False Colours

‘Sir, we can’t let it rest like that!’

‘Well, you’ll learn your mistake! You can tell Evelyn it’s none of his business, because it all happened before your father died. And don’t you try to pay me for that curst brooch, for I won’t have it! Good God, boy, what the devil is it to me, a miserable monkey?’

‘If it was you who bought the Denville necklace, sir, Mama must be thousands in your debt!’

‘Well, that’s nothing to me either! Thought you knew that!’

‘Everyone knows you’re as rich as Golden Ball, sir, but it’s beside the point.’

‘No it ain’t,’ said Sir Bonamy crossly. ‘You’ve got no right to stop me spending my blunt anyway I choose – not that I’d put it beyond you to try!’

‘Sir, I do beg of you –’

‘No, no, you keep your tongue between your teeth, Kit! Getting to be a regular jaw-me-dead! You’ll only come to fiddlestick’s end, and so I warn you! It was no fault of Evelyn’s that your mother ran aground, and there was nothing he could have done about it when she was near to being blown up at Point Non-Plus! Little enough I could do either, for she never would take a penny from me unless she was forced to, and then I had to call it a loan, and charge her interest!’

‘Which you never demand!’

‘No, of course I don’t! But I’m not at all sure that I oughtn’t to have done so,’ said Sir Bonamy reflectively. ‘She’s got no more notion of business than a kitten, but she don’t like to be beholden. Frets her more than you might guess!’ He chuckled. ‘Bless her, she thinks all’s right and tight if she can pay interest! She don’t tell me much more than she told your father, and I’ve got my suspicions that she’s borrowed money from others besides me. Well, I know she has, and that’s where I’m at a stand, because she won’t let me give her the rhino to pay her debts, and I can’t redeem ’em without raising a nasty dust. She’s got it fixed in her head that there’s no harm in borrowing from people who don’t hesitate to dun her for the interest she owes ’em, but that it’s wrong to come to me. No use arguing with her: all she does is talk balderdash about imposing on me. And when I told her she ought to know there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her, she said she did know it, and it made it worse!’ He sighed. ‘I daresay you don’t like it – in fact, I know you don’t – but I’m devoted to her – always have been, always shall be – but there’s no understanding her!’

‘I think I do understand what’s in her mind when she doesn’t like to hang on your sleeve, sir. You’re m

istaken in thinking that I don’t like your devotion to her: we were used to be jealous of you, I think, but that was when we were muffin-faced brats! What could either of us feel, in the light of what I’ve learnt today, but thankful for it that you were devoted to her, and – and most obliged to you?’

Sir Bonamy looked rather gratified, but said shrewdly: ‘You speak for yourself, my boy! You ain’t speaking for Evelyn, and if you think you are you don’t know him as well as I thought you did!’

‘I know him as I know myself,’ Kit replied, ‘and I am speaking for him. I haven’t said he’ll like it: he won’t and nor do I. He won’t stomach it. Good God, sir, how could either of us accept such a situation with complaisance? It was my father’s duty to discharge Mama’s debts. He didn’t do so, and Evelyn will tell you that he inherited his obligations as well as his fortune.’

‘Well, I’d as lief he didn’t tell me,’ responded Sir Bonamy. ‘I don’t want to have him ranting at me as well as you. What’s more, he’ll be wasting his breath, for he hasn’t inherited your father’s fortune yet, and from what I’ve seen of his carryings-on he ain’t likely to get Brumby to wind that Trust up a day before he must! I’ll tell you this too, Kit: when he does get control of his fortune he’ll have enough to do to settle the rest of your mother’s debts without adding what she’s borrowed from me to ’em!’

Eighteen

There was no more to be got from Sir Bonamy, who went off to enjoy his usual afternoon sleep in the library, saying that he was glad not to have that fidgety fellow, Cliffe, sharing the room with him any longer. Kit made no attempt to detain him. Every feeling might revolt against allowing his mother to be so deeply indebted to a man upon whom she had no claim, and who stood outside the family, but he could perceive no way either of forcing Sir Bonamy to state the sum of her obligation to him, or of discharging the debt, if he surmounted that first obstacle.

