Babe (22 page)

“Ellingwood?” he asked. “Don’t think she’ll settle for that dull dog.”

“You are quite mistaken, dear. Dullness—that is, a little less vivacity than before—is what she seeks now. She is out with Charles this minute. You’ll never guess what! He has taken her to call on Lady Anstrom and her family. It is certainly a prelude to a formal offer. His aunts have both called on me on separate occasions, and expressed—in a roundabout way, you know—their approval of the match. Both her fortune and family quite unexceptionable of course, and in that way a very good wife for Charles. Lady Graham had something to do with it, certainly. An old crony of Charles’s aunts, and she has put in a good word for Barbara. Those two visits to Mecklenberg Square have paid handsome dividends.

Who ever would have thought—”

“I can’t quite picture Lady Graham giving Babe a good character.”

“She only cut up one lark while there.”

“She has a few more under her belt since.”

“Yes, but Charles was with her at the water party, and it is as much his fault as anything that she went on the raft.”

“What have Charles’s aunts to say to her late engagement to Gentz?” he asked, in a sardonic mood.

“They do not go much into Society. They lay the whole affair in the colonel’s dish, where it belongs, very likely.”

“You actually think Ellingwood will be calling on me?”

“I know he will, and I think you must ask him to call you Larry. Or Laurence at least. Oh, I would be so happy if we could announce her engagement at the ball. A fit climax to the season, and it would mean she is settled decently for life, and we could all stop worrying about her.”

“You can’t seriously think she has changed her spots in the space of a month!”

“But she has, and she tells me she is more content than ever she was before. Haven’t you noticed she is calm? Not so eager and bubbling as she used to be. It was an inspiration on my part to have her. It is what she lacked all along, someone to take a little interest in her. Tact and tenderness, as I suggested from the start. She speaks of going home to Drumbeig for the summer, which would be a very good thing too—the marriage, I mean—for her to have someone to oversee her estate. Lord Romeo could never have been trusted to do it. He would have turned it into a Parthenon. My only regret in the matter is that we didn’t think to have  her when first her father died, for if we had, she would never have run amok. However, all’s well that ends well, as they say,” she ended up cheerfully.

“Don’t count on it. I’m not sure we’ve seen the end of Babe yet.”

“I wish you would not use that name, dear. Barbara dislikes it. You are in very poor spirits for a gentleman who has done precisely what he set out to do. Several times you have urged Ellingwood forward, and now she has decided to have him, so why are you in the devil’s own mood? You should be happy for her.”

“I am happy,” he said, with a black scowl.

His sister was too busy on this, the day before Barbara’s ball, to quibble, though she observed he was not in his customary spirits. Trouble with one of his flirts, of course. It was always woman trouble when Larry took to sulking. He was still protesting to be happy, and showing it in the same way, when Ellingwood brought Barbara home from the visit to Lady Anstrom. There was something on Clivedon’s face that made Charles decide to delay the pending interview one more day. He had the perfect opportunity to speak, for Barbara had gone to remove her pelisse, and Lady Withers with great tact went out behind her to clear the way. When the suitor tried to make a few polite remarks before getting on with his business, he received such a blighting set-down that he suddenly remembered a commission he had to perform for his aunt, and asked Clivedon to make his adieux to Lady Barbara.

“I’ll tell Babe you had to leave, Lord Ellingwood,” he was told. And there was a deuced odd thing, too. Clivedon had called him Lord Ellingwood three times in as many minutes, and he always used to call him Ellingwood.

“What—has Charles left already?” Barbara asked, when she entered the room.

“Yes, he asked me to tell you he had an errand to perform. So, Lady Barbara, have you found a captain to steer your frail barque after all?” he asked, in a tone not far removed from a sneer.

“I believe I may have,” she answered pertly. “A lady may be managed quite as easily as a man, you see, if the gentleman knows what he is about. Why are you staring so? You told me once that a lady might manage any gentleman, and I am merely pointing out that the reverse is also true. Even I am manageable, after all, by the right

man.”

