The Grand Sophy Read online

  ‘Only Eugenia’s strong sense of duty,’ he said stiffly, ‘and, I may add, Mama, her earnest desire to spare you anxiety, induced her to undertake a task which she felt to be excessively unpleasant.’

  ‘It is very kind of her, I am sure,’ said his mother, in a depressed voice.

  ‘Where is my cousin?’ he asked abruptly.

  She brightened, for to this question she was able to return an unexceptionable answer. ‘She has gone for a drive in the barouche with Cecilia and your brother.’

  ‘Well, that should be harmless enough,’ he said.

  He would have been less satisfied on this point had he known that, having taken up Mr Fawnhope, whom they encountered in Bond Street, the occupants of the barouche were at that moment in Longacre, critically inspecting sporting vehicles. There were a great many of these, together with almost every variety of carriage, on view at the warehouse to which Hubert had conducted his cousin, and although Sophy remained firm in her preference for a phaeton, Cecilia was much taken with a caned whiskey, and Hubert, having fallen in love with a curricle, forcibly urged his cousin to buy it. Mr Fawnhope, appealed to for his opinion, was found to be missing, and was presently discovered seated in rapt contemplation of a state berlin, which looked rather like a very large breakfast-cup, poised upon elongated springs. It was covered with a domed roof, bore a great deal of gilding, and had a coachman’s seat, perched over the front wheels which was covered in blue velvet with a gold fringe. ‘Cinderella!’ said Mr Fawnhope simply.

  The manager of the warehouse said that he did not think the berlin – which he kept for show purposes – was quite what the lady was looking for.

  ‘A coach for a princess,’ said Mr Fawnhope, unheeding. ‘This, Cecilia, is what you must drive in. You shall have six white horses to draw it, with plumes on their heads, and blue harness.’

  Cecilia had no fault to find with this programme, but reminded him that they had come to help Sophy to choose a sporting carriage. He allowed himself to be dragged away from the berlin, but when asked to cast his vote between the curricle and the phaeton, would only murmur: ‘What can little T.O. do? Why, drive a phaeton and two! Can little T.O. do no more? Yes, drive a phaeton and four!’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Hubert impatiently, ‘but my cousin ain’t Tommy Onslow, and for my part I think she will do better with this curricle!’

  ‘You cannot scan the lines, yet they have a great deal of merit,’ said Mr Fawnhope. ‘How beautiful is the curricle! How swift! How splendid! Yet Apollo chose a phaeton. These carriages bewilder me: let us go away!’

  ‘Who is Tommy Onslow? Does he indeed drive a phaeton and four?’ asked Sophy, her eyes kindling. ‘Now, that would be something indeed! What a bore that I have just bought a pair! I could never match them, I fear.’

  ‘You could borrow Charles’s grays,’ suggested Hubert, grinning wickedly. ‘By Jupiter, what a kick-up there would be!’

  Sophy laughed, but shook her head. ‘No, it would be an infamous thing to do! I shall purchase that phaeton: I have quite made up my mind.’

  The manager looked startled, for the carriage she pointed at was not the phaeton he had supposed she would buy – an elegant vehicle, perfectly suited to a lady – but a high-perch model, with huge hind-wheels, and the body, which was hung directly over the front-axle, fully five feet from the ground. However, it was not his business to dissuade a customer from making an expensive purchase, so he bowed, and kept his inevitable reflections to himself.

  Hubert, less tactful, said: ‘I say, Sophy, it really ain’t a lady’s carriage! I only hope you may not overturn it round the first corner!’

  ‘Not I!’

  ‘Cecilia,’ suddenly pronounced Mr Fawnhope, who had been studying the phaeton intently, ‘must never ride in that vehicle!’

  He spoke with such unaccustomed decision that everyone looked at him in surprise, and Cecilia turned quite pink with gratification at his solicitude.

  ‘I assure you, I shan’t overturn it,’ said Sophy.

  ‘Every feeling would be outraged by the sight of so exquisite a creature in such a turn-out as that!’ pursued Mr Fawnhope. ‘Its proportions are absurd! It was, moreover, built for excessive speed, and should be driven, if driven it must be, by some down-the-road man with fifteen capes and a spotted neck-cloth. It is not for Cecilia!’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Sophy. ‘I thought you were afraid I might overturn her in it!’

  ‘I am afraid of that,’ replied Mr Fawnhope. ‘The very thought of so ungraceful a happening must offend! It does offend! It intrudes its grossness upon the sensibilities; it blurs my vision of a porcelain nymph! Let us immediately leave this place!’

  Cecilia, wavering between pleasure at hearing herself likened to a porcelain nymph, and affront at having her safety so little regarded, merely said that they could not leave until Sophy had concluded her purchase; but Sophy, a good deal amused, suggested that she should withdraw with her swain to await her in the barouche.

  ‘Y’know,’ Hubert said confidentially, when the pair had departed, ‘I don’t know that I blame Charles for not being able to stomach that fellow! He is quite paltry!’

  Within three days of this transaction, Mr Rivenhall, exercising his grays in the Park, paused by the Riding House to take up his friend, Mr Wychbold, sauntering along in all the glory of pale yellow pantaloons, shining Hessians, and a coat of extravagant cut and delicate hue. ‘Good God!’ he ejaculated. ‘What a devilish sight! Get up, Cyprian, and stop ogling all the females! Where have you been hiding yourself this age?’

  Mr Wychbold mounted into the curricle, disposing his shapely limbs with rare grace, and replied, with a sigh: ‘The call of duty, dear boy! Visiting the ancestral home! I do what I may with lavender-water, but the aroma of the stables and cow-byres is hard to overcome. Charles, much as I love you if I had seen that neckcloth before I consented to let you drive me round the Park – !’

  ‘Don’t waste that stuff on me!’ recommended his friend. ‘What’s wrong with your chestnuts?’

  Mr Wychbold, one of the shining lights of the Four-Horse Club, sighed mournfully. ‘Dead lame! No, not both, but one, which is quite as bad. Would you believe it? I let my sister drive them! Take it as a maxim, Charles, that no woman is to be trusted to handle the ribbons!’

  ‘You haven’t yet met my cousin,’ replied Mr Rivenhall, with a twisted smile.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ said Mr Wychbold calmly. ‘I met her at the Gala night at Almack’s, which, dear boy, you might have known, had you not absented yourself from that gathering.’

  ‘Oh, you did, did you? I have no turn for that form of insipidity.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have done you any good if you had,’ said Mr Wychbold. ‘There was no getting near your cousin; at least, there wouldn’t have been for you. I managed it, but I have a great deal of address. Danced the boulanger with her. Devilish fine girl!’

  ‘Well, it’s time you were thinking of getting married: offer for her! I shall be much obliged to you.’

  ‘Almost anything else for your sake, dear boy, but I ain’t a marrying man!’ said Mr Wychbold firmly.

  ‘I wasn’t serious. To be honest with you, if you took such a notion into your head I should do my utmost to dissuade you. She is the most tiresome girl I ever hope to meet. The only thing I know to her credit is that she can drive to an inch. She had the damned impertinence to steal my curricle when my back was turned for five minutes.’

  ‘She drove these grays?’ demanded Mr Wychbold.

  ‘She did. Well up to their bits, too. All to force me into buying a phaeton-and-pair for her to lionize in! I shan’t do it, but I should rather like to see how she would handle such a turn-out.’

  ‘No wish to raise false hopes,’ said Mr Wychbold, who had been watching the approach of a dashing perch-phaeton, ‘but can’t help thinking that that’s just what you’re about to do, dear fellow! Though why your cousin should be driving Manningtree’s bays beats me!’