The Reluctant Widow (26 page)

“I should think he would!” corroborated Nicky, with an impish smile. “Why, when Miss Beccles only opened her door last night he set up such a barking as roused even old Barrow!”

“Did he, indeed?” said Francis politely. “I do trust I shall not be thought unreasonable if I solicit Miss Beccles not to open her door tonight. If I am awakened out of my first sleep I find it very hard to drop off again, and to be lying awake all night, you know, cannot but harm the most robust constitution.”

Miss Beccles assured him that she would not do so, and the party went out into the hall, where the bedroom candles were set out on the table. Bouncer was lying on the mat by the door, and Francis put up his quizzing glass to scrutinize him. He sighed. “A singularly ill-favored hound!” he said.

“Much you know about it!” snapped Nicky, who could not brook criticism of his favorite. Either his tone or the dog’s natural antipathy to Francis provoked Bouncer into uttering a subdued growl. He was in doubt how this would be received, but when no rebuke greeted it, he got up and barked aggressively at Francis.

Francis shuddered. “Pray hold him, dear Nicholas!” he begged. “What a shocking character mine must be! They say dogs can always tell, do they not? I do trust that is yet another of the fallacies one is forever discovering!”

“Oh, he will not bite you while I am here!” said Nicky cheerfully. “Then do, I beg of you, accompany me up the stairs!” said Francis. This was done, arid Francis delivered into the tender care of his valet. Nicky confided to Elinor that he should sleep with one ear open and only hoped that Francis would come out of his room, for he was willing to bet a monkey Bouncer would indeed savage him. Upon this pious aspiration, he took himself off to his own room, there to drop into the deep and sound sleep of youth, from which, Elinor shrewdly judged, nothing less than a cataclysm would rouse him.

But Miss Beccles, for whom Bouncer had no terrors, could not be satisfied, and horrified Elinor by stealing into her room hardly half an hour after the valet’s footsteps had been heard retreating to the wing which housed the servants, with the information that she had made it impossible for Francis to leave his bedchamber that night.

“What can you possibly mean, Becky?” Elinor demanded, sitting up, and pushing back the bed curtains.

“My love, I bethought me of the clothesline!” whispered the little governess impressively. “I have securely attached it to the handle of his door and to the handle of dear Mrs. Nicky’s door too!”

“Becky!” Elinor exclaimed. “No, no, you must not! I am sure Bouncer is guard enough! Only think if Mr. Cheviot should discover it! I should never be able to look him in the face again!” “Dear old fellow!” said Miss Beccles, fondly regarding the faithful hound who had followed her into the room and now sat on his haunches with his ears laid flat and an expression on his face of vacuous amiability. “I am sure he is not a nasty fierce dog, are you, Bouncer?” Bouncer at once assumed the mien of a foolishly sentimental spaniel and began to pant. “Becky, when the servants discover it in the morning, only conceive how it must look!” “Yes, my love, but I am always awake before the servants are stirring, and I shall undo the line, of course. Do not be in a pucker, my dear Mrs. Cheviot! I only thought you would wish to know that I have made all safe. Come, Bouncer, good doggie!”

She glided away again, leaving Elinor to toss and turn on her pillows, rehearsing the lame explanations she might be called upon to make in the morning to a justly offended guest. But the only disturbance consequent upon Miss Beccles’ brilliant stroke was caused by Nicky who, waking betimes and ascribing this unusual circumstance to some noise which must have penetrated to his consciousness, jumped out of bed and tried stealthily to open his door. The clothesline held fast, and Nicky, concluding very naturally that his imprisonment was due to Francis Cheviot’s wicked wiles, instantly set up a shout for help. The first to answer the call was Bouncer, who tore up the stairs, and after flinging himself unavailingly at

his master’s door, set to work to release him by a process of furious excavation. Miss Beccles, only pausing to cast a shawl over her nightdress, ran out, and seizing Bouncer by his collar, agitatedly begged Nicky to hush! Neither he nor Bouncer paid any heed to this admonition, and it was not until she had with trembling fingers untied her knots and the commotion had brought not only Elinor but Barrow also to the spot, that the imprecations of the prisoner and the excited barking of the dog abated. The matter being hurriedly explained to Nicky he instantly went off into a shout of laughter, quite sufficient to have roused anyone who had contrived to remain asleep through the previous hubbub. Elinor was in an agony of apprehension, but no sound of stirring came from the guest’s chamber.

