“Well, considering they still talk of the things you and Kit did, when you was up, it’s the outside of enough for you to be pinching at me!” said Ambrose, much injured.
“Do they? Famous!” said Kit, his eyes lighting with sudden laughter. “I’ll swear they don’t say, though, that we wasted our time chasing the white-aprons!”
9
On the following day, towards the end of the afternoon, the Dowager Lady Stavely arrived at Ravenhurst, in an even more antiquated and ponderous travelling chariot than Mr Cliffe’s, and accompanied by her granddaughter, her abigail, and her personal footman. Mr Fancot, notwithstanding his expressed wish to put as many miles as possible between himself and any member of the Stavely family, greeted their appearance on the scene with as much pleasure as was compatible with his fear that he might, in an unguarded moment, betray himself. For this, twenty-four hours spent in the company of his maternal relations were largely responsible. What Lady Denville mendaciously described as a cosily conversable evening had been followed by a singularly boring, and, at times, difficult day. Cosmo, himself the owner of a modest estate, had chosen, when civilly asked to say what he would like to do, to ride round his nephew’s acres. During this expedition, on which Kit had felt himself bound to escort him, he had asked a great many pertinent questions to which Kit, who, as a younger son, had never concerned himself with the management or the revenue of his father’s property, was hard put to it to answer. He was obliged to endure a homily from his uncle, who perceived, with regret, that report had not lied when it described the Sixth Lord Denville as a frippery young man, wholly abandoned to frivolity. Fortunately for the absent Evelyn’s reputation, Mr Cliffe retired to the library after a substantial nuncheon, spread a handkerchief over his face, and sank into profound and audible slumber. Kit was left with the task of trying to entertain his cousin: no easy one, since young Mr Cliffe’s sole desire was, as he expressed it, to take a bolt to Brighton. Asked what he wanted to do in Brighton, he replied vaguely that they might go for a toddle on the promenade, or perhaps take a look-in at a billiards-saloon. But as Kit, in the existing circumstances, was determined to give this haunt of fashion a wide berth; and would have shrunk, under any circumstances, from being seen in the company of a would-be dandy who presented to his jaundiced eye all the appearance of a counter-coxcomb, this scheme was blocked at the outset. Kit said that it behoved him to be on hand when the Stavelys arrived; and that if Ambrose wanted to play billiards on a summer’s afternoon there was a very good table at Ravenhurst. In the end, as Ambrose said that he didn’t know that he really wished to play billiards, he drove him upstairs to change his tightly fitting coat, his dove-coloured pantaloons, and his cut Venetian waistcoat for attire more suited to the country, and bore him off to shoot rabbits. Ambrose went unwillingly, saying, with a nervous laugh, that he was not a crack shot, like his cousin; but after he had been forcibly dissuaded from carrying his fowling-piece at an extremely dangerous angle, and had been given a lesson in how to load and fire it he forgot his affectations, and began to enjoy himself. He was much relieved to find his cousin so good-natured, for he stood in secret awe of Evelyn, remembering a previous visit to Ravenhurst, as a schoolboy, when Evelyn, finding that he had neither the taste nor the aptitude for any form of sport, regarded him with contempt, and soon shrugged him off. It seemed to him that the passage of time had greatly improved Evelyn; and presently, emboldened by the patient encouragement he received, he confided that he rather thought he would like to be able to shoot well. “Only the thing is, you see, that I never had the opportunity to learn, because m’father ain’t a sporting cove.”
Realizing for the first time that Ambrose had grown up under disadvantages he had never himself experienced, Kit was inspired to suggest that while he was at Ravenhurst he should place himself in the hands of the head gamekeeper, who would be delighted to have a pupil to school. The idea took well; and as the proposal was shortly followed by a shot which accounted for one of a gathering of unwary rabbits Ambrose trod back to the house immensely set up in his own conceit, as convinced that he had aimed at that particular rabbit as he was that in less than no time he would be acknowledged by all to be a famous shot.
Half-an-hour after they had reached the house again, and just as Kit came downstairs, having changed his rough coat, his breeches, and his long gaiters for more formal attire, the Dowager Lady Stavely’s impressive chariot was at the door and Norton, aided by my lady’s footman, and with two of his own satellites in support, was tenderly handing her down from it. Kit arrived on the scene in time to hear the blistering reproof she addressed to her helpers: he gathered that her mood was unamiable, and was not surprised to be greeted with a pungent criticism of the state of the lane which led from the pike-road to the main gates. “However,” she conceded magnanimously, “you have a very tolerable place here—very tolerable indeed! I was never here before, so I’m glad to have seen it.” Her sharp eyes scanned the variegated facade. “H’m, yes! I do not call it splendid, but a very respectable seat. You should root up all those rhododendrons beside the avenue: nasty, gloomy things! I can’t abide ’em!”
“But think how beautiful they are when they are in bloom, ma’am!” said Cressy, who had just alighted from the carriage.
“All but the shabby-genteels are in London then, so much good do they do one!” said Lady Stavely sweepingly. She saw that her hostess was coming down the wide, shallow stone steps, and nodded to her. “How-de-do? I’ve been telling Denville he should root up those rhododendrons on the avenue: they make it too dark.”
“Yes, don’t they?” agreed Lady Denville. “Like descending into Hell; only then, of course, one comes out into open ground, which is such an agreeable surprise. Let me take you into the house, ma’am: the sun is quite scorching!”
The Dowager uttered a cackle of amusement. “Thinking of your complexion, are you? When you get to be my age you won’t care a rush for it. We used to lay crushed strawberries on our faces, to clear the sunburn. Slices of raw veal, too, against wrinkles. Not that I ever did so: messy, I call it! I dare say you use all manner of newfangled lotions, but they don’t do you any more good than the old-fashioned remedies did us.”
Lady Denville, who nightly applied distilled water of green pineapples to her exquisite countenance, and protected it during the day with Olympian Dew, replied without a blink that that was very true; and guided her guest towards the steps, offering the support of her arm. This was refused, the Dowager stating that she preferred the services of her footman. She also, stated, when it was suggested to her that she might like to be conducted immediately to her bedchamber, that she was an old woman, and in no state to drag herself up any more stairs until she had recovered her breath and what little energy remained to her.
“Then you shall come into the Blue saloon, which is delightfully cool, ma’am,” responded Lady Denville, with unabated good-humour. “I’ll tell them to make tea, and that will revive you.”
“Well, it won’t, for I shan’t drink it!” said the Dowager. “I’ll take a cup of tea after dinner, but I won’t maudle my inside with it at this time of day! What I could fancy—but it’s of no consequence if you have none!—is a glass of negus.”
“To be sure! how stupid of me!” exclaimed Lady Denville, directing a look of agonized inquiry at her butler.
“Immediately, my lady!” he said, rising magnificently to the occasion.
Cressy, still standing at the foot of the steps, raised ruefully smiling eyes to Kit’s face, and said softly: “She is tired, you know, and that always makes her knaggy! I am so sorry! But she will be better presently.”