Lady John (21 page)

Once arrived, Miss Casserley felt it only proper to offer
the gentleman refreshment, and Mr. Haikestill shortly found himself in the
drawing room of Whelke House, taking tea with Miss Casserley and discussing
good works. It was inevitable that he, on his part, should compare this civil
treatment with that he had so recently suffered at Lady John Temperer’s hands.
Mr. Haikestill’s
amour propre
revived under
this treatment, and, disposed to notice Miss Casserley, he realized and
commented upon the fact that she looked somewhat peaked. Jane Casserley blushed
and gestured deprecatingly. “You must not think of it, Mr. Haikestill, although
it is kind in you to be concerned. I am a bit troubled over some affairs of
mine which affect me…” she trailed off. Had anyone suggested to her that she
was leaving a most deliberate opening for further inquiry, Miss Casserley would
have scorned the idea. But the fact remained that Mr. Haikestill did pursue the
matter, and in a very short time had learned of the problem that was possessing
Miss Casserley’s mind: Lord Menwin.

“I should dislike to say what was improper, of course.” She
dropped her eyes in horror of the very idea. “It is only that I am more and
more troubled by an increasing disparity of interest between myself and Lord
Menwin.”

“Ah, madam, but he is not worthy of you,” Haikestill
responded gallantly. “While an estimable man within his limitations, Lord
Menwin does not strike me as the sort of superior man who could do justice to
the qualities of a woman such as yourself.”

Miss Casserley was not loath to hear these sentiments, since
they marched very closely with her own feelings.

“It is strange. I have heard that Menwin is an excellent
landlord and is deeply concerned with the welfare of his tenants and his
properties, but when I have taxed him with my plans for assisting the
disadvantaged, he cannot rise above the meanest material plane. I promise you,
Mr. Haikestill,” Miss Casserley fixed him with an evangelical glance which
struck a chord in Haikestill’s heart. “Menwin seems to place the importance of
spiritual nourishment far below that of nourishment of the mere body. Why, he
continually brings the subject round to bread!”

Haikestill agreed that this was evidence of a lamentable
want of spiritual foresight on the part of the lady’s betrothed. The two of
them sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes.

“Miss Casserley,” Haikestill began at last, “although
perhaps it is not strictly proper that I express myself on a subject of such a
personal nature, yet I would like to say that your propriety of thought and
your appreciation of the serious tasks of life do you great credit.”

Miss Casserley blushed and smiled.

“I can only hope that Lord Menwin comes to appreciate his
good fortune in having found a bride who is both conscious of the duties
required of her as helpmeet and as a member of the privileged classes, and who
is so well suited by virtue of her informed mind and charitable disposition to
discharge those duties.” Haikestill paused, flushing. “You are also, although
it may not be my place to say such a thing, a charmingly handsome woman.”

Miss Casserley seemed to find nothing wrong in Mr.
Haikestill’s expressions; she blushed and murmured something to the effect that
Mr. Haikestill was too kind, too generous. Haikestill, in his turn, pooh-poohed
her protests.

“No, truly, sir, I am conscious not only of the kindness of
your opinions, but of their value, coming as they do from a man with such a
proper appreciation of—” Miss Casserley’s eyes met Mr. Haikestill’s, and her
voice died away. A pin, dropped in that moment in the drawing room, would have
made a thunderous noise.

Then, Miss Casserley looked away, blushing furiously, and
Mr. Haikestill rose with strange abruptness to thank the lady for her
hospitality. They murmured a few unthinking civilities and Mr. Haikestill
repossessed himself of his hat, ready to depart.

At the door, however, just before he put himself in the
hands of the butler to be shown out of the house, Haikestill paused.

“If I may say so, my dear Miss Casserley,” he began with
great seriousness, “I should like you to know that, should you ever find
yourself in need of a true friend and assistant, I would be pleased, honored—nay,
privileged to accomplish any service that I could for you.” Haikestill gazed
intently into Miss Casserley’s blue eyes and realized that she was precisely
the height a woman should be; he further was aware, in the back of his mind, of
a comparison between Jane Casserley’s fair-haired composure and Lady John
Temperer’s red-haired liveliness that did not flatter the late object of his
affections.