“Well, it queers me why anyone should take and do such a tedious silly thing!” said Barrow, staring in surprise at the clothesline. “A hem setout it’ll be if Mr. Francis comes to hear tell of it!”

“Barrow, you will please not to mention the matter to any!” Elinor said distractedly. “Miss Beccles took a notion—that is, it was all nonsense, of course! For heaven’s sake, do not let us be standing here!”

Barrow looked from one to the other with such an expression of astonishment on his face that Nicky marched him back to his own wing, favoring him on the way with an explanation which caused him to say with withering scorn, “Mistress hasn’t got no call to suspicion the likes of Mr. Francis! As like as ninepence to nothing, he is!”

“What did you say to Barrow?” demanded Elinor, upon Nicky’s return. He grinned at her. “I’ll not tell you. You would be ready to eat me!” “Hateful boy! What was it?”

“No, it would make you blush.” “Oh!” she gasped indignantly. “Odious!” “Well, I don’t know what else I could have told him!”

“Well, never mind!” She sank her voice to an even lower note and pointed toward Francis Cheviot’s door. “He cannot have slept through such a noise! Why has he not come out or called to us to know what is the matter?”

“Hiding under his bed belike,” responded Nicky caustically, “He is bound to remark upon it!”

“I’ll fob him off,” Nicky promised.

In spite of this assurance, it was in the expectation of suffering a considerable degree of embarrassment that the widow descended presently to the breakfast parlor. But her uninvited guest put in no appearance, and Barrow explained with a sniff of disapproval that Crawley had carried up a tray to his bedchamber. Mr. Cheviot, had said Crawley loftily, never left his room until noon.

“Oh, doesn’t he, by Jove?” exclaimed Nicky. “Well, he will then, for the funeral is at noon!” He lost no time, after he had consumed his usual hearty breakfast, in going upstairs to break these tidings to Francis. But Francis, who was seated before the dressing table wrapped in an exotic robe and having his nails carefully pared by his valet, remained annoyingly unruffled.

“Yes, dear boy, so I was informed, and you see how early I am up! I grudge no exertion, but how I shall contrive to be dressed in time I know not. After ten already, and I dare say we must set out quite by eleven! Crawley, we must bear in mind that should the Fates be against me, which I do trust, however, will not be found to be the case, I might be obliged to spend an hour over the arrangement of my neckcloth, and that would make me late, you know. Perhaps I should make the first attempts at once.”

Nicky stared at the pile of black cravats, each at least a foot wide, which lay on the table. “Good God, you cannot need the half of such a stock!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean to stay here a month?”

Francis eyed the pile anxiously. “Do you think I shall not?” he said. “I do hope you may be right, dear Nicholas, but it is by no means unknown for me to ruin a score before I have

achieved just the correct folds. It would be so disrespectful to poor Eustace if I were to attend his obsequies in a clumsily tied cravat! You will have to leave me, dear boy. I find it so agitating to be watched while I am engaged on the most crucial part of my toilet. But do tell me before you go, why was I so rudely awakened this morning?”

“Oh, so you did not sleep through the commotion?” said Nicky.

“My dear Nicholas, I am neither deaf nor a heavy sleeper. One would have supposed a regiment of soldiers to have stormed the house!”

“I wonder you should not have come out of your room to discover the cause!” Francis turned a shocked gaze upon him. “Come out of my room before I had been shaved?” he said. “Dear boy, are you mad?”

“Oh, well!” Nicky said impatiently. “It was nothing, after all! I could not open my door. It was stuck, you know. All the doors in this house are so warped there was never anything like it! Barrow was obliged to thrust his shoulder against it, for I thought if I tugged at it the handle would very likely come off.”

“Dear me!” said Francis mildly. “What a very violent young man you are, dear Nicholas!” Nicky went off to find Elinor and to tell her that there was no making anything of Francis. “Do you think he can have tried to open his own door?” she asked anxiously. “Lord, I don’t know, but I should not be surprised! He is the smokiest fellow, and lies as fast as a dog would trot, I dare say! But only wait till I tell John of the cravats he has brought with him! John cannot bear a dandy!”

