Arabella Read online

  ‘I cannot help feeling,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘that Jemmy would benefit by country air.’

  This suggestion found favour. ‘Nothing could be better for him!’ agreed Arabella. ‘Besides, there is no reason why he should tease you, I am sure! Only how may it be contrived?’

  Much relieved at having so easily cleared this fence, Mr Beaumaris said: ‘The notion did just cross my mind, ma’am, that if I were to take him into Hampshire, where I have estates, no doubt some respectable household might be found for him.’

  ‘One of your tenants! The very thing!’ exclaimed Arabella. ‘Quite a simple cottage, mind, and a sensible woman to take care of him! Only I am afraid she would have to be paid a small sum to do it.’

  Mr Beaumaris, who felt that no sum could be too large for the ridding of his house of one small imp who threatened to disrupt it, bore up nobly under the warning, and said that he had envisaged this possibility, and was prepared to meet it. It then occurred to Arabella that he might reasonably expect so great an heiress as herself to bear the charge of her protégé; and she embarked on a tangled explanation of why she could not at present do so. Mr Beaumaris interrupted her speech when it showed signs of becoming ravelled beyond hope. ‘No, no, Miss Tallant!’ he said. ‘Do not deny me this opportunity to perform a charitable action, I beg of you!’

  So Arabella very kindly refrained from doing so, and bestowed so grateful a smile upon him that he felt himself to have been amply rewarded.

  ‘Are you quite in disgrace with Lady Bridlington?’ he asked quizzically.

  She laughed, but looked a little guilty. ‘I was,’ she owned. ‘But since she has seen that the story has not got about, she has forgiven me. She was persuaded that everyone would be laughing at me. As though I would care for such a thing as that, when I had but done my duty!’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Do you know, I had begun to believe that everyone in town – all the grand people, I mean – were quite heartless, and selfish?’ she confided. ‘I am afraid I was not quite civil to you – indeed, Lady Bridlington assures me that I was shockingly rude! – but then, you see, I had no notion that you were not like all the rest. I beg your pardon!’

  Mr Beaumaris had the grace to acknowledge a twinge of conscience. It led him to say: ‘Miss Tallant, I did it in the hope of pleasing you.’

  Then he wished that he had curbed his tongue, for her confiding air left her, and although she talked easily for a few more minutes he was fully aware that she had withdrawn from him again.

  He was able to retrieve his position a few days later, and took care not to jeopardise it again. When he returned from a visit to his estates he called in Park Street to give Arabella comfortable tidings of Jemmy, whom he had foisted on to a retired servant of his own. She was a little concerned lest the town-bred waif should feel lost and unhappy in the country, but when he informed her that the last news he had of Jemmy, before leaving Hampshire, was that he had let a herd of bullocks out of the field where they were confined, pulled the feathers from the cock’s tail, tried to ride an indignant pig round the yard, and eaten a whole batch of cakes newly baked by his kind hostess, she perceived that Jemmy was made of resilient stuff, and laughed, and said that he would soon settle down, and learn to be a good boy.

  Mr Beaumaris agreed to it, and then played his trump card. He thought Miss Tallant would like to know that he had taken steps to ensure the well-being of Mr Grimsby’s future apprentices.

  Arabella was delighted. ‘You have brought him to justice!’

  ‘Well, not quite that,’ confessed Mr Beaumaris. He saw the disappointed look in her eye, and added hastily: ‘You know, I could not feel that to be appearing in a court of law was just what you would like. Then, too, when it is a question of apprentices one is apt to find oneself confronted with all manner of difficulties in the way of removing boys from their masters. It seemed best, therefore, to drop a word in Sir Nathaniel Conant’s ear. He is the Chief Magistrate, and as I have some acquaintance with him the thing was easy. Mr Grimsby will take care how he disregards a warning from Bow Street, I assure you.’

