The Reluctant Widow Read online

  Elinor was in an agony of apprehension, but no sound of stirring came from the guest’s chamber.

  ‘Well, it queers me why anyone should take and do such a tedious silly thing!’ said Barrow, staring in surprise at the clothes-line. ‘A hem set-out it’ll be if Mr Francis comes to hear tell of it!’

  Barrow looked from one to the other with such an expression of astonishment on his face that Nicky marched him back to his own wing, favouring him on the way with an explanation which caused him to say with withering scorn: ‘Mistress hasn’t got no call to suspicion the likes of Mr Francis! As like as ninepence to nothing, he is!’

  ‘What did you say to Barrow?’ demanded Elinor, upon Nicky’s return.

  He grinned at her. ‘I’ll not tell you. You would be ready to eat me!’

  ‘Hateful boy! What was it?’

  ‘No, it would make you blush.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped indignantly. ‘Odious!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what else I could have told him!’

  ‘Well, never mind!’ She sank her voice to an even lower note, and pointed towards Francis Cheviot’s door. ‘He cannot have slept through such a noise! Why has he not come out, or called to us to know what is the matter?’

  ‘Hiding under his bed be like,’ responded Nicky caustically.

  ‘He is bound to remark upon it!’

  ‘I’ll fob him off,’ Nicky promised.

  In spite of this assurance, it was in the expectation of suffering a considerable degree of embarrassment that the widow descended presently to the breakfast-parlour. But her uninvited guest put in no appearance, and Barrow explained, with a sniff of disapproval, that Crawley had carried up a tray to his bedchamber. Mr Cheviot, had said Crawley loftily, never left his room until noon.

  ‘Oh, doesn’t he, by Jove?’ exclaimed Nicky. ‘Well, he will, then, for the funeral is at noon!’

  He lost no time, after he had consumed his usual hearty breakfast, in going upstairs to break these tidings to Francis. But Francis, who was seated before the dressing-table, wrapped in an exotic robe, and having his nails carefully pared by his valet, remained annoyingly unruffled.

  ‘Yes, dear boy, so I was informed, and you see how early I am up! I grudge no exertion, but how I shall contrive to be dressed in time I know not. After ten already, and I dare say we must set out quite by eleven! Crawley, we must bear in mind that should the Fates be against me, which I do trust, however, will not be found to be the case. I might be obliged to spend an hour over the arrangement of my neckcloth, and that would make me late, you know. Perhaps I should make the first attempts at once.’

  Nicky stared at the pile of black cravats, each at least a foot wide, which lay on the table. ‘Good God, you cannot need the half of such a stock!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you mean to stay here a month?’

  Francis eyed the pile anxiously. ‘Do you think I shall not?’ he said. ‘I do hope you may be right, dear Nicholas, but it is by no means unknown for me to ruin a score before I have achieved just the correct folds. It would be so disrespectful to poor Eustace if I were to attend his obsequies in a clumsily tied cravat! You will have to leave me, dear boy; I find it so agitating to be watched while I am engaged on the most crucial part of my toilet. But do tell me, before you go, why was I so rudely awakened this morning?’

  ‘Oh, so you did not sleep through the commotion?’ said Nicky.

  ‘My dear Nicholas, I am neither deaf nor a heavy sleeper. One would have supposed a regiment of solders to have stormed the house!’

  ‘I wonder you should not have come out of your room to discover the cause!’

  Francis turned a shocked gaze upon him. ‘Come out of my room before I had been shaved?’ he said. ‘Dear boy, are you mad?’

  ‘Oh, well!’ Nicky said impatiently. ‘It was nothing, after all! I could not open my door: it was stuck, you know: all the doors in this house are so warped there was never anything like it! Barrow was obliged to thrust his shoulder against it, for I thought if I tugged at it the handle would very likely come off.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Francis mildly. ‘What a very violent young man you are, dear Nicholas!’

  Nicky went off to find Elinor, and to tell her that there was no making anything of Francis.

  ‘Do you think he can have tried to open his own door?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Lord, I don’t know, but I should not be surprised! He is the smokiest fellow, and lies as fast as a dog would trot, I dare say! But only wait till I tell John of the cravats he has brought with him! John cannot bear a dandy!’

  Apparently the cravats were not that day recalcitrant, for punctually at eleven o’clock Francis descended the stairs, dressed, with the exception of a gray waistcoat, in funeral black, and followed by Crawley, carrying his fur-lined cloak, gloves, hat, and ebony cane. His chaise stood at the door, and it had been arranged that he should take Nicky up with him as far as Wisborough Green, where funeral carriages were to await them.

  Francis greeted his hostess with all his usual urbanity, assuring her that but for such trifling disagreeables as a mouse gnawing in the wainscoting, Bouncer’s predilection for scratching himself on the landing just outside his door, the matutinal habits of apparently a hundred cockerels, and Nicky’s unfortunate contretemps with his bedroom door, he had passed an excellent night. The only thing that threatened, in fact, to ruffle his placidity was an ineradicable fear that the wind was backing round to the north-east, in which case, he apologetically warned Elinor, it would be impossible for him to leave Highnoons that day, starting his journey, as he must, at an advanced hour of the afternoon and without the hope of reaching London before night. Her civility obliged her to say what was proper, but her heart sank, and when Francis had been tenderly packed into the chaise, and the door shut upon him and his impatient companion, she went off to ask the gardener what he thought of the weather. He said there was a nasty cold wind a-blowing up. She went dejectedly back to the house, to give Mrs Barrow due warning, but that competent woman was so delighted to have two girls from the village at her beck and call, not to mention the gardener’s wife, whom she had been briskly bullying all the morning, that she merely asked whether her mistress preferred her to make a pheasant-pie, or to serve up a couple of broiled fowls and mushrooms for dinner.

  The funeral, meanwhile, passed off as smoothly as could be desired, Francis occupying the first carriage in solitary state, the three Carlyon brothers following in the second; while a scattering of persons of consequence who lived in the neighbourhood, and who had put in an appearance more from a desire to gratify Carlyon than from any regard for the deceased, made the cortège respectable. The tail was brought up by a few humbler personages, chief amongst whom was the doctor.

  A cold collation having been prepared at the Hall for the chief mourners, all the more genteel personages repaired there after the interment, when Carlyon had the opportunity to observe that although Louis De Castres was absent, there were present two gentlemen who had come down from London at Francis’s behest, and were almost as beautifully arrayed as he was himself. They excused themselves early, on the score of having the drive back to London to accomplish; and the local gentry, finding an awkwardness in the occasion, and perhaps oppressed by the demeanour of Mr Cheviot, who seemed crushed by woe, soon followed their example, the last to leave being Sir Matthew Kendal, who shook Carlyon by the hand, saying gruffly that all was well that had ended well. Feeling that the sentiments underlying this remark might have been more felicitously expressed, he coloured up to roots of his grizzled hair, and sought to cover his confusion by turning to issue a ferocious warning to Nicky to keep that damned dog of his off his preserves if he did not want to see him shot, and hung up as a warning to other such marauders. After this threat, which he palliated by a playful punch in his young friend’s ribs, he took himself off, and John was at last at liberty to give vent to the annoyance wh