Page 10 of Confounding Oaths
“Well, notdirectly,” the ensign admitted. “But the men expect that an officer should be, that is, he should be of a certain sort.”
Miss Caesar nodded. “Refined,” she said.
“Educated,” added Miss Anne.
“Rich?” suggested Lady Mary, with a little less sincerity than her daughters.
Mr. Bygrave smiled, not quite realising it was at his own expense. “Precisely.”
This era being one of strict social convention, there was a limit to the duration any visitation could reach before it was deemed indecorous, and the refined, educated, rich Mr. Bygrave observed that limit scrupulously. He departed in a haze of pleasantries, avowing his intent to call upon the family again when next he was in the vicinity, which Miss Anne expressed the profound hope would mean “tomorrow.”
“Was he not marvellous?” she asked the room in general once Mr. Bygrave was more or less out of earshot. “So genial and dashing and—”
“Well, I found him rather rude,” replied Miss Caesar without much real conviction. “I don’t see why he showed such favour to Anne when there were four other people present.”
“In his defence” the younger Mr. Caesar said, making the subtlest effort he could to turn the conversation in a lighter direction, “I don’t think I’d be entirely to his tastes.”
Unfortunately the remark did not have its intended effect. Miss Caesar remained disconsolate, and Miss Anne took the opportunity to assert her inalienable right to occupy the ensign’s attention.
“It is hardly my fault,” she told her sister, “that gentlemen like me more than they like you. They clearly respond to my sweeter temperament.”
This was decidedly not what they were responding to, and at least half the room knew it.
“It is not your temperament they admire,” Miss Caesar said bluntly. “It is your face. You had the fortune to be born favouring mama. I did not.”
A hush fell across the assembly. Miss Anne, if I am any judge (and as the omniscient narrator of the entire book I am), seemed about to break that hush with some indignant observation to the effect that she could not be blamed for her own prettiness, but her mother did not permit it.
“I do not think,” Lady Mary said in the gentlest tone she could muster, which, despite her upbringing, was actually quite gentle, “that is necessarily a helpful way to—”
“And what would you know of it?” demanded Miss Caesar. “Gentlemen slight me at balls and in my own home. Dresses hang poorly on me. My hair will not take the fashionable style. My complexion is not fair, my features are not delicate, I dance well enough but I never get the chance to show it because nobody will ask me to dance with them.”
Rising from the chair where she had been working on her own needlepoint, Lady Mary went to her daughter’s side. “You are beautiful, Mary. Let nobody tell you otherwise.”
“Not in the eyes of anybody who matters.” Miss Caesar seemed close to weeping. “To the ton I am worse than nothing.”
I have said many times that I am a connoisseur of human sorrow, and that watching mortal kind torment themselves is one of my finest pleasures. But even I found this exchange pitiable. Morepitiable still was its effect on the elder Mr. Caesar, who sat stoic throughout but found himself unable to comfort his child, and for that matter on the younger Mr. Caesar, who found himself similarly affected but with less talent for stoicism.
Through it all, Miss Caesar proved quite inconsolable, and so at the first opportunity she retired to her room. And there, as the sun set, she sat by her window with tears in her eyes, and watched a star fall.
Miss Anne, in the end, got her wish. Which is suitable, for this is, after all, a story about wishes. Mr. Bygrave returned the next day, and the next, and the next after that. Indeed the sequence of events had become practically routine—Nancy would arrive announcing a military gentleman, Mr. Bygrave would appear, demonstrate his absolute besottedness with Miss Anne, and then he would depart with the impeccable manners of the set to which Lady Mary had been born and to which all three of her children, in their several ways, aspired.
Miss Anne was thus somewhat disappointed on the fourth day when Nancy once again announced a military gentleman at the door and—running downstairs in her best dress as she always did—she was met not by the lovely Mr. Bygrave but by somebody altogether shabbier. She should perhaps have expected that something was amiss when the visitor was announced rather before the fashionable hour and did not send a card, but the whole household had grown so lulled into complacency that it was only when the visitor was admitted that they realised the error.
The new guest was ill-kempt and rough-featured, and althoughhe wore regimental red, he wore it with sufferance. When he spoke, it was with a thick Irish brogue that would have been quite unacceptable in fashionable society.
“Begging your pardon,” he said to the elder Mr. Caesar, “I’m Infantryman Callaghan, and I’ve a message for the young master.”
Mr. Caesar, who knew his son’s proclivities and considered them nobody’s business, fixed the visitor with a stern glare. “If you are here for money …”
“Nothing of the sort, sir”—the man seemed genuinely surprised—“I’m here on behalf of the captain, and he doesn’t want no money neither, sir. Just, well, helped your son out of a spot of bother he did, and now that’s landed him in a spot of bother himself.”
“Has Major Bloodworth decided to cause trouble?” The younger Mr. Caesar had been expecting a development like this and dreading it. I, by contrast, had been hoping for it so fervently that had it not happened soon I would have seriously consideredmakingit happen. Not that I do such things, of course. I am only an observer.
Callaghan nodded. “He’s coming for the captain’s commission. Brawling he says he was. Drunk he says he was. And seeing as he did you a turn, the captain thought as maybe you’d speak for him.”
“I’m not a military man,” the younger Mr. Caesar told him with genuine regret. “I’m not sure what influence I would have.”
“And even if hehadany influence,” declared Miss Anne, “perhaps your captain should not have been brawling.”