  Arabella was a little sorry to think that Mr Grimsby was not to be cast into gaol, but being a sensible girl she readily appreciated the force of Mr Beaumaris’s arguments, and told him that she was very much obliged to him. She sat pondering deeply for some moments, while he watched her, wondering what now was in her head. ‘It should be the business of people with interest and fortune to enquire into such things!’ she said suddenly. ‘No one seems to care a button in a great city like this! I have seen such dreadful sights since I came to London – such beggary, and misery, and such countless ragged children who seem to have no parents and no homes! Lady Bridlington does not care to have anything of that nature spoken about, but, oh, I would like so much to be able to help such children as poor Jemmy!’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ he asked coolly.

  Her eyes flew to his; he knew that he had been too blunt: she would not tell him the truth about herself. Nor did she. After a tiny pause, she said: ‘Perhaps, one day, I shall.’

  He wondered whether her godmother had warned her against him, and when she excused herself from dancing with him at the next Assembly was sure of it.

  But the warning came from Lord Bridlington. Mr Beaumaris’s marked attentions to Arabella, including, as they had, so extraordinary a gesture as the adoption of Jemmy, had aroused the wildest hopes in Lady Bridlington’s shallow brain. If any of his previous amatory adventures had led him to perform a comparable deed, she at least had never heard of it. She began to indulge the fancy that his intentions were serious, and had almost written to give Mrs Tallant a hint of it when Lord Bridlington dashed her hopes.

  ‘You would do well, ma’am, to put your young friend a little on her guard with Beaumaris,’ he said weightily.

  ‘My dear Frederick, and so I did, at the outset! But he has become so particular in his attentions, showing such a decided preference for her, and trying to fix his interest with her by every means in his power, that I really begin to think he has formed a lasting attachment! Only fancy if she were to form such a connection, Frederick! I declare, I should feel it as much as if she were my own child! For it will be all due to me, you know!’

  ‘You would be very unwise to put such a notion into the girl’s head, Mama,’ he said, cutting short these rhapsodies. ‘I can tell you this: Beaumaris’s intimates don’t by any means regard his pursuit of Miss Tallant in that light!’

  ‘No?’ she said, in a faltering tone.

  ‘Far otherwise, ma’am! They are saying that it is all pique, because she does not appear to favour him above any other. I must say, I should not have expected her to have shown such good sense! You must know that men of his type, accustomed as he is to being courted and flattered, are put very much on their mettle by a rebuff from any female who has not been so foolish as to pick up the handkerchief they have carelessly tossed towards her. It puts me out of all patience to see anyone so spoiled and caressed! But be that as it may, you should know, Mama, that bets are being laid and taken at White’s against Miss Tallant’s holding out against this siege!’

  ‘How odious men are!’ exclaimed Lady Bridlington indignantly.

  Odious they might be, but if they were laying bets of that nature at the clubs there was nothing for a conscientious chaperon to do but warn her charge once more against lending too credulous an ear to an accomplished flirt. Arabella assured her that she had no intention of doing so.

  ‘No, my dear, very likely not,’ replied her ladyship. ‘But there is no denying that he is a very attractive man: I am conscious of it myself! Such an air! such easy address! But it is of no use to think of that! I am sadly afraid that it is a kind of sport with him to make females fall in love with him.’

  ‘I shall not do so!’ declared Arabella. ‘I like him very well, but, as I told you before, I am not such a go
ose as to be taken-in by him!’

  Lady Bridlington looked at her rather doubtfully. ‘No, my love, I hope not indeed. To be sure, you have so many admirers that we need not consider Mr Beaumaris. I suppose – you will not be offended at my asking, I know! – I suppose no eligible gentleman has proposed to you?’

  Quite a number of gentlemen, eligible and ineligible, had proposed to Arabella, but she shook her head. She might acquit some of her suitors of having designs on her supposed wealth, but two among them at least would never have offered for her hand, she was very sure, had they known her to be penniless; and the courtships of several notorious fortune-hunters made it impossible for her to believe that Lord Bridlington’s well-meaning efforts had in any way scotched that dreadful rumour. She felt her situation to be unhappy indeed. Easter was almost upon them, and there had been plenty of time for her, with the opportunities which had been granted to her, to have fulfilled her Mama’s ambitions. She felt guilty, for it had cost Mama so much money, which she could ill-afford, to send her to London, so that the least a grateful daughter could have done would have been to have repaid her by accepting some respectable offer of marriage. She could not do it. She cared for none of those who had proposed to her, and although that, she supposed, ought not to weigh too heavily in the scales when balanced against the benefits that would accrue to the dear brothers and sisters, she was resolved to accept no offer from anyone ignorant of her true circumstances. Perhaps there was still to come into her life some suitor to whom it would be possible to confess the whole, but he had not yet appeared, and, pending his arrival, it was with relief that Arabella turned to Mr Beaumaris, who, whatever his intentions might be, certainly coveted no fortune.

