Miss Stavely, though in no doubt of Miss Rimpton’s skill, declined her condescending offices, saying that Grandmama’s Jane would do all for her that was necessary. This was not of a nature to tax the skill of an abigail who was more a nurse than a dresser, for it consisted merely of hooking up a very becoming gown of light orange crape. This was done in the Dowager’s room, and under her eye. She accorded the gown a certain measure of approval, but said that the skirt was too narrow, adding the time-honoured observation that she didn’t know what the world was coming to, when females tried to make themselves look like hop-poles. Disdaining the modern fashion of high waists and clinging skirts, she was herself attired in a stiff black silk, worn over an underdress embroidered with silver thread. A cap of starched black lace was on her hair: mittens covered her arms; and in one hand she held a fan. Unlike her granddaughter, who wore the lightest of silk sandals, she had chosen from a large collection of outmoded shoes a pair with high heels, and paste buckles. Cressy told her mischievously that the only thing wanting was a patch on her cheek.
“Patches went out of fashion before you were born!” replied the Dowager crushingly. “You may go now, Jane. No, give me my cane—the ebony one! Yes, that will do. And tell William to come up directly to support me down those slippery stairs!” She turned to survey Cressy, as the door closed behind the placid attendant. “And where have you been, miss?” she demanded.
“Walking in the rose-garden with Lord Denville, ma’am,” said Cressy, undismayed by the sharpness of the question.
“H’m!” My lady scrutinized her own rouged countenance in the looking-glass, picked up a down puff with her twisted fingers, and gave her cheeks a further dusting of powder. “Never thought to ask if I wanted your company!”
“I knew that you didn’t, Grandmama,” responded Cressy, quizzing her intrepidly. “You told me not to hang about you, unless I wished to fret you to flinders, which, I promise you, I don’t! Furthermore, dear ma’am, I couldn’t suppose that when you had Lady Denville to take care of you there was the smallest need for me to remain at your side.”
“Amabel Denville is nothing but a pretty widgeon!” declared the Dowager roundly. “She always was, and she always will be!” She glared at her own reflection, her jaws working. “One of these days she’ll be like me: an old bag of bones! But I’ll tell you this, girl! If any of my daughters had possessed a tenth part of her charm I’d have thanked God for it! Help me out of this chair! I ought to be in my bed, with a basin of gruel, but I’ll come down to dinner, and if I feel able for it I’ll have a game of backgammon with Cosmo Cliffe afterwards. But I dare say I shan’t: I’m too old for all this junketing about the country! I only trust that if I’m carried off you’ll remember it was for your sake I came here!”
This malevolent speech did not augur well, nor did the Dowager’s mood grow more propitious until the party went in to dinner, when she became very much more mellow. For this her hosts had Mr Dawlish to thank. Not for nothing did this genius command an extortionate wage: he knew quite as well what to offer a very old lady as how to serve up a grand dinner of two full courses, consisting of half-a-dozen removes and upwards of thirty side dishes. The Dowager, revived by a soup made with fresh peas, allowed herself to be persuaded to try a morsel of turbot; followed this up with several morsels of a delicate fawn, roasted whole, and served with a chevreuil sauce; and ended her repast with a dish of asparagus, cut and delivered by the kitchen-gardener a bare ten minutes before Mr Dawlish was ready to cook it. This was so succulent that she was moved to compliment Kit on his cook. She informed him, in her forthright fashion, that she had eaten too much, and would probably be unable to close her eyes all night; but it was noticeable that when she left the dining-room she did so without assistance, and with a remarkable diminution of her previous decrepitude.
Although Kit had been willing enough to concede that Cosmo might entertain the Dowager by plying card-games with her, he had been quite unable to picture her enduring with even the appearance of complaisance his aunt’s flat platitudes. Great was his astonishment, therefore, when, following his uncle and cousin into the drawing-room some time later, he found these two ladies seated side by side on the sofa, and engaged in interested converse. Since Lady Denville had had a card-table set up at the far end of the long room, and lost no time in sweeping the three younger members of the party to it, to play, under her aegis, such frivolous games as suggested themselves to her, it was not until he paid his mama a goodnight visit that Kit learned the reason for this sudden and extraordinary friendship. Nothing, declared her ladyship, had ever been more fortunate! Poor Emma, during the course of a very boring anecdote, had let fall a Name, which had instantly made Lady Stavely prick up her ears. After exhaustive discussion, which had appeared to Lady Denville to range over most of the noble houses in the country, and a fair proportion of the landed gentry, it had been established, to both ladies’ satisfaction, that they were in some way related.
“But pray don’t ask me how, dearest!” begged Lady Denville. “I can’t tell you how many cousins, and marriages, and mere connexions were dragged in: you cannot conceive how tedious! But it has led to that terrible old woman’s taking a fancy to Emma, and I have every hope that we shall be able to fob her off on to your aunt!”
10
Lady Denville’s hope was to some extent realized. Either because of the remote relationship between herself and Mrs Cliffe, or because the Dowager perceived in that biddable lady an excellent substitute for her daughter Clara, she chose to honour her with her approval, and lost no time in inducting her into the duties of companion-in-chief. Somewhat to Lady Denville’s surprise, Poor Emma was perfectly willing to assume these. They were not, in fact, as arduous as might have been supposed, since the Dowager never left her bedchamber till noon, and admitted no one into it except her abigail; retired to it two hours before dinner; and spent the evening playing whist, or piquet, or backgammon with such members of the party as she considered to be worthy opponents, or partners. Mrs Cliffe was not numbered amongst these; and until the arrival of Sir Bonamy Ripple, three days after the rest of the guests had assembled, it was Kit who occupied the fourth place at the whist-table. He was a sound, if not a brilliant player, and once he had grasped the difference between long whist, which the Dowager preferred, and short, to which, as a member of the younger generation, he was accustomed, she had no serious fault to find with him. But as Lady Denville’s play was divided between flashes of brilliance, and strange lapses (due, as she unacceptably explained to the Dowager, to her having been thinking of something else at just that moment), it was soon tacitly decided that she and her son should be perpetual partners against the Dowager and Cosmo Cliffe.
Emma’s new duties, therefore, consisted merely of bearing the Dowager company during her unoccupied moments, and going with her, every fine afternoon, for a sedate drive round the neighbouring countryside; and as this regimen exactly suited her disposition no one felt her to be an object for compassion.