The sneer was markedly accentuated at this speech. “I wonder how much success Charles would have had if I hadn’t tamed you for him?”

This was said in a way that would have raised the temper of a much more docile lady than Lady Barbara, who did not consider herself quite broken to the bridle yet. “He has a talent for it. I think he might have contrived without your help,” she answered tartly.

“Odd a young gentleman of twenty-five years should be so talented.”

“Talent is by definition an innate gift, is it not? With a little cooperation from the barque, we will see it safely landed yet. Did he speak to you before leaving?”

“Yes, he said two or three times that it is a jolly fine day out.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You refer to making an offer for you? The subject did not arise. You think he intends to do it, when he manages to screw up his courage?”

“I trust he does. Surely he did not mean to set me up in a love nest when he spoke of my going to him. He never calls me Babe,” she added with a saucy look.

“The slow top!”

“You are the one who said it showed disrespect!”

“Did I, Babe?”

“Oh you are hateful! You don’t want to see me settled. I have learned from you not to live up to everyone’s worst expectations of me. You said I should marry someone nice, and I shall.”

“I am quite certain I did not use the meaningless word ‘nice.’ Nor do I wish to see you anchored to an anchorite.”

“He’s not like that! Not hermitish in the least.”

“He’s the dullest dog in the country. Watch what you are about, or, in your effort to show me a lesson, you’ll end up in the role of Lady Ellingwood. How does that strike you?”

“I’m not trying to show you a lesson! Clivedon, you suggested Charles yourself.”

“You said he was immature and hadn’t an original word to say.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind.”

“So have I.”

She stared at him in disbelief. This contradiction of his former views was so sudden she felt for a moment the floor was shifting under her feet. One of the major reasons she had undertaken to change herself was to please these relatives, and this was the way he reacted. “Kind of you to let me know!” she said angrily. “Don’t you think you’ve left it a little late?”

“I didn’t realize you were such a fast worker, but I should have expected it of Babe Manfred.”

“As you are so intimately aware of my true character, you had better not goad me too far. There is more than one way to get married, and I don’t fancy you would care for any but the proper, established mode, as my behavior now is to reflect on yourself.”

“Hinting you mean to dash up to Gretna Green and get married by the smitty? You’ll have uphill work getting Ellingwood moving in that direction. The wealthy aunts would disapprove.”

“He’s not the only man in England.”

“Surely, as you speak of marrying him, he is the only one you love.”

“This marriage has nothing to do with love, and you know it!”

“Does Charles know it?”

“He loves me! I’m marrying him because you convinced me it was the only course open to me. You told me I was a step from ruin.”

“You were.”

“Well, then!” She looked to see some recognition of her logic, and saw only an intransigent mask. “I come to see it’s better than being your ward in any case. I'd rather marry a donkey than spend one more week under your dubious protection.”

“In that case, send Ellingwood to me, and it will be arranged at once.”

The scorching reply she was preparing died on her lips. She looked at him, too confused to continue.

“Well?” he said. “I can forbid it, you know.”

“You risk creating a greater scandal than I have ever done, if you refuse such an unexceptionable match, one that has your sister’s approval, too, with no reason.”

“Call it a caprice on my part,” he suggested loftily.

“A conundrum is more like it. You are incomprehensible.”

“Babe, you know he wouldn’t suit you,” he said, seeming to simmer down, though there was still a good head of steam waiting to blow.

“Why did you suggest him, then? What were you about all these weeks, but trying to get me married to him?”

“It wasn’t my intention to see you gallop to the altar with the first man who asked.”

“Actually, that would have been Romeo.”

“Don’t mention that lunatic’s name to me.”

“You two have one thing in common at least. He feels precisely the same about you. And you didn’t make him leave last night, either, when he asked me to dance. I come to think you want me to do something foolish. Don’t push me too far with this capricious guardianship of yours, Clivedon.”

“What is it you have in mind? Dancing nude in the streets? Announcing an engagement to an actor? Or becoming one yourself. Yes, that’s more like it, front stage center. Fairly amusing. Right in your old style. The donkey, I fancy, would bray, but the rest of your audience would applaud the return of Babe.”

