Cressida (4 page)

Rossiter’s impassivity did not alter in the faintest degree. He turned civilly to Sir Octavius.

“We must make allowances for Miss Calverton, I believe, sir,” he said coolly. “Most young ladies, I daresay, upon suddenly coming face to face with a man to whom they have once been engaged, experience an understandable shock to their tenderer sensibilities—”

Sir Octavius’s right eyebrow, expressing intense interest, had risen at the phrase,
a man to whom they have once been engaged,
and Cressida’s colour immediately heightened, but she managed to say quite composedly, “You may make yourself easy on that head, Captain Rossiter. I have no ‘tender sensibilities where you are concerned!”

“No, I daresay you haven’t,” Rossiter agreed, regarding her thoughtfully. “After all, when one has been engaged as often as you have, the matter no doubt becomes something of a commonplace. I believe I recall hearing that you were engaged to a viscount when I visited England briefly several years ago; now, if gossip is correct, we are shortly to felicitate you upon your betrothal to a marquis. May I enquire if it is your intention to stop at this point and actually marry this gentleman, or are you holding out for a duke?”

Even in the midst of her indignation at this really outrageous speech, Cressida found herself thinking swiftly that, if Rossiter found her changed, she could assuredly say the same of him. The Rossiter she had known in Gloucestershire would no doubt have given her quite as severe a set-down for her thinly veiled impertinences to him as the man who sat opposite her now had just done, but the words in that case would have been rough and direct, not couched in terms of a barbed and leisurely sarcasm even more telling than that which she had been able to turn upon him. Nor would he have faced her with this sardonic calm.

She said quickly and almost defensively, feeling herself at a disadvantage before the three pairs of masculine eyes regarding her with their various expressions of interested amusement (Sir Octavius), astonished discomfort (Captain Harries), and dispassionate expectation (Rossiter), “I am
not
betrothed to Lord Langmere! But if I ever should be, you may be assured that I shall certainly marry him!’

“Good!” said Rossiter, in negligent approval. “I am glad to see that in this case, at least, your intentions are honourable.”

Cressida was about to say warmly that, considering that it was he who had made the first push to break
their 
engagement, those words came rather oddly from him; she was forestalled, however, by his continuing at once, in the tone of one putting an end to a conversation of little importance, “But now, if you have no objection— my purpose in coming here was to discuss business matters with Sir Octavius, and I scarcely think we should be taking up any more of his time with trivialities.”

This was such an obvious dismissal of her that Cressida at once resolved that, only to spite him, she would stay for another half hour, at least; and she would have done so, she assured herself as she took her leave, had it not been for the mortifying conviction that she had come off second best in this exchange. As she walked out of the room and down the stairs to her waiting carriage she remembered how often she had pictured, when she had first come to London and had shed her greenness like a butterfly shedding its cocoon, how she would behave when she next met Captain Deverell Rossiter, in a London ballroom, or at the theatre, or while she was riding in the Park. How coolly self-assured she had always been in those mental encounters, and how utterly she had crushed any pretensions upon his part to a resumption of their former degree of intimacy!

Yet now, when almost seven years had gone by, when she was the petted darling of the
ton,
a lead in fashion acknowledged by all, she had allowed herself to be betrayed into losing her temper like a schoolgirl, while he had clearly demonstrated, not only to her but to Sir Octavius and Captain Harries as well, that he was so far from wishing to put himself upon terms even of the most ordinary friendship with her that he had not the slightest compunction in being abominably rude to her. “When one has been engaged as often as you have, the matter no doubt becomes something of a commonplace, ” he had dared to say to her, and she vowed to herself that if it was the last thing she did in her life she would marry the Marquis of Langmere in a very public and exceedingly fashionable manner in St. George’s, Hanover Square, with the entire world of the
ton,
plus Captain Deverell Rossiter, looking on.