Apparently the cravats were not that day recalcitrant, for punctually at eleven o’clock Francis descended the stairs, dressed, with the exception of a gray waistcoat, in funereal black, and followed by Crawley carrying his fur-lined cloak, gloves, hat, and ebony cane. His chaise stood at the door, and it had been arranged that he should take Nicky up with him as far as Wisborough Green where funeral carriages were to await them.

Francis greeted his hostess with all his usual urbanity, assuring her that but for such trifling disagreeables as a mouse gnawing in the wainscoting, Bouncer’s predilection for scratching himself on the landing just outside his door, the matutinal habits of apparently a hundred cockerels, and Nicky’s unfortunate contretemps with his bedroom door, he had passed an excellent night. The only thing that threatened, in fact, to ruffle his placidity was an ineradicable fear that the wind was backing round to the northeast, in which case, he apologetically warned Elinor, it would be impossible for him to leave Highnoons that day, starting his journey as he must, at an advanced hour of the afternoon and without the hope of reaching London before night. Her civility obliged her to say what was proper, but her heart sank, and when Francis had been tenderly packed into the chaise and the door shut upon him and his impatient companion, she went off to ask the gardener what he thought of the weather. He said there was a nasty cold wind a-blowing up. She went dejectedly back to the house to give Mrs. Barrow due warning, but that competent woman was so delighted to have two girls from the village at her beck and call, not to mention the gardener’s wife whom she had been briskly bullying all the morning, that she merely asked whether her mistress preferred her to make a pheasant pie or to serve up a couple of broiled fowls and mushrooms for dinner.

The funeral, meanwhile, passed off as smoothly as could be desired, Francis occupying the first carriage in solitary state, the three Carlyon brothers following in the second, while a scattering of persons of consequence who lived in the neighborhood and who had put in an appearance more from a desire to gratify Carlyon than from any regard for the deceased, made the cortege respectable. The tail was brought up by a few humbler personages, chief among whom was the doctor.

A cold collation having been prepared at the Hall for the chief mourners, all the more genteel personages repaired there after the interment, when Carlyon had the opportunity to observe that although Louis de Castres was absent, there were present two gentlemen who had come down from London at Francis’ behest, and were almost as beautifully arrayed as he was himself. They excused themselves early on the score of having the drive back to

London to accomplish, and the local gentry, finding an awkwardness in the occasion and perhaps oppressed by the demeanor of Mr. Cheviot who seemed crushed by woe, soon followed their example, the last to leave being Sir Matthew Kendal, who shook Carlyon by the hand, saying gruffly that all was well that had ended well. Feeling that the sentiments underlying this remark might have been more felicitously expressed, he colored up to the roots of his grizzled hair and sought to cover his confusion by turning to issue a ferocious warning to Nicky to keep that damned dog of his off his preserves if he did not want to see him shot and hung up as a warning to other such marauders. After this threat, which he palliated by a playful punch in his young friend’s ribs, he took himself off, and John was at last at liberty to give vent to the annoyance which had been consuming him ever since the return of the funeral party to the Hall. Speaking with a restraint which only served to emphasize the profound nature of his vexation, he looked Francis up and down and said, “I was not aware that you cherished such peculiarly strong sentiments toward our cousin. Your grief, I dare say, does credit to your heart, but for my part, I should be glad, now that only ourselves remain to be edified by it, if you would abate its violence!” Nicky, who had just raised a glass of madeira to his lips, was taken with a fit of choking which, while it for once brought down upon his head no rebuke from his stern brother, earned him a pained glance from Francis. A heavy sigh was the only answer Francis vouchsafed to John. He raised his handkerchief to his eyes and kept it there. John’s lips tightened for a moment before he said, “Come, Cheviot, this is the outside of enough!”

Francis shook his head, saying into the folds of his handkerchief, “Alas, you are mistaken! I have received the most distressing tidings. These unmanly tears are not, I blush to confess, for our unfortunate young relative, but for one nearer to me by the ties of affection. Pardon me! It has cost me a severe effort to bear my part at this feast with any degree of fortitude. No, feast is not the right word: I should have said wake, but it is odd how often the funeral baked meats are partaken of in a spirit almost of jollification. My dear John, I have sustained a terrible shock which has quite overborne me!”