The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford Read Free Book Online Page B

the father of Beau Brummel’s fat friend, and he was one of those vacillators you know. “I am his Highness’s dog at Kew, pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” she added, inconsequently. ‘Oh, how sweet!’
    Uncle Matthew shot a look of cruel triumph at Aunt Emily. I saw that I had let down the side and began to cry, inspiring Uncle Matthew to fresh bouts of beastliness.
    ‘It’s a lucky thing that Fanny will have
£
15,000 a year of her own,’ he said, ‘not to speak of any settlements the Bolter may have picked up in the course of her career. She’ll get a husband all right, even if she does talk about lunch, and
en
velope, and put the milk in first. I’m not afraid of that, I only say she’ll drive the poor devil to drink when she has hooked him.’
    Aunt Emily gave Uncle Matthew a furious frown. She had always tried to conceal from me the fact that I was an heiress, and, indeed, I was one only until such time as my father, hale and hearty and in the prime of life, should marry somebody of an age to bear children. It so happened that, like the Hanoverian family, he cared for women only when they were over forty; after my mother had left him he had embarked upon a succession of middle-aged wives whom even the miracles of modern science were unable to render fruitful. It was also believed, wrongly, by the grown-ups that we children were ignorant of the fact that my mamma was called the Bolter.
    ‘All this,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘is quite beside the point. Fanny may possibly, in the far future, have a little money of her own(though it is ludicrous to talk of
£
15,000). Whether she does, or does not, the man she marries may be able to support her – on the other hand, the modern world being what it is, she may have to earn her own living. In any case she will be a more mature, a happier, a more interested and interesting person if she –’
    ‘If she knows that George III was a king and went mad.’
    All the same, my aunt was right, and I knew it and she knew it. The Radlett children read enormously by fits and starts in the library at Alconleigh, a good representative nineteenth-century library, which had been made by their grandfather, a most cultivated man. But, while they picked up a great deal of heterogeneous information, and gilded it with their own originality, while they bridged gulfs of ignorance with their charm and high spirits, they never acquired any habit of concentration, they were incapable of solid hard work. One result, in later life, was that they could not stand boredom. Storms and difficulties left them unmoved, but day after day of ordinary existence produced an unbearable torture of ennui, because they completely lacked any form of mental discipline.
    As we trailed out of the dining-room after dinner, we heard Captain Warbeck say:
    ‘No port, no, thank you. Such a delicious drink, but I must refuse. It’s the acid from port that makes one so delicate now.’
    ‘Ah – you’ve been a great port drinker, have you?’ said Uncle Matthew.
    ‘Oh, not me, I’ve never touched it. My ancestors –’
    Presently, when they joined us in the drawing-room, Aunt Sadie said: ‘The children know the news now.’
    ‘I suppose they think it’s a great joke,’ said Davey Warbeck, ‘old people like us being married.’
    ‘Oh, no, of course not,’ we said, politely, blushing.
    ‘He’s an extraordinary fella,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘knows everything. He says those Charles II sugar casters are only a Georgian imitation of Charles II, just fancy, not valuable at all. To-morrow we’ll go round the house and I’ll show you all our things and you can tell us what’s what. Quite useful to have a fella like you in the family, I must say.’
    ‘That will be very nice,’ said Davey, faintly, ‘and now I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed. Yes, please, early morning tea – so necessary to replace the evaporation of the night’
    He shook hands with us all, and hurried from the