False Colours Read online

  So, indeed, it proved. By the time the first guests arrived on Tuesday my lady was herself again, her final activity having been to drift through the flower-gardens, holding up a parasol to protect her complexion from the sun, and pointing out to the head gardener the blooms she wished to see in her six new containers. The effect was all that she had been sure it would be, for the gardener was expert in flower-arrangement; and since she watched him at work, several times choosing, and handing to him, a spray from the basket held by one of his satellites, and proffering a number of suggestions, she was convinced, by the end of the morning, that she had filled all the containers herself, with only a little assistance from him.

  The first arrivals were the Hon. Cosmo and Mrs Cliffe, and Mr Ambrose Cliffe, their sole surviving offspring. They came in a somewhat antiquated travelling chariot, drawn by one pair of horses: a circumstance which caused my lady to exclaim: ‘Good God, Cosmo, did you hire that shocking coach, or is it your own? I wonder you will be seen in such a Gothic affair!’

  Mr Cliffe, who was a tall, spare man, some few years older than his sister, replied, as he dutifully kissed her cheek, that post-charges were too heavy for his modest purse. ‘We are not all of us as fortunately circumstanced as you, my dear Amabel,’ he said.

  ‘Nonsense!’ responded her ladyship. ‘I daresay your purse is fatter than mine, for you never spend a groat out of the way. It is quite abominable of you to have brought poor Emma here, jumbling and jolting in a horrid old coach which strongly reminds me of the one Grandpapa had, and which always made Grandmama sea-sick! Dear Emma, how much I pity you, and how glad I am to see you – though not looking as stout as one would wish! I shall take you up to your bedchamber immediately, and see you laid down to rest before dinner.’

  Mrs Cliffe, a flaccid woman, with weak blue eyes, and a sickly complexion, responded, with an indeterminate smile, and in a curiously flat voice, that she was pretty well, except for a slight headache.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder at it if every inch of you ached!’ said her ladyship, shepherding her into the house.

  ‘Oh, no, indeed! If only Ambrose may not have caught cold!’

  ‘My dear Emma, how could he possibly have done so on such a day as this?’

  ‘His constitution is so delicate,’ sighed Mrs Cliffe. ‘He was sitting forward, too, and I am persuaded there was a draught. Perhaps if he were to swallow a few drops of camphor – I have some in my dressing-case –’

  ‘If I were you I wouldn’t encourage him to quack himself!’ said Lady Denville frankly.

  ‘No, dear, but your sons are so remarkably healthy, are they not?’ said Mrs Cliffe, looking at her with faint compassion.

  But as her ladyship was not one of those mothers who considered that delicacy of constitution conferred an interesting distinction on her children, the compassion was wasted. She said blithely: ‘Yes, thank goodness! They never ail, though they did have the measles, and the whooping-cough, when they were small. They may have had chicken-pox too, but I can’t remember it.’

  Mrs Cliffe admired her lovely sister-in-law, but she could not help feeling that she must be a very heartless parent to have forgotten such an event in the lives of her sons. Perhaps Cosmo was right, when he said that Amabel cared for nothing but fashionable frivolities. But when Lady Denville presently left her, comfortably reposing on a day-bed, with a shawl cast lightly over her feet, a handkerchief soaked with her ladyship’s very expensive eau-de-cologne in her hand, and the blinds drawn to shut out the sunshine, she decided that no one so kind and so attentive could be heartless, however fashionable she might be.

  Meanwhile, Kit had led his uncle and his cousin into one of the saloons on the ground floor where various liquid refreshments of a fortifying nature awaited them. Although an engrained parsimony prompted Cosmo to stock his own cellar with indifferent wine, his palate was not so vitiated that he did not know good wine from bad. After a sniff, and an appreciative sip, his expression became almost benign, and he said, with a nod at Kit: ‘Ah!’

  ‘A very tolerable sherry, coz!’ said Ambrose, not to be outdone.

  ‘Much you know about it!’ said his father scornfully. ‘Sherry, indeed! This is some of the Mountain-Malaga your uncle laid down – let me see! – ay, it must be thirteen or fourteen years ago! It wants another year or two yet, Denville, to be at its prime, for the longer the Spanish Mountain wines are allowed to mature the better they become. But it is very potable! Alas, what is now being sold as Malaga is a travesty of the Mountain wines I drank in my youth!’ He took another sip, and favoured his nephew with a smile. ‘I collect, my dear boy, that I shall shortly be called upon to offer you my felicitations. Very right! very proper! I live out of the world nowadays, but I understand that Miss Stavely is an unexceptionable female: I look forward to making her acquaintance. Your dear mother tells me that the match has Brumby’s approval, so I must suppose that Miss Stavely’s portion is handsome?’

  ‘I regret, sir, that I can give you no information on that point, since I have no idea what her portion may be,’ said Kit, regarding him with disfavour.

  Cosmo looked shocked, but said, after a moment’s reflection: ‘But it is not to be supposed that your uncle Brumby would favour the match if it were not so! To be sure, you were born to all the comfort of a handsome fortune, Denville, but it must cost a great deal of money – a very great deal of money! – to maintain an establishment such as this, and the house in London, to say nothing of the little place you own in Leicestershire. Then, too, your father, I daresay, made suitable provision for your brother, and that must mean a considerable diminution of your income.’

  ‘As though Denville wasn’t full of juice!’ muttered young Mr Cliffe into his wineglass.

  Happily, Cosmo did not hear this interpolation. He seemed to take almost as much interest in his nephew’s financial situation as in his own; and continued, for as long as it took him to drink three glasses of Malaga, to speculate on the probable yield of my lord’s estates; the number of servants needed to keep so large a mansion in order; the cost of maintaining such extensive flower-gardens; and the extortionate rates demanded for houses in Mayfair. To do him justice, his interest, and his energetic plans for the reduction of his nephew’s expenses, were entirely altruistic: he had nothing to gain; but almost as much as he liked to save money for himself did he like to evolve plans whereby other people’s money could be saved. He was listened to politely by his nephew, and by his son with a mixture of rancour and embarrassment. That young gentleman, as soon as Cosmo had left the room, was so ill-advised as to beg Kit not to pay any heed to him. ‘He always talks as if he was purse-pinched – it’s his way! It’s bad enough when he starts that tug-jaw at home, but when he does it in company it’s beyond anything!’

  Kit was not unsympathetic, for he could readily perceive that to a nineteen-year-old, unsure of himself, yet anxious to be thought all the go, Cosmo must be a severe trial; but he thought his cousin’s speech extremely unbecoming, and somewhat pointedly changed the subject. It was to no avail. Ambrose continued to animadvert bitterly and at length on his father’s shortcomings until Kit lost patience, and told him roundly that his complaints did him no credit. ‘I don’t wonder at it that my uncle should have taken your doings in snuff! Lord, could you find nothing better to do at Oxford than to visit the fancy-houses? As for rustication, let me tell you, cawker, that Eve –’ He caught himself up, and swiftly altered the word he had been about to utter – ‘that even Kit and I weren’t rusticated because we had got into the petticoat line! In our day we left such stuff to the baggagery! As for boasting of having given some wretched ladybird a slip on the shoulder –’

  ‘I didn’t boast of it!’ blurted out Mr Cliffe, blushing fierily. ‘I only said –’

  ‘Oh, yes, you did!’ said Kit grimly. ‘And if I were you I’d keep mum for that, halfling!’

  Much discomposed, Amb