“Mr. Haikestill, I—” Miss Casserley began.

“Any service at all, ma’am. Your devoted servant.” With a
grace that would have startled his acquaintances, Haikestill took Miss
Casserley’s hand and kissed it.

Then he stepped from the drawing room into the hall and
their interview was at an end. Jane Casserley returned to her chair and stared
absently at the emptied teacups.

For the first time in her entire life, Jane found herself in
a position she knew to be incontrovertibly wrong. No matter what logic she
brought to the problem, still she was wrong. That she did not love Matthew
Polry, to whom she was engaged, was no secret. But in her heart there was a
growing suspicion that she was come to regard Another in just such a fashion as
she was supposed to consider Menwin. That, of course, was very wrong. She could
not marry Menwin if she felt as she did about this Other. At the same time, she
could not jilt the man. She understood, as she had by her own insistence been
privy to all the marriage contracts, that Menwin’s salvation from debt rested
upon his grandfather, Lord Mardries. And that Mardries was assisting Menwin
only because Menwin was marrying
her.
And
on top of this consideration there were her mother’s sensibilities to be dealt
with.

At heart Miss Casserley considered her mother a very foolish
woman, but she could not deliberately hurt her without stigmatizing herself as
a Bad Child. Jane Casserley had never willingly assumed a position which could
be termed either bad or, worse, undutiful, and she was perfectly certain that
even if she, herself, could clear her conscience of any guilt, Lady Whelke
would never forgive her should she jilt Menwin. And of course there was no hope
that Menwin would jilt her, for even discounting what he stood to gain from his
grandfather upon their marriage, he was not so light-minded as to leave a woman
waiting at the altar.

Which presented her with a seemingly insuperable problem.
For it had occurred to Jane Casserley quite suddenly in the midst of her
conversation with Quincy Haikestill that she was betrothed to the wrong man.
And she suspicioned that the same idea had occurred to Mr. Haikestill as well.

Fueled by a sense of desperation born of his wish to be free
of Miss Casserley, as much as by a sense of guilt stemming from this
desperation, Lord Menwin called at Whelke House in Hill Street a few days after
the outing to Richmond. His ostensible purpose was to inquire after the health
of his betrothed; his actual purpose, to continue the charade of foppish idiocy
he had begun. Lady Bette Temperer, with whom he had driven back from Richmond,
had made enthusiastic suggestions in regards to this charade, the last of
which, at least, had had some grain of sense to it. Even discounting the fact
that the girl inevitably regarded the whole matter as a very good joke, Bette’s
proposal that Menwin seek to emulate the style of one or the other of Society’s
famed dandies or eccentrics made more sense than anything else she had said. It
was only later, considering the matter, that Menwin realized that most of the
great eccentrics—Petersham, “Poodle” Byng, even the Regent himself—were more
his father’s contemporaries than his own, and that most of the younger men he
knew who could be termed dandies, fribbles, eccentrics or the like, were to
Menwin’s mind too absurd to be regarded as models for anything. Obviously any
peculiarity he adopted had to be consistent with his usual manner, age, and
history.

So Lord Menwin bought a snuffbox.

It was a pretty piece, cerulean enamel on gold, chased with filigree
and closed with a diamond clasp. Lord Menwin did not take snuff, but had been
willing to part with the exorbitant sum demanded by his jeweler, if the
snuffbox would assist in making his point with Miss Casserley.

He found his betrothed, her mother, and her young sister
Miss Phoebe Casserley seated in the upper salon, all three assiduously applying
themselves to needlework. Lady Whelke held her head up upon her several chins
and exerted herself to greet Menwin charmingly. It was one of her greatest
sorrows that Jane, while a very handsome girl, had stubbornly refused to learn
the art of charming a gentleman, an art which Lady Whelke flattered herself she
understood and practiced very successfully.

Miss Casserley and her sister made their curtseys to the
visitor; after a few minutes of conversation Lady Whelke suddenly and without
any subtlety at all recalled an errand which required her presence and Miss
Phoebe’s, and Menwin was left alone with Jane.