The Cliffes were gone within an hour of rising from the nuncheon table; and Kit waited only to see them off before going across the park to Nurse Pinner’s cottage. He found Fimber, whom he had sent there earlier with a couple of bottles of wine, engaged in rather more than usually acrimonious hostilities with Nurse, and for once at a disadvantage, since the noble object of their jealousy was once more, and for the first time since her retirement, restored to Nurse’s fond and despotic care. Fimber had scored a point in having his services in helping his lordship to dress preferred to Nurse’s; but he had been obliged to yield to her superior skill in bandaging; to endure, in tight-lipped silence, her sharply authoritative warnings and instructions when he eased my lord into his shirt and coat; and to suppress his wrath at my lord’s tacit refusal to send her out of his tiny bedroom while he was dressed. She bustled in and out, full of interference, and addressing her nursling with such endearments as she had used during his childhood, so that the only course open to his valet was to adopt an attitude of meticulous respect towards a young gentleman whom he was burning to scold and to cross-question.

When Kit walked into the parlour, Fimber bowed, and immediately informed him that he would find his lordship in the garden. He added, dropping his voice in the manner of one imparting a confidence whose significance was known only to himself and Kit, that he would find his lordship a trifle on the fidgets.

‘Lord bless the man, what else was to be expected?’ Nurse exclaimed scornfully. ‘Do you go out to him, Master Kit! And if he is to go up to the house this evening, as her ladyship wishes, you may bring him back here, though there’s not a bit of need, for I can help him out of his coat better than you or Fimber. Nor I don’t want Fimber to come fussing round him at that hour of night, keeping him awake till all hours, with brushing his clothes, and I don’t know what besides, in the finicking way he has!’

‘Well, we can talk about that later, Pinny,’ Kit said pacifically. He added, with the flicker of an eyelid at the outraged valet: ‘Better get back to the house now, Fimber, or Norton will begin to wonder what’s become of you.’

He then made good his escape into the small, enclosed garden at the back of the cottage, where he found Evelyn moodily winding his way along the narrow paths which separated various beds filled with vegetables and currant bushes. Nurse had carried a chair out, and placed it in the shade of an apple tree; an open book lay on the ground beside it, with a clutter of newspapers and magazines.

Kit said cheerfully: ‘I wouldn’t be in your shoes for something, twin! There’s a pitched battle going on in the parlour!’

Evelyn was looking moody, but he laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t mind that! They’ve been skirmishing over me ever since you sent Fimber here. The thing is that every time he starts to give me one of his thundering scolds Pinny comes back into the room, so he’s obliged to stop, because by the mercy of God neither combs my hair if the other is present. I can’t think why not, but I can tell you I’m thankful for it! Has Mama managed to send the Cliffes packing? She said she meant to, if she could only hit upon a means of doing it. Did she?’

‘Can you doubt it? I’ve just been waving farewell to them.’

‘Mama is wonderful! How did she contrive to make them shab off?’

‘By telling them that there was not an outbreak of scarlet fever in the village. I was afraid, when she began to talk of sickness, she was going to make it small-pox, which would have been doing it too brown. If you’re coming up to the house tonight, I’d best meet you in the nursery-wing, to make sure the coast is clear. Lady Stavely goes to bed at ten and the servants won’t come into the drawing-room once the tea-tray has been taken away.’

Evelyn nodded. ‘Yes, very well. Kester, I think I’ll go to Tunbridge Wells tomorrow. That’s one piece of business I can settle – and if I stay cooped up here for much longer I shall go mad!’

‘I should think you might,’ agreed Kit. ‘But you can’t go to Tunbridge Wells, for all that.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Kester, don’t you start talking fustian about my broken shoulder!’ Evelyn exclaimed irritably.