The Foundling (4 page)

When the gentlemen at last joined the ladies, they found them established before the fire in the Crimson Saloon, one of a handsome suite of reception rooms on the first floor. Lady Lionel had sent for some working-candles, and her embroidery-frame, upon which latter Miss Scamblesby was engaged in setting stitches in various coloured silks. Her ladyship rarely occupied herself with anything more fatiguing than the knotting of a fringe, but by constantly desiring to have her embroidery brought to her, choosing the silks, and criticizing the design, she was easily able to persuade herself that she was an indefatigable worker, and would receive compliments upon her skill with perfect complaisance.

Mr. Romsey went over to Miss Scamblesby's side, to observe what progress she had made; and while Lady Lionel informed him for perhaps the tenth time that the work was destined to form an altar-cloth for the Chapel, her husband gave Gilly the letter from his younger uncle, and waited expectantly for it to be handed over to him when Gilly had finished his perusal of it.

Gilly read it in some little surprise. Lord Henry, who was of a saving turn of mind, had managed to avoid the cost of an enclosure by compressing the intelligence he wished to convey on a single, crossed sheet. He wrote to inform his nephew of a very desirable connection he was about to form, through the betrothal of his eldest daughter to a scion of a distinguished family. He contrived to squeeze a number of details into his single sheet, and ended by expressing the hope that the proposed alliance would meet with his nephew's approval.

The Duke gave up this letter to Lord Lionel in a mechanical way, and his lordship, casting his eye over it, said: "Ha! I suspected as much! Yelverton's son, eh? Pretty well for a chit not out of the schoolroom!"

"I cannot conceive why he should write to tell me of it," remarked the Duke.

Lord Lionel looked up from the letter to direct an admonishing frown at him. "Naturally he would do so! It is a very proper letter. You will write your felicitations, of course, and say that you are very well pleased with the connection."

"But he will not care a button whether I am pleased or not," objected the Duke, with a touch of impatience.

"Pray do not let me have these odd humours!" begged his lordship irascibly. "One would suppose you do not attend to anything that is said to you, Sale! I have been telling you for ever that you are the head of the family, and must learn to take your place as such, and now you talk rubbishing stuff to me of your uncle's not caring a button for your approval! If you are so lost to the sense of what is due to your position, you must perceive that he is not! A very pretty letter he has written you: expresses himself just as he ought! I must say, I had not thought he would have contrived such an eligible match for that girl—not but what it is not precisely what I should have cared for myself."

"No," agreed Gilly, taking his letter again. "My cousin is not yet seventeen, and I am sure Alfred Thirsk must be forty if he is a day."

"Well, well, that need not signify!" said Lord Lionel. "The thing is that I have never fancied that brood of Yelverton's. There is a damned vulgar streak in them all; came into the family when the old man—Yelverton's father, I mean: you would not recall—married some rich Cit's heiress. However, it is none of my business!"

The Duke said a little impishly: "Very true, sir, but if it is mine I think I should inform my uncle that I do not like the match. Poor Charlotte! I am sure she cannot wish for it!"

Lord Lionel audibly drew a breath. In the voice of one restraining himself with a strong effort, he said: "You will not, I trust, be guilty of such a piece of impertinence, Sale! Pray, what should a young man of your age know about the matter?"

"But you told me, sir, that I must learn to assert myself," said the Duke meekly.

"Let me assure you, Gilly, that that kind of nonsense is beyond the line of being pleasing!" said Lord Lionel sternly. "You must be perfectly well aware that this very proper letter of your uncle's is the merest formality, and not to be taken as an excuse for you to be putting yourself forward in a very unbecoming way! A fine state of affairs it would be if a man of your uncle's age and experience is to be told how he is to manage his household by a young jackanapes of a nephew! You will write to him as I have directed, and mind you write it fair, and not in one of your scrawls! You had better let me see the letter before it is sealed."

"Very well, sir," said the Duke.