And then, having got into her carriage in a fine rage and directed her coachman to drive to Bruton Street, where one could always purchase a frivolous and shockingly expensive new bonnet calculated to make the bones of any even moderately susceptible member of the male sex turn to water when he saw it set upon a crown of tawny curls and shading a pair of the most brilliantly sparkling eyes in all England, the humour of the situation overcame her and she began to laugh. They had certainly, she and Rossiter, treated Sir Octavius and Captain Harries to a brief but spirited battle-royal that it seemed to her—though she had not, of course, been present upon that celebrated occasion—might cast the contest between Molyneux, the Black, and Champion Tom Cribb in the shade.

“They will be laying bets at White’s as to which of us will come out the winner if we are not careful!” she told herself. “Poor Captain Harries! I wonder what on earth he must think of me! But let me hope for the best. Perhaps, if luck is with me, I shan’t be obliged to meet Rossiter again. ”

But she still went on to Bruton Street, all the same, to buy that shockingly expensive and fatally attractive bonnet.

Lady Constance, meanwhile, had sent off her invitation to Miss Kitty Chenevix to spend the Season in Mount Street, and some few days later was rewarded by a letter despatched by that young lady by return post, announcing her imminent arrival, and thanking both Lady Constance and Miss Calverton in the warmest terms for their kindness. Lady Constance, of course, showed the letter to Cressida, who agreed that Miss Chenevix had expressed herself just as she ought, and that she would no doubt be found to be a very pretty-behaved girl, whom it would be quite agreeable to have in the house.

It was true that by this time Cressida had had some slight misgivings as to the wisdom of having invited into her home for an extended period a young girl who might, for all she knew, turn out to be either an unmanageable hoyden or a dead bore; but the arrival of Miss Chenevix herself a few days later put a decisive period to these troublesome speculations. Cressida, entering the front door one morning after a ride in the Park with Lord Langmere, found herself face to face with a slight, fair, very attractive young girl in an earth-coloured travelling dress and a chip hat, who was being greeted by Lady Constance while Harbage supervised the removal of her modest portmanteau and a pair of bandboxes to an upper floor.

“Oh, Cressy, my dear! Here is Kitty,” Lady Constance said at once, drawing Miss Chenevix forward towards Cressida. “And this is Miss Calverton, my love. Only think, Cressy,” she continued immediately, forestalling Kitty’s attempt to speak, “she spent the night in a horrid little inn in Turnham Green only because she did not wish to put us out by arriving so late in the evening! Was not that thoughtful of her? But really quite unnecessary, as I have just been telling her—”

“Yes, quite,” Cressida said pleasantly. “But do come into the morning-room and sit down, Miss Chenevix—or shall I do away with formality and call you Kitty at once?”

She was accustomed to making up her mind very quickly about the people she met, and she immediately decided, as Kitty smiled at her a trifle timidly and said, “Yes, please do!” that neither she nor Lady Constance need have any qualms over their invitation to Miss Chenevix. There was something very taking in her manner— a kind of quiet, modest self-composure with only the slightest hint of an appealing timidity; and her appearance was entirely prepossessing. She had a slender, elegant figure and a delicately boned face, somewhat over-thoughtful, it seemed, for her years; her hair, very fair, almost flaxen, was arranged simply, in a becomingly girlish fashion, and her blue eyes were set wide apart under softly pencilled brows.

All in all, Cressida thought approvingly, as she sat down opposite her in the yellow morning-room, an entirely presentable young girl—not a diamond of the first water, certainly, but all the same she might do very well for herself in London, even with her deplorable lack of fortune, under the aegis of Miss Cressida Calverton and Lady Constance Havener.

As for Miss Chenevix herself, her first concern, when she found herself seated in the morning-room with Cressida and Lady Constance, was to express her gratitude to them for agreeing to sponsor her come-out in London.

“I am afraid you must have thought me dreadfully forward to write to you, she said in her soft, clear voice, turning to Lady Constance. “But Mama has always spoken so much of you that I feel as if I know you a great deal better than I do, and I did not quite realise that— that I should be imposing upon Miss Calverton as well—”

“Nonsense!” said Cressida. “There is no question of imposing. Lady Con and I will enjoy the Season a good deal more with someone with us to whom everything is new. I do hope you are prepared to like parties and balls? A friend of mine, Lady Dalingridge, is giving one tomorrow night, and she asked me to bring you with me when she learned you were to be my guest. It will be a dreadful squeeze, I expect—her parties always are—but you will meet everyone who is anyone, and I shall introduce you to every eligible young man I can manage to lay my hands on.”