  Mr Beaumaris offered her every facility to turn to him, but he could scarcely congratulate himself on the outcome. The smallest attempt at gallantry had the effect of transforming her from the confiding child he found so engaging into the society damsel who was ready enough to fence lightly with him, but who showed him quite clearly that she wanted none of his practised love-making. And when Lady Bridlington had repeated much of her son’s warning, not omitting to mention the fact that Mr Beaumaris’s friends knew him to be merely trifling, Mr Beaumaris found Miss Tallant even more elusive. He was reduced to employing an ignoble stratagem, and, having been obliged to visit his estates on a matter of business, sought Arabella out upon his return, and told her that he wished to consult her again about Jemmy’s future. In this manner, he lured her to drive out with him in his curricle. He drove her to Richmond Park, and she raised no objection to this, though he had not previously taken her farther afield than Chelsea. It was a fine, warm afternoon, with the sun so brightly shining that Arabella ventured to wear a very becoming straw hat, and to carry a small sunshade with a very long handle, which she had seen in the Pantheon Bazaar, and had not been able to resist purchasing. She said, as Mr Beaumaris handed her up into the curricle, that it was very kind of him to drive her into the country, since she liked it of all things, and was able to think herself, while in that great park, many miles from town.

  ‘Do you know Richmond Park, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ replied Arabella cheerfully. ‘Lord Fleetwood drove me there last week; and then, you know, the Charnwoods got up a party, and we all went in three barouches. And tomorrow, if it is fine, Sir Geoffrey Morecambe is to take me to see the Florida Gardens.’

  ‘I must count myself fortunate, then, to have found you on a day when you had no other engagement,’ remarked Mr Beaumaris.

  ‘Yes, I am out a great deal,’ agreed Arabella. She unfurled the sunshade, and said: ‘What was it that you wished to tell me about Jemmy, sir?’

  ‘Ah, yes, Jemmy!’ he said. ‘Subject to your consent, Miss Tallant, I am making – in fact, I have made – a trifling change in his upbringing. I fear he will never come to any good under Mrs Buxton’s roof, and still more do I fear that if he remained there he would shortly be the death of her. At least, so she informed me when I went down to Hampshire the day before yesterday.’

  She gave him one of her warm looks. ‘How very kind that was of you! Did you go all that way on that naughty boy’s account?’

  Mr Beaumaris was sorely tempted. He glanced down at his companion, met her innocently enquiring gaze, hesitated, and then said: ‘Well, no, Miss Tallant! I had business there.’

  She laughed. ‘I thought it had been that.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘I am glad I did not lie to you.’

  ‘How can you be so absurd? As though I should wish you to put yourself to so much trouble! What has Jemmy been doing?’

  ‘It would sadden you to know: Mrs Buxton is persuaded that he is possessed of a fiend. The language he employs, too, is not such as she is accustomed to. I regret to say that he has also alienated my keepers, who have quite failed to impress upon him the impropriety of disturbing my birds, or, I may add, of stealing pheasants’ eggs. I cannot imagine what he can want with them.’

  ‘Of course he should be punished for doing so! I daresay he has not enough employment. One must remember that he has been used to work and should be made to do so now. It is not at all good for anyone to be perfectly idle.’

  ‘Very true, ma’am,’ agreed Mr Beaumaris meekly.

  Miss Tallant was not deceived. She looked sharply up at him, and bit her lip, saying after a moment: ‘We are speaking of Jemmy!’

  ‘I hoped we were,’ confessed Mr Beaumaris.