Perceiving that he had quite banished the smile from his nephew's eyes, Lord, Lionel relented, saying in a kindlier tone: "There is no need to be cast into a fit of dejection because I am obliged to give you a scold, boy. There, we shall say no more about it. Give the letter to your aunt to read, and come into the library with me. I have something I wish to say to you."

The Duke looked extremely apprehensive on hearing these ominous words, but he obediently handed over the letter to Lady Lionel, and followed his uncle downstairs to the library on the entrance floor. Since the candles had already been lit, and the fire made up, it was apparent to him that this interview had been premeditated. Insensibly, he braced himself to meet it with becoming fortitude, wishing that he dared light one of the cigarillos which his cousin Gideon had very reprehensively bestowed on him. But as Lord Lionel objected strongly to the vice of smoking, both on the score of its being a vulgar, dirty habit, and of its being excessively injurious to the lungs, he did not dare.

"Sit down, Gilly!" said Lord Lionel, treading over to the fire, and taking up his favourite position before it.

This command was less unnerving than earlier ones (delivered in ferocious accents) to stand up straight and put his hands behind his back, but the prospect of having to sit in a low chair while his uncle loomed over him was almost equally daunting. The Duke's apprehensive look deepened, and although he did sit down, it was with obvious reluctance.

Lord Lionel, who did not include the taking of snuff amongst the vulgar and dirty habits engendered by the use of tobacco, helped himself to a generous pinch, and shut his box with a snap. "You know, Gilly," he said, "that letter of your uncle's comes remarkably pat."

The Duke's eyes lifted quickly to his face. "Yes, sir?"

"Yes, my boy. You will be of full age in less than a year now, and it is high time we were thinking of settling your affairs comfortably."

The Duke was aware of a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He kept his eyes fixed on his uncle's face. "Yes, sir?"

For once in his life, Lord Lionel seemed disinclined to come speedily to the point of his discourse. He opened his snuff-box again, and said: "I have always tried to do my best for you, boy, I daresay you may sometimes have thought me harsh—"

"Oh, no!" said the Duke faintly.

"Well, I am happy to hear you say so, for I am very fond of you, Gilly, and always have been. I have no scruple in telling you that apart from your health, and a want of spirits in you, you have never caused me anxiety."

The Duke, feeling that a response was expected, stammered: "Th-thank you, sir!"

"I don't say that you are as wise as I could wish," said Lord Lionel, tempering his praise, "or that you have not a great many faults, but on the whole I fancy your poor father might have been not dissatisfied with his son, had he lived to see you today." Here he took another pinch of snuff. As Gilly was unable to think of anything to say, an uneasy silence prevailed. Lord Lionel broke it. "Your father left you to my guardianship," he said, "and I think I may say that I have in every way open to me followed out what I knew to be his wishes. I even had you christened Adolphus," he added, a slight sense of grievance overcoming him, "although it is one of these new-fangled German names that I very much dislike. However, that was a small thing, and you know I have never called you by it. And I have never permitted your uncle Henry to interfere in your education, for all he has been one of your trustees. I have nothing to say against your uncle, and no doubt his notions do very well for his own sons, but they will not do for me, and they would not have done for your father either, and a thousand pities it was that his name should have been included in the Trust. But there is no sense in repining over that, and I hope I know how to deal with my own brother."

The Duke, drawing upon his recollection, could not feel that this hope was misplaced, but he did not think himself called upon to say so. Instead he uttered an indistinguishable murmur.

"There is no reason why you should be treated like a child, Gilly," said Lord Lionel, in a burst of candour, "so I shall not conceal from you that I have a very poor opinion of your uncle's judgment! He does not want, precisely, for sense, but you must know that he never partook of your father's and my sentiments as one could have wished he might have done, and when he married that foolish woman—but I do not wish to dwell upon that, and if he chose to ally himself with a female out of a canting Methodist family, and to breed a pack of ill-conditioned brats who can think of nothing better to do than to ruin a lawn it has taken fifty years to bring to perfection, I am sure it was not for me to cavil. Although, mind you," he added admonishingly, "I told him how it would be at the outset. But Henry was never one to listen to those who might be supposed to be a little wiser than himself. I trust you will not turn out to be the same, Gilly."

