not?”
“I should dashed well think I have!” said Freddy, stirred by the memory of his activities.
“You have—you will agree!—a trifle of explaining to do!”
“Not to you, Jack!” said Freddy, meeting his eyes fair and square.
The Rector, a silent and puzzled auditor, at this point moved a pace forward, but it was Kitty who intervened. “Good God! Freddy, she has not eloped with Camille?”
“That’s it,” said Mr. Standen, pleased to find her of such a ready understanding. “Best thing she could do. Saw it in a flash. Thing was, Gosford offered for her—poor girl cast into despair—came to find you—found me instead! Left her with Meg, and went off to your cousin’s lodgings. Silly fellow flew into his high ropes: never met such a gabster in my life! Give you my word, Kit, he enacted me a whole Cheltenham tragedy! However, contrived to settle it all right and tight in the end. Saw ’em off from the Golden Cross, told the hack to take me to Doctors’ Commons, got the licence, and posted down here as soon as I could. Here, Hugh! you’d better take the thing!”
With these words, he handed over a folded document to his cousin. Hugh took it, but before he could say anything, Kitty exclaimed: “But, Freddy, an elopement! Have you considered—I own, the thought did not occur to me until quite recently!—that Camille must be a Catholic?”
It was plain that Mr. Standen had not considered this possibility. He once more rubbed the tip of his nose, but said philosophically, after a moment’s reflection: “Oh, well, no sense in teasing ourselves over a trifle! If he is, she’ll have to change! Shouldn’t think she’d object: seems a very biddable girl!”
Kitty drew a breath. “Then—then everything is settled! At least, it will be, when Dolph and Hannah are married, and there can be no difficulty about that, now that you have brought them that stupid licence! Oh, Freddy, it is all your doing!”
“No, no!” said Freddy, embarrassed.
“Yes, indeed it is! For although it was I who wanted Olivia to marry Camille, I should never have thought of telling him to carry her off to France; and you see what sad work I made of poor Dolph’s elopement! I am so very grateful to you! Oh, and Jack says that Uncle Matthew is going to marry Fish, and that is a very good thing too, though, to be sure, it was none of our doing!”
“Is he, though?” said Freddy, mildly interested. “Well, I daresay it don’t matter, because he’s a deuced rum ’un himself, but that Fish of yours is queer in her attic.”
“Freddy, she is not!”
“Must be. Dash it, wouldn’t write to you about Henry VIII if she wasn’t! Stands to reason.”
“You are mistaken, coz,” interrupted Mr. Westruther, in a brittle voice. “The Fish is cleverer than we knew. I have not the slightest desire to dwell upon all she saw fit to pour into my ears not an hour since, for I found it nauseating, but if the matter teases you, you may as well know that she believes herself to be comparable to Katherine Parr—tending the aged and irascible monarch!” he added sarcastically.
“So that was it!” exclaimed Kitty. “Of course! He had a bad leg too! Though I fancy it was not precisely gout that afflicted him, was it? Now I see it all! How very like Fish to be so absurd! If only Uncle Matthew has not bullied her into saying she will marry him, I must say I think it an excellent thing for them both, don’t you, Freddy?”
“Well, Freddy?” said Mr. Westruther. “Do you think it excellent, or does some grain of common-sense exist in your mind?”
“Not my affair,” said Freddy. “At least—come to think of it, not sure it isn’t, in which case I do think it’s an excellent thing. What I mean is, I don’t want that woman living with us, and if she marries my great-uncle she dashed well can’t!”
Miss Charing’s cheeks became flooded with colour. “But, F-Freddy—!” she faltered.
Mr. Westmther laughed. “Just so, my love! You have been so busily employed in making what I can only call infelicitous matches that you have left your own future out of account, have you not? Oh, don’t look so conscious! I imagine Hugh cannot be so wood-headed that he does not know very well what game you have been playing! Dolphinton, I am sure, we need not regard; and as for Miss Plymstock, I look upon her as quite one of the family! It has been an amusing game, my little one, and you must not think that I blame you for having played it. It was very unhandsome of me not to have come to Arnside that day, was it not?”
He moved towards her as he spoke; his eyes were laughing again; and he held out his hands. The Rector cast a glance at Mr. Standen, but Mr. Standen had discovered an infinitesimal speck of fluff adhering to his coat sleeve, and was engaged in removing it. It was a task that appeared to absorb his whole attention.