Kitty, her face flushing up with pleasure, said she would enjoy it of all things.

“Then we must have a look at once at your wardrobe, Cressida said practically, “and see what you are to wear, for nothing is more important than the first impression one makes. She paused, seeing that the flush, no longer, it seemed, one of pleasure, had suddenly mounted higher in Kitty’s face. “Never mind; you need not tell me!” she said briskly. “You have nothing that is not ever so slightly dowdy, or not quite in the mode, or suitable more for a provincial assembly than a London ballroom—is that it? I know all about that—I was not always so well to pass, you know!” Her eyes ran quickly over Kitty’s slender figure. “We are almost of a height, I think,” she said, “though you are perhaps a shade the slenderer. Moodle—my dresser—will take care of that. She is very clever with her needle, and though it would not do for you to appear in your first Season in most of my gowns, I am sure I shall be able to find one or two that will raise no eyebrows if you wear them. Come along; we shall go upstairs and see.”

She rose, and Kitty, looking a little dazed by this masterful intromission into her affairs, followed her upstairs to her bedchamber, where Cressida at once began pulling dresses out of the tall French garderobe.

“But I couldn’t—Miss Calverton, I really
can’t
—” Kitty protested, her blue eyes lighting up with incredulous pleasure, nonetheless, like any other young girl’s, at sight of the exquisite creations Cressida was tossing on to the bed for her inspection. “Mama gave me a fifty-pound note before I left,” she continued, in the tone of one announcing the possession of untold riches, “and she said if I needed anything I must use it to buy it—”

“Fifty pounds!” Cressida said, smiling. “Yes, that will do very well when you have a desire to see the Pantheon Bazaar, and discover a pair of silk stockings, or a smart sunshade, that you find you really cannot do without. But gowns are quite another matter. They are horridly expensive, and if I were to send you to Fanchon she would gobble up that entire fifty-pound note, and more, only to provide you with one moderately tonnish carriage dress. As for evening frocks—they are quite out of the question!” She held up a gown of white spider-gauze embroidered with silver acorns, its demure bodice fastened down the front with tiny satin rosettes. “This will do, I expect,” she said. “I can’t think what made me buy it, for I am certainly past the
ingenue
stage—but you will agree that it is very pretty! It should become you admirably. Do try it on, and if it should require alteration, Moodle will be able to attend to it before tomorrow evening. ”

There was nothing for it but for Kitty to don the frock, and in a few minutes she stood gazing at herself in the glass, her protests quite stilled by what she saw there, while Cressida rummaged in drawers for the elbow-length French kid gloves and the silver net drapery that she said would be necessary to complete her young protegee’s costume.

Lady Constance, coming upstairs a few minutes later to tell Cressida that she really must change out of her riding-dress so that they could pay morning-calls upon the Duchess of Webwood and Lady Camlin, who had just arrived in town, found Moodle down on her knees beside Kitty with her mouth full of pins, which did not prevent her from carrying on a spirited though somewhat unintelligible dispute with her mistress on the desirability of Cressida’s presenting to Kitty a gown of pale primrose sarsnet. White, she said, or, at the most, pale pink or blue, was far more suitable for a young lady in her first Season.

“Oh, Lady Constance,” said Kitty, turning upon her a face which, even while glowing with excitement and pleasure, still managed to maintain its air of quiet composure, so unusual in a girl of her age, “you cannot think how kind Miss Calverton has been to me! She has given me this gown, and an opera cloak, and so many other things that I am sure I must be grateful to her all my life!”

Cressida laughed and said that wouldn’t be necessary; Kitty need only enjoy herself at the ball on the following evening and she would be quite sufficiently repaid. Half an hour later, when she and Lady Constance were in the carriage on the way to pay their morning-calls, Lady Constance said in a judicial voice that, really, it might be far less fatiguing than she had imagined to chaperon Kitty about, so very pretty as she was, particularly with Cressida seeing to it that she would appear to the greatest advantage wherever she went.