The Duke assured him that he would not.

"No, well, I fancy I have drilled a few proper notions into your head," agreed his uncle. "But all this has nothing to do with what I have to say to you!" He bent his austere gaze upon Gilly's downcast face, and was silent for a moment. "I am speaking of your marriage, Gilly," he said abruptly.

The Duke looked up, startled. "My marriage, sir!"

"There is nothing to be surprised about in that, surely!" said Lord Lionel. "It is not, I fancy, unknown to you that I have already made certain arrangements on your behalf. I do not believe in making a secret of a very ordinary business, and since I am quite as much concerned with the question of your future comfort and happiness as with the very important one of securing the succession, I have been careful to choose for you a bride who will bring you, besides the necessary advantages of birth and fortune, a reasonable chance of harmony in your future life. In this, I hope you will realize, my boy, that I have had all these modern notions with which I make no doubt you are imbued in my head. You are not to suppose that my mind was irrevocably fixed upon the first and most obvious choice. I have had several young females in my eye, but I believe they will not do for you, and it is now some years since I have entertained any other idea than that you should, as soon as you had come of full age, marry Lady Harriet Presteigne."

The Duke got up suddenly, and said in some little agitation: "Yes—no! It had not been unknown to me. But the succession cannot be in danger, sir, while my cousin Gideon and, indeed, my Uncle Henry's five sons—"

"Do not talk to me of your Uncle Henry's sons!" commanded Lord Lionel wrathfully. "If they are all to take after the eldest of them, who, I am hearing, is for ever in some disgraceful scrape, as I have very little doubt they will do, for what can one expect, if a man will marry a Methodist?—I can only say that I am astonished you should entertain the notion of seeing one of them here in your shoes for as much as a moment!"

"But I should not see them in my shoes," pointed out the Duke reasonably. "And really, you know, sir, Mart's scrapes cannot be called disgraceful! And in any event I am sure that Gideon would fill my shoes far better than I could ever do. Surely—"

"You may put that out of your head once and for all!" said Lord Lionel, in his sternest voice. "Understand me, Gilly, I have never thought to see my son in your place, and nothing could more distress me than the knowledge that it must come to that in the end! I venture to say that Gideon shares my sentiments to the full. I do not know what cause he can have given you to suppose—"

"None! Oh, none!" Gilly said hurriedly. "I only meant—I only wished to say that it cannot be thought
necessary
for me to marry so soon!"

"So soon?" repeated his uncle, raising his brows. "My dear boy, it has been an understood thing between myself and Ampleforth any time these five years! I make no doubt the young lady herself is fully aware of it, for her mother is a woman of great good sense, and will have made it her business to prepare the girl for the position she is destined to occupy."

"You think that Harriet herself knows of it?" the Duke said, in a stunned voice.

"Certainly. Why should she not?" replied his uncle. "If you have some romantic notion in your head, I advise you to rid yourself of it, boy. Romantic notions do very well in a trashy novel, and I daresay they may not come amiss amongst the lesser ranks of society, but they are not for persons of our order, and that you may depend upon. Yes, yes, you think me very unfeeling, I daresay, but you may believe me when I tell you that I have seen more unhappiness arising out of a so-called love-match than from any other cause in this world. I dare swear you, at twenty-four and with your head full of nonsense, have not half as much idea of what will suit you as I have. But don't imagine, Gilly, that I would tie you up to someone for whom you feel the least degree of dislike! You cannot have failed to notice that your aunt and I have taken every opportunity of inviting the Ampleforths to Sale. I have encouraged you to visit them, and you have not been backward in accepting invitations to Ampleforth. I have made it my business to observe you narrowly, and I own that I shall be surprised to learn that you are wholly indifferent to Lady Harriet."

The Duke grasped the back of a chair. He looked even paler than was natural in him, and acutely unhappy. "No, indeed! I have the greatest regard—She has always been most amiable—But marriage—!"

"Come, Gilly!" said Lord Lionel, a little impatiently, "you do not mean to tell me that you had never considered the question! You knew very well that the matter was arranged!"