“I don’t! A pretty easy competence, Mama!”
“A competence,” stated her ladyship, with conviction, “cannot be described as easy! You are talking like Adlestrop, and I wish you will not!”
Kit was aware that the family’s man of business had never been a favourite with his mother, but these embittered references to him seemed to call for explanation. “What’s Adlestrop done to offend you, Mama?” he asked.
“Adlestrop is a—Oh, let us not talk about him! Such a screw, and so malignant! I can’t think why I mentioned him, except that he told me, when Mr Bembridge died, that there was no occasion for you to come home, because there are no estates in question, or anything you might be obliged to attend to yourself—nothing but those detestable Funds, whatever they may be—and pray don’t tell me, Kit, for you might as well talk gibberish! I perfectly understand that they are holy, and must on no account be touched; and, for my part, I would never invest my money in anything so stupid!”
“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Kit. “It would never stay in your purse long enough to be invested in anything!”
She considered this for a moment, and then sighed, and said: “No; that’s true! It is the most lowering reflection. I have frequently tried to cultivate habits of economy, but I don’t seem to have the knack of it. None of the Cliffes have! And the dreadful thing is, Kit, that such habits only lead to waste!”
He gave a shout of laughter, but, although her eyes twinkled sympathetically, she said earnestly: “Yes, but they do! I purchased a cheap gown once, because Papa cut up stiff over one of Celeste’s bills, but it was so horrid that I was obliged to give it to Rimpton, without once wearing it! And when I gave orders for an economical dinner Papa got up from the table, and went straight off to the Clarendon, which is quite the most expensive hotel in London! Yes, you may laugh, but you have no experience of such matters. I assure you, the instant you begin to practise economy you will find yourself spending far more than ever you did before you embarked on such a ruinous course!”
“No, shall I? Perhaps I had better sell out of the Funds immediately, and start wasting the ready!”
“Nonsense! I know very well you haven’t come home to do that! So what has brought you home, dearest? I’m persuaded it wasn’t to look after these prodigious affairs of yours, so don’t try to bamboozle me!”
“Well—not entirely,” he admitted. He hesitated, colouring a little, and then said, meeting her look of inquiry: “To own the truth, I took a notion into my head—stupid, I dare say, but I couldn’t be rid of it—that Evelyn is in some sort of trouble—or just botheration, perhaps—and might need me. So I made my prodigious affairs serve as a reason for wanting leave of absence. Now tell me I’m an airdreamer! I wish you may!”
She said instead, in a marvelling tone: “Do you still get these feelings, both of you? As though one’s own troubles were not enough to bear!”
“I see: I am not an airdreamer. What’s amiss, Mama?”
“Oh, nothing, Kit! That is to say—well, nothing you can cure, and nothing at all if Evelyn returns tomorrow!”
“Returns? Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” disclosed her ladyship. “No one knows!”
He looked startled, and, at the same time, incredulous. Then he remembered that when she had first seen him, and had mistaken him for Evelyn, she had sounded disproportionately relieved. She was not an anxious parent; even when he and Evelyn were children their truancies had never ruffled her serenity; and when they grew up, and failed to return to the parental home at night, she had always been more likely to suppose that she had forgotten they had told her not to look for them for a day or two than to wonder what accident could have befallen them. He said in a rallying tone: “Gone off upon the sly, has he? Why should that cast you into high fidgets, Mama? You know what Evelyn is!”
“Yes, I dare say I shouldn’t even have noticed that he wasn’t here, at any other moment! But he assured me, when he left London, that he would return within a sennight, and he has been away now for ten days!”
“So—?”
“You don’t understand, Kit! Everything hangs upon his return! He is to dine in Mount Street tomorrow, to be presented to old Lady Stavely, and she has come up from Berkshire particularly to make his acquaintance. Only think how dreadful if he were to fail! We shall be at fiddlestick’s end, for she is odiously starched-up, you know, and I collect, from something Stavely said to me, that already she doesn’t like it above half.”
“Doesn’t like what above half?” interrupted Kit, quite bewildered. “Who is she, and why the deuce does she want to make Evelyn’s acquaintance?”
“Oh, dear, hasn’t Evelyn told you? No, I dare say there has been no time for a letter to reach you. The thing is that he has offered for Miss Stavely; and although Stavely was very well pleased, and Cressy herself not in the least unwilling, all depends upon old Lady Stavely. You must know that Stavely stands in the most absurd awe of her, and would turn short about if she only frowned upon the match! He is afraid for his life that she may leave her fortune to his brother, if he offends her I must say. Kit, it almost makes me thankful I have no fortune! How could I bear it if my beloved sons were thrown into quakes by the very thought of me?”
He smiled a little at that. “I don’t think we should be. But this engagement—how comes it about that Evelyn never so much as hinted at it? I can’t recall that he mentioned Miss Stavely in any of his letters. You didn’t either, Mama. It must have been very sudden, surely? I’ll swear Evelyn wasn’t thinking of marriage when last I heard from him, and that’s no more than a month ago. Is Miss Stavely very beautiful? Did he fall in love with her at first sight?”
“No, no! I mean, he has been acquainted with her for—oh, a long time! Three years at least.”
“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?”
2
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!”