False Colours

Mr Fancot, therefore, was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that his mother was encumbered by debt. He merely said: “Scorched, love? Just how does the land lie?”

“I don’t know. Well, dearest, how can one remember everything one has borrowed for years and years?”

That did startle him a little. “Years and years? But, Mama, when you were obliged to disclose to my father the fix you were in—three years ago, wasn’t it?—didn’t he ask you for the sum total of your debts, and promise that they should be discharged?”

“Yes, he did say that,” she answered. “And I didn’t tell him. Well, I didn’t know, but I’m not trying to excuse myself, and I own I shouldn’t have done so even if I had known. I can’t explain it to you, Kit, and if you mean to say that it was very wrong of me, and cowardly, don’t, because I am miserably aware of it! Only, when Adlestrop wrote down everything I said—”

“What?” exclaimed Kit. “Are you telling me he was present?”

“Yes—oh, yes! Well, your father reposed complete confidence in him, and it has always been he, you know, who managed everything, so—”

“Pretty well, for one who set so much store by propriety!” he interrupted, his eyes kindling. “To admit his man of business into such an interview—!”

“I own, I wished he had not, but I dare say he was obliged to. On account of its being Adlestrop who knew just what the estate could bear, and—”

“Adlestrop is a very good man in his way, and I don’t doubt he has our interests at heart, but he’s a purse- leech, and so my father should have known! If ever a grig was spent out of the way he always behaved as if we should all of us go home by beggar’s bush!”

“Yes, that’s what Evelyn says,” she agreed. “I might have been able to have told Papa the whole, if he hadn’t brought Adlestrop into it—that is, if I had known what it was. Indeed, I had the intention of being perfectly open with him! But whatever my faults I am not a—a mawworm, Kit, so I shan’t attempt to deceive you! I don’t think I could have been open with Papa. Well, you know how it was whenever he was displeased with one, don’t you? But if I had known that my wretched affairs would fall upon Evelyn I must have plucked up my courage to the sticking-point, and disclosed the whole to him.”

“If you had known what the whole was!” he interpolated irrepressibly.

“Yes, or if I could have brought myself to place my affairs in Adlestrop’s hands.”

“Good God, no! It should have been a matter between you and my father. But there’s no occasion for you to be blue-devilled because your affairs have fallen on Evelyn: he must always have been concerned in them, you know, and it makes no difference to him whether my father discharged your debts, or left it to him to do so.”

“But you are quite wrong!” she objected. “It makes a great deal of difference. Evelyn cannot discharge them!”

“Stuff!” he said. “He has no more notion of economy than you have, but don’t try to tell me that he has contrived, in little more than a year, to dissipate his inheritance! That’s coming it too strong!”

“Certainly not! It isn’t in his power to do so. Not that I mean to say he would wish to, for however volatile your father believed him to be, he has no such intention! And I must say, Kit, I consider it was most unjust of Papa to have left everything in that uncomfortable way, telling your uncle Henry that he had done so because Evelyn was as volatile as I am! For he never knew about the two worst scrapes Evelyn was in, because you brought him off from his entanglement with that dreadful harpy who got her claws into him when you both came down from Oxford—and how you did it, Kit, I have long wanted to know!—and it was I who paid his gaming debts when he was drawn into some Pall Mall hell when he was by far too green to know what he was doing! I sold my diamond necklace, and your papa knew nothing whatsoever about it! So why he should have told your uncle that —”

“You did what?” Kit interrupted, shaken for the first time during this session with his adored parent.

She smiled brilliantly upon him. “I had it copied, of course! I’m not such a goose that I didn’t think of that! It looks just as well, and what should I care for diamonds when one of my sons was on the rocks?”

“But it was an heirloom!”

“I have no opinion of heirlooms,” said her ladyship flatly. “If you mean to say that it belonged to Evelyn, I know it did, but, pray, what use was it to him, when what he needed, quite desperately, poor love, was the money to pay his gaming debts? I told him about it afterwards, and I assure you he made not the least objection!”

“I dare say! And what of his son?” demanded Kit.

“Dearest, you are too absurd! How should he raise an objection when he won’t know anything about it?”

“Have you—have you disposed of any more heirlooms?” he asked, regarding her with awe, and some reluctant amusement.

“No, I don’t think so. But you know what a wretched memory I have! In any event, it doesn’t signify, because what’s done is done, and I have more important things to think of than a lot of hideous family jewels. Dearest, do, pray, stop being frivolous!”

“I didn’t mean to be frivolous,” he said meekly.

“Well, don’t ask me stupid questions about heirlooms, or talk nonsense about it’s being as easy for Evelyn to pay my debts as it would have been for your papa. You must have read that hateful Will! Poor Evelyn has no more command over Papa’s fortune than you have! Everything was left to your uncle’s discretion!”

He frowned a little. “I remember that my father created some kind of Trust, but not that it extended to the income from the estate. My uncle has neither the power to withhold that, nor to question Evelyn’s expenditure. As I recall, Evelyn was prohibited from disposing of any part of his principal, except with my uncle’s consent, until he reaches the age of thirty, unless, at some time before that date, my uncle should judge him to have outgrown his—his volatility (don’t eat me, Mama!), when the Trust might be brought to an end, and Evelyn put in undisputed possession of his inheritance. I know I thought my father need not have fixed on thirty as the proper age: twenty- five would have been a great deal more reasonable, and in no way remarkable. Evelyn was vexed, of course—who wouldn’t have been?—but it made very little difference to him, after all. You’ve said yourself that he has no intention of wasting his principal. You know, Mama, the income is pretty considerable! What’s more, my uncle told him at the time that he was prepared to consent to the sale of certain stocks, to defray whatever large debts Evelyn had incurred—particularly any post-obit bonds—since he thought it not right that the income should perhaps be reduced to a monkey’s allowance until they had all been paid.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “He did say that, and it quite astonished me, for, in general, he’s as close as wax, Kit!”

“No: merely, he doesn’t live up to the door, and certainly not beyond it. But the thing is, Mama, that he didn’t wish Evelyn to succeed my father under a load of debt, and if you had but told him of the fix you were in I’m persuaded he would have settled your debts along with the rest.”

She gazed at him incredulously. “Henry? You must be out of your mind, Kit! When I think of the way he has always disapproved of me, and the rake-down he gave Evelyn, whose debts were nothing compared to mine—Oh, no, no! I had liefer by far put a period to my existence than cast myself on his mercy! He would have imposed the most humiliating conditions on me—condemned me to live the rest of my days in that horrid Dower House at Ravenhurst, very likely! Or worse!”

He was silent for a moment. Knowing that Henry, Lord Brumby, considered his charming sister-in-law incorrigible, he could not help feeling that there was some truth in what she said. His frown deepened; he said abruptly: “Why the devil didn’t Evelyn tell him? He could have handled my uncle so much more easily than you could!”

“Do you think so?” she said doubtfully. “He never has done so. Besides, he didn’t know just how things stood with me, because I never thought to tell him. Well, how was I to guess that nearly every soul I owed money to would suddenly start to dun me, and some of them in the rudest way, too? Not that I should have teased Evelyn with my difficulties when he was already in hot water with Henry on his own account. I