On the following morning, Lucilla, who was eager to discuss the previous day’s entertainment with Corisande, volunteered to accompany Lady Wychwood to the Pump Room. Annis excused herself from going with them, for she felt reasonably certain that she would receive a visit from Ninian. Nor was she mistaken; but it was nearly midday before he arrived on the doorstep, hot and out of breath from having walked at breakneck speed up the steep hill from the Christopher. She received him in the book-room, because it seemed likely that her sister-in-law and Lucilla would return at any minute; and he said impetuously as he crossed the threshold: “Oh, I am so glad to find you at home, ma’am! I was afraid you might have gone down to the Pump Room, where I couldn’t have talked privately to you! And that I must do!”
“Then it is as well that I didn’t go to the Pump Room this morning,” she replied. “Sit down, and tell me all about it!”
He did sit down, and dragged his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his brow. Recovering his breath, he said in a tight, rigidly controlled voice: “I’ve come to take my leave of you, ma’am!”
“Have you decided to go back to Chartley?” she asked. “We shall miss you, but I think perhaps you should go back.”
“I suppose so,” he said dejectedly. “I said at first—but I see it won’t do! It seems that my father is quite knocked-up, and—and all through my having left Chartley in a huff, though I wrote to him, just as I told you I should, so why he should have taken it into his head that I meant never to return I can’t conceive! It makes me afraid that he must be in very, very queer stirrups, and—and I could never forgive myself if—if anything happened to him! There seems to be nothing for it but for me to go back. You see, my mother arrived here yesterday morning, Miss Wychwood. She is putting up at the Christopher.”
“I see,” she replied sympathetically.
“And my sister Cordelia as well,” he added, on a gloomy note. “If she had to bring one of my sisters with her she might at least have brought Lavinia, for she has some sense, and she ain’t a watering-pot, and she don’t wind me up anything like as often as Cordelia does! I can tell you, ma’am, it made me as mad as fire when the silly wet-goose flung her arms round my neck before I could stop her, and wept all over me!”
“I—I expect it did!” said Miss Wychwood, a trifle unsteadily.
“Well, of course it did, and it would have made any man feel just as I did! I told Mama—perfectly politely! that it was enough to make me jump on the Bristol coach, and ship aboard the first packet bound for America, or anywhere else that the Bristol boats sail to, because I had rather live in the Antipodes than have Cordelia hanging round my neck, and dashed well ruining my necktie, besides calling me her beloved brother, which was the biggest hum I ever heard, for she don’t like me any better than I like her! So then Cordelia asked me, as though she had been acting in some tragedy or another, if I wished to drive my sainted parents into their graves! Well, that did make me lose my temper, and I told her to her head that I had come to talk to Mama, and not to listen to fustian rubbish from her!”
Miss Wychwood, hugely enjoying this recital, perceived that the eldest Miss Elmore was a daughter after Lady Iverley’s heart. She also perceived that his sojourn in Bath had done Ninian (to her way of thinking) a great deal of good; and she hoped that Lady Iverley had realized that he was no longer the adored and dutiful son who did as he was bid, but a young gentleman who had crossed the threshold of adolescence, and had become a man.
Apparently she had. She had sent Cordelia out of the room. According to Ninian, she had done this because she had recognized the justice of his complaint; Miss Wychwood thought that she had done it because she had been frightened. But this she did not say. She merely said: “Oh, dear! What a sad ending to the day!”
“I should rather think it was!” said Ninian fervently. “Except that it wasn’t the end of the day, but the beginning of it! Of this day, I mean! Well, I didn’t get back to the Pelican till past midnight, so I didn’t see the note my mother wrote me until then, when it was far too late to visit her, even if I hadn’t been—” He stopped, in a good deal of embarrassment.
“Foxed?” suggested Miss Wychwood helpfully.
He grinned at her. “No, no, not foxed,ma’am! Just a little bit on the go! If you know what I mean!”
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean!” she assured him, the smile dancing in her eyes. “You had been dipping rather deep, but you were not too bosky to perceive the unwisdom of presenting yourself to your mama until you had slept off your potations! Have I that right?”
He burst out laughing. “Yes, by Jupiter you have! You’re a great gun, ma’am! Well, I went up to bed, but I told the boots to wake me not a moment later than eight this morning, which he did, and though I must say I felt pretty devilish at first, a cup of strong coffee more or less set me to rights, and I went off to the Christopher.” He paused; the laughter vanished from his voice, a frown descended on to his brow, and his mouth hardened. It was a full minute before he spoke again, and when he did speak it was with a little difficulty. He said: “Do you think it chicken-hearted of me to have knuckled down, Miss Wychwood?”
“By no means! You owe a duty to your father, remember!”
“Yes, I know. But—but I have begun to wonder if he is so very ill as Mama believes him to be. Or even if she does believe it, or if she says it to compel me to go home, and stay at home, because she is—well, much more deeply attached to me than to my sisters!”
“I daresay she might exaggerate a little, but from what you have told me I collect that Lord Iverley’s constitution was seriously impaired by his service in the Peninsula.”
“Yes, it was: there can be no doubt about that!” said Ninian, brightening. He thought it over for a moment, and then said: “And he did have a bad heart-attack some years ago. But—but Mama seems to live in dread of his having another, which might prove fatal, if he is put into a passion, or if one doesn’t do exactly as he bids one!”
“That is very natural, Ninian.”
“Yes, but it isn’t true! He was in the devil of a passion when Lucy ran away, and I helped her to do it; and when I lost my temper, and we quarrelled, and I said I should go straight back to Bath, he flew into such a rage that he shook with anger, and could hardly speak. But he didn’t suffer a heart-attack! What’s more, he went on being in a rage, for it was several days later that he wrote me that thundering scold, so that it is absurd to expect me to believe that he was exhausted. But when I tried to point this out to Mama, all she would say was that she couldn’t blame me for turning against my parents because she knew well that I had fallen under an evil influence! I couldn’t think what had put such a crack-brained notion into her head! It took me an age to get it out of her, but she did tell me in the end, and what do you think it was? Your influence, ma’am! Lord, I nearly laughed myself into stitches! Well, did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous?”