  ‘You are being nonsensical,’ said Arabella, with some severity. ‘What is to be done with him?’

  ‘I found, upon enquiry, that the only person who is inclined to regard him favourably is my head groom, who says that his way with the horses is quite remarkable. It appears that he has been for ever slipping off to the stables, where, for a wonder, he comports himself unexceptionably. Wrexham was so much impressed by finding him – er – hobnobbing with a bay stallion generally thought to be extremely dangerous, that he came up to represent to me the propriety of handing the boy over to him to train. He is a childless man, and since he expressed his willingness to house Jemmy, I thought it better to fall in with his schemes. I hardly think Jemmy’s language will shock him, and I am encouraged to hope, from what I know of Wrexham, that he will know how to keep the boy in order.’

  Arabella approved so heartily of this arrangement, that he took the risk of saying in a melancholy tone: ‘Yes, but if it succeeds, I shall be at a loss to think of a pretext for getting you to drive out with me.’

  ‘Dear me, have I shown myself so reluctant?’ said Arabella, raising her eyebrows. ‘I wonder why you will talk so absurdly, Mr Beaumaris? You may depend upon it that I shall take care to be seen every now and then in your company, for I cannot be so sure of my credit as to run the risk of having it said that the Nonpareil has begun to find me a dead bore!’

  ‘You stand in no such danger, Miss Tallant, believe me.’ He drew in his horses for a sharp bend in the road, and did not speak again until the corner was negotiated. Then he said: ‘I am afraid that you deem me a very worthless creature, ma’am. What am I to do to convince you that I can be perfectly sensible?’

  ‘There is not the least need: I am sure that you can,’ she replied amicably.

  After that she became interested in the countryside, and from that passed to her forthcoming presentation. This event was to take place in the following week, and already her dress had been sent home from the skilful costumier who had altered an old gown of Lady Bridlington’s to the present mode. Miss Tallant did not tell Mr Beaumaris that, naturally, but she did describe its magnificence to him, and found him both sympathetic and knowledgeable. He asked her what jewels she would wear with it, and she replied, in a very grand way: ‘Oh, nothing but diamonds!’ and was promptly ashamed of herself for having said it, although it was perfectly true.

  ‘Your taste is always excellent, Miss Tallant. Nothing could be more displea
sing to a fastidious eye than a profusion of jewelry. I must congratulate you on having exerted so beneficial an influence over your contemporaries.’

  ‘I?’ she gasped, quite startled, and half-suspecting him of quizzing her.

  ‘Certainly. The total lack of ostentation which characterises your appearance is much admired, I assure you, and is beginning to be copied.’

  ‘You cannot be serious!’

  ‘But of course I am serious! Had you not noticed that Miss Accrington has left off that shocking collar of sapphires, and that Miss Kirkmichael no longer draws attention to the limitations of her figure by a profusion of chains, brooches, and necklaces which I should have supposed her to have chosen at random from an over-stocked jewel-box?’

  There was something so irresistibly humorous to Arabella in the thought that her straitened circumstances had been at the root of a new mode that she began to giggle. But she would not tell Mr Beaumaris why she sat chuckling beside him. He did not press her for an explanation, but as they had by this time reached the Park, suggested that she might like to walk on the grass for a little way, while the groom took charge of the curricle. She assented readily, and while they strolled about, Mr Beaumaris told her something of that home of his in Hampshire. The bait failed. Miss Tallant confined her remarks on her own home to descriptions of the Yorkshire scene, and would not be lured into exchanging family reminiscences.

  ‘I collect that your father is still alive, ma’am? You mentioned him, as I remember, on the day that you adopted Jemmy.’

  ‘Did I? Yes, indeed he is alive and I wished for him very much that day, for he is the best man in the world, and he would have known just what was right to be done!’

  ‘I shall hope to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance one day. Does he come to London at all?’

  ‘No, never,’ replied Arabella firmly. She could not imagine that Mr Beaumaris and Papa would have the least pleasure in one another’s acquaintance, thought that the conversation was getting on to dangerous ground, and reverted to her society manner.