Snowdrift and Other Stories Read online

  ‘What roses?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘Yours. The ones she carried!’

  ‘They were not mine!’ Jack said, his eyes kindling. ‘By Jupiter, Tom, I have a mind to call you out for thinking I would serve you such a backhanded turn! It passes everything, so it does!’

  ‘Not yours?’ ejaculated Tom.

  Sir Gavin coughed deprecatingly. ‘If you refer to the roses Miss Treen carried last night, they were mine!’ They stared at him. ‘I hope you will not both call me out,’ he said, ‘but the fact is that Miss Treen has done me the honour to become my affianced wife. Our betrothal was announced at supper last night.’

  This was shocking news. Each unsuccessful suitor tried to realize that his life was blighted, and failed. Tom said, with dignity: ‘You might have told us so last night, sir!’

  ‘I might, of course, but I had the oddest notion that it wouldn’t have been of the least avail,’ confessed Sir Gavin.

  They thought this over. A reluctant grin overset Tom’s dignity. ‘Well, perhaps not,’ he conceded.

  Jack executed his best bow. ‘We must beg leave to wish you happy, sir,’ he said nobly.

  ‘I am very much obliged to you,’ responded Sir Gavin, with great civility.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Tom, blushing, ‘you think we have made great cakes of ourselves, sir?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Sir Gavin. ‘You have conducted yourselves with perfect propriety, and I am happy to have assisted in an affair of honour so creditable to both parties. Let us repair to the inn beyond this charming coppice, and partake of breakfast! I bespoke it half an hour ago, and I am sure it will by now be awaiting us. Besides, I do not care to keep my horses standing any longer.’

  ‘I should think not indeed!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘I say, sir, what a bang-up set-out it is! Real blood-and-bone!’

  ‘I am so glad you like them,’ said Sir Gavin. ‘Do, pray, try their paces as far as to the Rising Sun! If you will allow me, I will drive the gig.’

  It was rather too much to expect two budding whips to nurse their broken hearts when offered the chance of driving a match-pair of thoroughbreds. Briefly but fervently thanking Sir Gavin, Tom and Jack hurried off to the curricle, arguing with some heat on which of them was first to handle the ribbons.

  Sir Gavin, devoutly trusting that his confidence in their ability to cope with a high-couraged pair had not been misplaced, took his fellow-second by the arm, and pushed him gently towards the humbler gig.

  A Clandestine Affair

  MISS TRESILIAN SURVEYED the young couple before her with perturbation in her usually humorous grey eyes. Not that there was anything in the picture presented by Mr Rosely and Miss Lucy Tresilian to dismay the most captious of critics, for a better-looking pair would have been hard to find: the lady was a glowing brunette, the gentleman a fair youth with golden locks, classic features, and a graceful figure. He was dressed very correctly for a morning visit in a blue coat, with fawn pantaloons and Hessian boots; and if the folds of his neckcloth did not aspire to dandified heights it was easy to see that he had arranged these to the best of his ability. Mr Rosely, in fact, was doing justice to a momentous occasion: he had come to make an offer for the hand of Miss Tresilian’s niece.

  He said, with a shy smile: ‘It can’t, I fancy, come as a surprise to you, ma’am! You have been so kind that I’m persuaded – that is, I have ventured to indulge the hope that you wouldn’t be displeased.’

  No, it had not come as a surprise to Miss Tresilian. It was nearly a year since Mr Rosely had been introduced to Lucy in the Lower Rooms, at Bath; but although Lucy did not want for admirers, and it was scarcely to be supposed that anyone so handsomely endowed in face and fortune as Mr Rosely had not had a great many caps set at him, neither had swerved in allegiance since that date. Nor could Miss Tresilian deny that she had favoured the match: it had seemed so eminently suitable!

  ‘Of course she’s not displeased!’ said Lucy. ‘You knew from the start how it was, didn’t you, Aunt Elinor?’

  ‘Yes,’ acknowledged Miss Tresilian. ‘But I didn’t know until I brought you to London, love, that the connection was disliked by Arthur’s family.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ he said quickly. ‘Only by Iver! My sister likes it excessively!’

  ‘And Lord Iver is only Arthur’s cousin,’ said Lucy. ‘Removed, too! Scarcely a relation at all!’

  He demurred at this, saying diffidently: ‘Well, it’s more than that, for he has been my guardian, you know. I wouldn’t for the world displease him, only that in this case he fancies we are both of us too young – or some such nonsense! He will come about! Particularly if I am able to tell him you don’t frown on the marriage, ma’am!’

  ‘No, I don’t frown upon it,’ said Miss Tresilian, ‘but I agree with Lord Iver that you are very young. This is Lucy’s first season, you know, and –’

  ‘How can you, aunt?’ protested her niece. ‘I may not have been regularly presented until last month, but you know you would have brought me to town a year ago if Aunt Clara hadn’t insisted she was too unwell to be left alone! Why, I am nineteen, and have been out in Bath above a twelve-month!’

  ‘Yes, my dear, but I never knew until just the other day how awkwardly Arthur is situated. Or even that he had a guardian, much less –’

  ‘No, no, ma’am!’ interrupted Mr Rosely anxiously. ‘Iver isn’t my guardian now that I am of age, but only my trustee! He has no power to prevent my marriage – no authority over me at all!’

  ‘It appears to me that if he holds your purse-strings until you are five-and-twenty he has a great deal of power over you,’ responded Miss Tresilian dryly.

  He looked troubled, but said: ‘He wouldn’t – I know he wouldn’t! People think him tyrannical, but he has never been so to me! The kindest of guardians – and he must have wished me at the devil, for I was only eight when my father died, and he not much above five-and-twenty. I wonder he didn’t leave me to be reared in my own house, for I was used to follow him about like a tanthony-pig!’

  Miss Tresilian refrained from comment. It seemed to her unlikely that Mr Rosely had ever offered Lord Iver the least pretext for a display of tyranny, for while she could not but acknowledge the sweetness of his disposition she did not feel that resolution was amongst his many virtues. No hint of a strong will was to be detected in his delicate countenance, none of the determination that characterized Lucy.

  ‘And even if he doesn’t consent, we shall come off all right,’ said Lucy cheerfully. ‘After all, I have quite a genteel fortune of my own, and we can subsist on that, until your stupid Trust comes to an end.’

  But at this Miss Tresilian intervened, saying firmly that neither she nor Lucy’s papa could countenance an engagement entered into without Lord Iver’s sanction. Lucy, always outspoken, said: ‘Dearest, you know that’s fudge! All Papa would say is that you must settle it as you think best!’

  Miss Tresilian laughed, but said: ‘Well, I can’t settle it, precisely, but I can and must forbid an engagement at this present. I am very sorry for you both, but unless Lord Iver should change his mind I am afraid there is nothing for it but to wait until Arthur’s fortune passes into his own hands.’

  It was not to be expected that two young persons deep in love could view with anything but dismay the prospect of waiting more than three years before becoming engaged. Mr Rosely took a dejected leave of the ladies, and went away, saying that he was sure he must be able to prevail upon Iver to relent; and Lucy at once set about the task of convincing her aunt that her attachment to her Arthur was no girlish fancy to be speedily forgotten.

  It was unnecessary. Although she had been virtually in her aunt’s charge since her childhood only fifteen years separated them, and the bonds of affection between them were strong. Miss Tresilian knew that her niece was neither volatile nor impressionable. She had been much courted in Bath, but none of her suitors, before the arrival on the scene of Mr Rosely, had done so much as turn her head. But she had fallen in lov