Miss Charing took a step backward. “If you please, Jack,” she said, rather breathlessly, “no more!”
“Oh, nonsense, Kitty, nonsense!” Mr. Westruther said impatiently. “This folly has gone far enough!”
Miss Charing swallowed, and managed to say: “I collect that you mean to ask me to marry you, but—but I beg you will not! If you had come—that day—I should have accepted your offer, which would have been a very great mistake, and makes me so deeply thankful now that you did not come! Pray, Jack, say no more!”
He paid no heed to this, but said: “The fair Olivia admitted you a little too deeply into her confidence, did she? I was afraid she would. Don’t trouble your pretty head for such a trifle as that, Kitty! You will own that I have borne with tolerable equanimity the news that she has fled to France with your enterprising cousin.”
“No, no, it is not that! I can’t tell what it is, only that perhaps I have changed, or—or something of that nature!” said Kitty. “And, indeed, Jack, I am excessively fond of you, and I daresay I shall always be, in spite of knowing that you are quite odiously selfish, but, if you will not be very much offended, I would much prefer not to be married to you!”
He stood staring down into her perturbed face. The laugh had quite vanished from his eyes, and there was a white look round his mouth. Miss Charing had never before had experience of the temper Mr. Westruther’s cousins knew well, and she was a little frightened.
“So that’s it, is it?” he said, quite softly. “George was right after all! Dolphinton was a little too much for you to swallow, but you had indeed set your heart on a title and a great position, and so you laid the cleverest trap for Freddy that I have ever been privileged to see! You cunning little jade!”
It was at this point that Mr. Standen, that most exquisite of Pinks, astounded the assembled company, himself included, by knocking him down.
For this, two circumstances were largely responsible. He took Mr. Westruther entirely unawares; and Mr. Westruther, recoiling from the blow, tripped over a small footstool, lost his balance, and fell heavily.
“Good God!” said the Rector, forgetting his cloth. “Well done, Freddy! A nice, flush hit!”
Lord Dolphinton, who had found the interchange between Kitty and his cousin rather beyond his power of comprehension and had allowed his attention to wander, now realized that a mill was in progress, which he was perfectly well able to understand. In high glee he called upon Miss Plymstock to observe that Freddy had floored Jack, and begged Freddy to do it again.
Freddy himself, rather pale, stood waiting with his fists clenched while his cousin picked himself up. There was a very ugly look in Mr. Westruther’s eyes, which caused Hugh, who had helped him to his feet, to maintain a grip upon his arm, and Kitty to say hurriedly: “Oh, Freddy, it was splendid of you, and I am so very much obliged to you, but pray do not do it again!”
“No, no!” said Freddy, conscience-stricken.
The ugly look faded. “At least admit you could not!” said Mr.Westruther.
“No, I know I could not,” replied Freddy, “but I dashed well don’t mind trying to!”
Mr. Westruther began to laugh. “Freddy, you dog, you took me off guard and off balance, and I have a good mind to knock you through that window! Oh, take your hand off my arm, Hugh! You can’t be fool enough to suppose I mean to have a turn-up with Freddy!” He shook the Rector off as he spoke, and straightened his neckcloth. That done, he held out his hand imperatively to Kitty. “Come, cry friends with me!” he said. “I will apologize for the whole, confess that I entirely misread a situation that is now perfectly plain to me, and remove myself immediately from your presence.” He held her hand for a moment, grinning rather ruefully at her; then he lightly kissed her cheek, and said: “Accept my best wishes for your happiness, my dear, and believe that I shall do my utmost to cut you out with Uncle Matthew! My felicitations, Freddy. I’ll serve you trick-and-tie for that leveller one of these days. Oh, no, pray don’t accompany me, Hugh! Really, I have had more than enough of my family for one day!”
A bow to Miss Plymstock, a wave of the hand, and he was gone. The front-door slammed behind him; they heard his tread going down the garden-path, the click of the gatelatch, and, in another moment or two, the sound of his horses’ hooves. Miss Plymstock rose, and shook out her skirt. “I’m bound to say I ain’t at all sorry to see the last of him,” she remarked. “Nor I haven’t told you yet, Mr. Standen, how very much obliged to you I am for bringing that
