False Colours

‘And has only now popped the question? That’s not like him! I never knew him to tumble into love but what he did so after no more than one look. You don’t mean to tell me he has been trying for three years to fix his interest with the girl? It won’t fadge, my dear: I know him too well!’

‘No, of course not. You don’t understand, Kit! This is not one of his – his flirtations!’ She saw laughter spring into his eyes, tried to keep a solemn look in her own, and failed lamentably. They danced with wicked mirth, but she said with a very fair assumption of severity: ‘Or anything of that nature! He has outgrown such – such follies!’

‘Has he indeed?’ said Mr Fancot politely.

‘Yes – well, at all events he means to reform his way of life! And now that he is the head of the family there is the succession to be considered, you know.’

‘So there is!’ said Mr Fancot, much struck. ‘What a gudgeon I am! Why, if any fatal accident were to befall him I should succeed to his room! He would naturally exert himself to the utmost to cut me out. I wonder why that should never before have occurred to me?’

‘Oh, Kit, must you be so odious? You know very well –’

‘Just so, Mama!’ he said, as she faltered, and stopped. ‘How would it be if you told me the truth?’

Two

There was a short silence. She met his look, and heaved a despairing sigh. ‘It is your Uncle Henry’s fault,’ she disclosed. ‘And your father’s!’ She paused, and then said sorrowfully: ‘And mine! Try as I will, I cannot deny that, Kit! To be sure, I thought that when your Papa died I should be able to discharge some of my debts, and be perfectly comfortable, but that was before I understood about jointures. Dearest, did you know that they are nothing but a take-in? No, how should you? But so it is! And, what is more,’ she added impressively, ‘one’s creditors do know it! Which makes one wonder why they should take it into their heads to dun me now that I am a widow, in a much more disagreeable way than ever they did when Papa was alive. It seems quite idiotish to me, besides being so unfeeling!’

He had spent few of his adult years at home, but this disclosure came as no surprise to him. For as long as he could remember poor Mama’s financial difficulties had been the cause of discomfort in his home. There had been painful interludes which had left Lady Denville in great distress; these had led to coldness, and estrangement, and to a desperate policy of concealment.

The Earl had been a man of upright principles, but he was not a warm-hearted man, and his mind was neither lively nor elastic. He was fifteen years older than his wife, and he belonged as much by temperament as by age to a generation of rigid etiquette. He had only once allowed his feelings to overcome his judgement, when he had succumbed to the charm of the lovely Lady Amabel Cliffe, lately enlarged from the schoolroom to become the rage of the ton, and had offered for her hand in marriage. Her father, the Earl of Baverstock, was the possessor of impoverished estates and a numerous progeny, and he had accepted the offer thankfully. But the very qualities which had fascinated Denville in t

he girl offended him in the wife, and he set himself to the task of eradicating them. His efforts were unsuccessful, and resulted merely in imbuing her with a dread of incurring his displeasure. She remained the same loving, irresponsible creature with whom he had become infatuated; but she lavished her love on her twin sons, and did her best to conceal from her husband the results of her imprudence.

The twins adored her. Unable to detect beneath their father’s unbending formality his real, if temperate, affection, they became at an early age their mama’s champions. She played with them, laughed with them, sorrowed with them, forgave them their sins, and sympathized with them in their dilemmas: they could perceive no fault in her, and directed their energies, as they grew up, to the task of protecting her from the censure of their formidable father.

Mr Fancot, therefore, was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that his mother was encumbered by debt. He merely said: ‘Scorched, love? Just how does the land lie?’

‘I don’t know. Well, dearest, how can one remember everything one has borrowed for years and years?’

That did startle him a little. ‘Years and years? But, Mama, when you were obliged to disclose to my father the fix you were in – three years ago, wasn’t it? – didn’t he ask you for the sum total of your debts, and promise that they should be discharged?’

‘Yes, he did say that,’ she answered. ‘And I didn’t tell him. Well, I didn’t know, but I’m not trying to excuse myself, and I own I shouldn’t have done so even if I had known. I can’t explain it to you, Kit, and if you mean to say that it was very wrong of me, and cowardly, don’t, because I am miserably aware of it! Only, when Adlestrop wrote down everything I said –’

‘What?’ exclaimed Kit. ‘Are you telling me he was present?’

‘Yes – oh, yes! Well, your father reposed complete confidence in him, and it has always been he, you know, who managed everything, so –’

‘Pretty well, for one who set so much store by propriety!’ he interrupted, his eyes kindling. ‘To admit his man of business into such an interview – !’

‘I own, I wished he had not, but I daresay he was obliged to. On account of its being Adlestrop who knew just what the estate could bear, and –’

‘Adlestrop is a very good man in his way, and I don’t doubt he has our interests at heart, but he’s a purse-leech, and so my father should have known! If ever a grig was spent out of the way he always behaved as if we should all of us go home by beggar’s bush!’

‘Yes, that’s what Evelyn says,’ she agreed. ‘I might have been able to have told Papa the whole, if he hadn’t brought Adlestrop into it – that is, if I had known what it was. Indeed, I had the intention of being perfectly open with him! But whatever my faults I am not a – a mawworm, Kit, so I shan’t attempt to deceive you! I don’t think I could have been open with Papa. Well, you know how it was whenever he was displeased with one, don’t you? But if I had known that my wretched affairs would fall upon Evelyn I must have plucked up my courage to the sticking-point, and disclosed the whole to him.’

‘If you had known what the whole was!’ he interpolated irrepressibly.

‘Yes, or if I could have brought myself to place my affairs in Adlestrop’s hands.’

‘Good God, no! It should have been a matter between you and my father. But there’s no occasion for you to be blue-devilled because your affairs have fallen on Evelyn: he must always have been concerned in them, you know, and it makes no difference to him whether my father discharged your debts, or left it to him to do so.’

‘But you are quite wrong!’ she objected. ‘It makes a great deal of difference. Evelyn cannot discharge them!’

‘Stuff!’ he said. ‘He has no more notion of economy than you have, but don’t try to tell me that he has contrived, in little more than a year, to dissipate his inheritance! That’s coming it too strong!’

‘Certainly not! It isn’t in his power to do so. Not that I mean to say he would wish to, for however volatile your father believed him to be, he has no such intention! And I must say, Kit, I consider it was most unjust of Papa to have left everything in that uncomfortable way, telling your uncle Henry that he had done so because Evelyn was as volatile as I am! For he never knew about the two worst scrapes Evelyn was in, because you brought him off from his entanglement with that dreadful harpy who got her claws into him when you both came down from Oxford – and how you did it, Kit, I have long wanted to know! – and it was I who paid his gaming debts when he was drawn into some Pall Mall hell when he was by far too green to know what he was doing! I sold my diamond necklace, and your papa knew nothing whatsoever about it! So why he should have told your uncle that?–’

‘You did what?’ Kit interrupted, shaken for the first time during this session with his adored parent.