They talked, distantly enough, of the weather and the
parties to which both had been invited; Menwin strove to follow Bette Temperer’s
advice and cultivate a drawl, a wearily superior manner, and a vacuous
expression, but he was no practiced dissembler, and the drawl or mannerism
lasted no more than a moment after it was begun. Finally, with the unhappy
suspicion that he was failing in his part, Menwin played his ace and drew the
snuffbox from his pocket.

“I brought it a-purpose to show you, ma’am,” he began
heartily. “Is it not a pretty piece?” He handed the box to Jane, who regarded
the object with a cool bemusement. “Just today purchased it,” Menwin continued,
“for my collection. Gold and enamel work. See the clasp? Charming work, ain’t
it?”

Miss Casserley agreed that the work was very pretty. “But I
do not recall that your lordship took snuff,” she added.

“No more do I. Just collect the boxes, you know. A man must,
after all, have a hobby,” Menwin drawled, seeking to appear as mindless as
possible.

Miss Casserley peered at the snuffbox. “My father would like
to see it, I collect,” she said at length.

“Your father?”

“Yes sir. Did you not know? Papa collects snuffboxes and
lacquer. I shall see if he is in his study.”

Miss Casserley rose with an air of relief and left her
betrothed staring at the object in his palm bemusedly. If her father collected
snuffboxes, then certainly she would be used to the idea and the extravagance;
this was clearly not the way to impress the lady with his unsuitability as a
husband. In fact, none of this playacting seemed to be doing the trick: it
appeared that Miss Casserley was as determined to have him as her mother was to
see her wed to him. Cursing fate and his own stupidity, Menwin waited for the
return of his fiancée and her father.

“Who’s this? Menwin? Didn’t know you were a collector, sir!”
Lord Whelke, usually so taciturn, followed his daughter into the salon, all
smiles and rapacious curiosity. “Janie tells me you’ve a pretty specimen of
enamel work, sir. Would you allow me a look at it?”

Menwin produced the snuffbox again and offered it for Lord
Whelke’s appraisal. Fixing his quizzing glass upon the box Whelke silently
inspected it for some minutes in silence, while Menwin and Miss Casserley
awaited his verdict.

“Very nice, very pretty. Not what I should call top
workmanship, of course, but a very pretty little box. I must show you
my
collection some time: got several very
handsome Louis Quatorze boxes and some beautiful cloisonne. Nice little box,
this,” Whelke said again, rather as if he praised a well-mannered dog or a
pretty child. “What did you pay for it?”

Beginning to feel stupid in truth, Menwin told him,
privately calculating how much of a loss he would take in reselling the box to
the jeweler.

“Shouldn’t have paid more than half that, my boy,” Whelke
chuckled. Behind him Miss Casserley stood, mouth slightly agape. Whether she
was appalled by the sum of money discussed, or by the ease with which her fiancé
had been fleeced, Menwin was not sure. “No, I shouldn’t say you had a bargain
in this little box, but then, we all get taken in sometime, hey? A mistake one
time will save you being a flat the next, hey?” Whelke handed the box back to
Menwin. “Well, I shall leave you two young people to talk. Janie, where has
Lady Whelke got to?”

Miss Casserley admitted distractedly that she did not know.

“Well, no odds, no odds. Good afternoon, Menwin. A pretty
little box, sir, indeed.” Lord Whelke left the room with a frown of pleasant
concentration, which was explained when Miss Casserley suggested he would now
retire to examine his own collection.

Further conversation between Lord Menwin and Miss Casserley
did not continue above five minutes, and when Menwin took his leave it was with
the formality which had distinguished their relationship from the first. He was
given over to the footman, who showed him to the door, and stepped out into
Hill Street ready to find his jeweler and attempt to sell the snuffbox back to
him.

o0o

In the salon Jane Casserley paced back and forth with an
agitation foreign to her normally pacific manner.

“I cannot. I cannot marry him! Good God, that wretched little
snuffbox, bought for a price which would keep a country family—nay, a village!—in
the greatest comfort for a year! How could I have thought that man to be a man
of sense? How could I have thought I could marry him? He is not in the least—”

“Jane dearest,” Lady Whelke’s voice trilled sweetly from the
hallway. “Is Lord Menwin still with you?”