of his corsets, and his rigidly starched shirt-points, and was attired in a dressing-gown of thick brocade, of such rich colouring and such voluminous cut that his appearance, at all times impressive, was almost overpowering. ‘Came to have a word with you!’ he announced.

Fimber, his face wooden, withdrew into the dressing-room; and Kit, feeling that his sheet-anchor had vanished, said: ‘Why, certainly, sir! Is something amiss?’

‘That snuff of yours is dry!’ said Sir Bonamy, staring very hard at him.

‘Good God, sir, is it? I do most humbly beg your pardon!’

‘I’ll drop a word of warning in your ear, my boy!’ said Sir Bonamy, ignoring this interpolation. ‘I don’t know what sort of wheedle you’re trying to cut, and I don’t ask you to tell me, because it’s no affair of mine, but if you want to bamboozle people into thinking you’re young Denville, don’t offer ’em dry snuff, and don’t use two hands to open your box!’

‘So that was it!’ said Kit. ‘I was afraid I had betrayed myself, but I didn’t know how!’

‘Damme, Kit, Evelyn set himself to copy Brummell’s way of handling a snuff-box! One hand only, and no more than a flick of the thumb-nail to open it! You remember that!’

‘I will, sir,’ Kit promised. ‘Thank you! You must feel that I owe you an explanation –’

Sir Bonamy checked him with an upraised hand. ‘No, I don’t!’ he said hastily. ‘I’ve told you already it’s no affair of mine! I’d as lief it wasn’t, too, because it looks to me like a damned havey-cavey business.’

‘It isn’t quite as havey-cavey as it must seem,’ Kit told him.

‘If it’s half as havey-cavey as it seems I don’t want to have anything to do with it!’ replied Sir Bonamy, not mincing matters. ‘And from what I know of you and Evelyn – not that I came here to pull a crow with you, for I didn’t! What’s more, you won’t goad me into it, my boy, so don’t think it! If Evelyn hasn’t been able to wind me up in all the years he’s been trying to do it, it stands to reason you can’t.’

‘But I don’t wish to, sir!’ expostulated Kit mildly.

‘Now I come to think of it,’ conceded Sir Bonamy, ‘you never did take so much pepper in your nose at the sight of me as that whisky-frisky brother of yours, so I daresay that’s true. As a matter of fact, that’s what made me suspicious: you shouldn’t have looked as if you was glad to see me! Ought to have known better: civil enough, young Denville, but pokers up a trifle!’

‘Does he? I’ll comb his hair for it!’ said Kit. He smiled. ‘In any event I shouldn’t have done so: I’m by far too grateful to you for coming to support us! I knew, too, that I’d nothing to fear even if you did recognize me.’

‘No, no, nothing at all!’ Sir Bonamy assured him. ‘But I’m not as young as I was, Kit, and it’s no use thinking, if you’ve got hold of a wolf by one ear, that I’m going to grasp the other, because I won’t do it! So don’t tell me anything! If your mother wishes me to know the whole she’ll tell me fast enough, bless her!’ He added uneasily: ‘No need to edge her on to tell me, mind!’

Kit reassured him on this head; and he went off, feeling that he had done as much for his young friend as could have been expected of any man of his years and elevated position.

Lady Denville, when informed next day of this interlude, not only went into a peal of laughter, but showed a regrettably mischievous desire to devise some way of entangling her hapless adorer in an imbroglio which she proudly claimed to be of her own making.

‘No, Mama!’ said Kit firmly. ‘You’ll do no such thing! We’re devilish obliged to the old court card, and I won’t have him roasted! No one could blame him for wanting to steer clear of this affair: if we save our groats without kicking up the very deuce of a scandal it’s more than I’d bargain for!’

‘I won’t do anything you don’t like, dearest,’ she promised. ‘But you mustn’t be so downhearted!’

‘Not downhearted! Henhearted!’

‘No, no, Kit!’ she protested, dismayed to hear him make such an admission. ‘Never that! Besides, why should you be? I own that there may be difficulties ahead, and, of course, our situation is often most awkward, but we shall come about!’

‘What makes you think so, love?’ he asked, regarding her in affectionate exasperation.

‘One always does – and particularly when one thinks one is quite knocked up. Only consider how many times I have been in the briars! I have always contrived to bring myself home, even when my case appeared to be desperate! Now, why are you laughing, wicked one? It’s perfectly true! The thing is that it’s no use for us to fret ourselves over what can’t be helped. Depend upon it, something will happen, or I shall have a notion suddenly, which will bring us off prosperously. I very often do, you know – really nacky ones!’

‘I know you do,’ he said. ‘All I beg of you is that you won’t have one without telling me!’