“Have you finished? I hope so, for I have finished with being Babe. You have thrown her in my face for the last time.”

“Do you know, I come to think I like her better than the new Lady Barbara, so encumbered with fichus and calls on dowagers.”

“Lady Barbara is greatly flattered at the comparison, but quite frankly, she will not heed your implicit advice to make a spectacle of herself. There will be no dancing in the streets to entertain you. If you wish to see me dance, come to my ball, and you’ll see me open it with my bridegroom.”

“You mean to have him, then?”

“Unless you have someone else in mind for me for the next week or so? Don’t be shy to tell me if you have changed your mind,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could find.

“You have already admitted you don’t love him.”

“At least I understand him. He isn’t a moralist one day and a—a fiend the next.”

“Now, surely it was yourself who told me variety is the spice of life. How will you take to such a bland diet as undiluted Ellingwood, I wonder.”

“I’ll provide the spice, if that is what worries you.”

“God pity Ellingwood! He doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for.”

“He’s not deaf or blind.”

“Only dumb, alas, but then, he can’t help that.”

“He knows well enough what I have been in the past. Unlike yourself, he has some confidence that I can continue, with his help, to be what I am now.”

“I wonder if that confidence isn’t misplaced,” he suggested in a conversational spirit.

There was no sense to be made of his conversation today. In a final, uncontrollable fit of pique, Babe surfaced and said, “Go to hell!” then turned and stormed from the room.

“See you there, Babe,” he called after her, and laughed as he slammed the door behind her, but the laughter did not long remain on his lips. He took two hasty steps after her, then turned back, hit a chair with his fist and uttered an accomplished and original curse, before going to take a fairly polite leave of his sister.

Chapter Twenty

When Lord Ellingwood went to call on Clivedon the next morning, the latter’s secretary was very surprised indeed to be asked to inform the caller his lordship was not at home, and not expected home that day. “He sent around a note yesterday to make the appointment, sir, and you directed me to tell him you would see him at eleven.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“It was an important matter, you recall, sir.”

“You mistake your duties, Smythe. You are my servant, not my advisor.”

Mr. Smythe left in confusion to do his duty. He realized Clivedon was in a pelter over something, and though he was a good-natured employer in the general way, one did not argue when he was out of sorts. Smythe did not trouble to tell his employer when the next gentleman called. If he had turned Ellingwood from the door, he would not want to see Lord Romeo. The instant the strangely persistent young artist was got rid of, Clivedon sent to ask who had called.

“You turned young Rutledge away without telling me!” Clivedon asked, at his most arrogant. “Go after him at once. In future you will be kind enough to inform me when my friends call, and let me decide whether I wish to see them.”

To Mr. Smythe’s infinite relief, Lord Romeo had got no farther than the edge of the street, where he stood gazing at the red brick facade of Clivedon House envisioning its revision.

“His lordship is in now, sir,” Smythe said, feeling very foolish indeed.

“Oh, good,” Lord Romeo said, and smiled sweetly. “I hope he is in a good mood.”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Angry?”

“Rather.”

“He’s seen me, then. It cannot be helped.”

Clivedon looked less angry than calculating when the young gentleman was shown in. “What is it you want now?” was his blunt greeting.

“I am leaving town almost immediately. I know you dislike me, but still I feel the honorable thing to do is to come and ask you for Lady Barbara’s hand, as I am going to marry her.”

“Lady Barbara’s hand is taken.”

“You’re making her marry you!”

“It is another gentleman who has done us both out.”

“Elderwood?”

“Close enough,” Clivedon told him, smiling a smile that held an invitation, or a challenge. “She prefers him to us, it seems.”

“I had not thought you were quite so stupid,” Romeo replied. “I was afraid you might beat me out, but she cannot prefer Elderwood to me, or even you.”

“Thank you.”'

“That carrot possibly be misconstrued as a compliment. The man is a wooden dummy,”

“I tend to agree with you.”