The Nonesuch Page 16

  After disposing of several lemon-flavoured ices, they left the pastrycook’s, and began to retrace their steps to the King’s Arms. The street was a busy one, and there was no room to walk four abreast, so the two girls went ahead, amicably discussing the latest modes, and Lindeth civilly offered his arm to Miss Trent. A picture hanging in the window of a print-shop caught his eye; he recognized the subject, which was the Dripping Well, and at once drew Miss Trent’s attention to it. It was while they were studying it that the harmony of the day was suddenly and rudely shattered. Some kind of a stir was taking place further up the street; there were shouts of: ‘Stop thief !’ and as they looked quickly round a ragged urchin came into view, darting towards them with an apple clutched in his hand, and an expression of hunted terror in his starting eyes. He was dodging between the passers-by, and had almost reached Patience and Tiffany when a middle-aged citizen thrust his walking-cane between his legs to arrest his progress. A crashing fall was the inevitable result: the child, swerving to avoid the over-zealous citizen, pitched forward, not on the flagway but on to the cobbled street. A cry of protest had burst from Patience; parcels, parasol, and purse were flung away; and under Miss Trent’s horrified eyes she sprang into the road, snatching the urchin almost from under the hooves of a high-stepping chestnut harnessed to a tilbury, which was being driven at a spanking pace along the street. For a dreadful moment it seemed as if she must be trampled upon; then the chestnut reared up, snorting, and was miraculously swung to one side; and the driver of the tilbury, a natty young gentleman clad in raiment which, almost as clearly as his handling of the reins, proclaimed him to be a top-sawyer, added his voice to the general hubbub in a furious expletive. The next instant Lindeth had brushed past Miss Trent, racing forward to the rescue, and unceremoniously pushing Tiffany out of the way as he bent over Patience.

  ‘Good God, Miss Chartley – ! Are you hurt?’

  She had dragged rather than lifted the urchin out of danger, and was on her knees, supporting him in her arms, and gazing down in horror at his face, down which blood was streaming from a gash on the forehead, but she glanced up, saying: ‘Oh, no, no! But this poor little boy – ! Something to stop the bleeding – a handkerchief – anything! – Oh, pray, one of you – !’

  ‘Here, take mine!’ Lindeth said, thrusting it into her hand. ‘Poor little devil! Knocked himself out!’ He looked up at the driver of the tilbury, and said curtly: ‘I’m sorry, sir, and must thank you for acting so promptly. I trust your horse has suffered no injury.’

  By this time the natty gentleman had realized that the female kneeling beside the gutter was a young and very pretty girl of obviously gentle birth. Blushing hotly, he stammered: ‘No, no, not the least in the world! Beg you’ll accept my apologies, ma’am! Agitation of the moment – forgot myself ! By Jove, though! You might have been killed! Bravest thing I ever saw in my life! By Jove, it was!’

  She looked up briefly, to say: ‘Oh, no! I am so much obliged to you! I don’t wonder you were angry – but, you see, I had to do it!’

  Miss Trent, who had succeeded in pushing her way through the fast-gathering crowd, bent over her, asking anxiously: ‘How badly is he hurt, my dear?’

  ‘I don’t know. His head struck the cobbles. I must take him to the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, for I fear this cut must be stitched,’ said Miss Trent, folding her own handkerchief into a neat pad, and pressing it over the wound. ‘Do you hold his head so that I can tie Lord Lindeth’s handkerchief round it!’

  At this point, a fresh voice intruded upon them. The owner of the stolen apple, a stout and breathless shopkeeper, had arrived on the scene, and was loudly announcing his intention of summoning a constable to take the young varmint in charge. He was in a blustering rage, and somewhat roughly told Patience that the gaol was the place for hedge-birds, not the hospital. She said imploringly: ‘Pray don’t give him up to the constable! It was very wrong of him to steal from you, but you see what a little boy he is, and how wretched! And he’s badly hurt, too.’

  ‘Not he!’ retorted the shopkeeper. ‘Serve him right if he’d broke his neck! It’s a shame and a scandal the way him and his like hang about waiting for the chance to prig something! I’ll have this young thief made an example of, by God I will!’

  ‘Here, you rascal, that’s no way to speak to a lady!’ exclaimed the gentleman in the tilbury indignantly. ‘What’s more I’ll go bail the brat ain’t half as big a thief as you are! I know you shopkeepers! All the same: selling farthing-dips for a bull’s eye apiece!’

  Not unnaturally, the effect of this intervention was far from happy. The injured tradesman appealed to the onlookers for support, and although one or two persons recommended him to pardon the thief, several others ranged themselves on his side. The air was rent with argument; but Lindeth, who had never before found himself in the centre of so embarrassing a scene, collected his wits and his dignity, and in a voice which held a remarkable degree of calm authority bade the shopkeeper declare the worth of the stolen fruit.

  The man seemed at first to be determined on revenge, but after some more argument, in which some six or seven members of the crowd took part, he consented to accept the coin held out to him, and withdrew, accompanied by several of his supporters. The crowd now began to disperse; the small thief, coming round from his swoon, started to cry for his home and his Mammy; and while Patience soothed him, assuring him that she would take him to his home directly, and that no one should lock him up in prison, or give him up to the beadle (an official of whom he seemed to stand in terror), Miss Trent, Lord Lindeth, and the gentleman in sporting toggery, who had descended from the tilbury to join in the discussion, held a hurried council.

  Throughout this animated scene Tiffany had been standing neglected and alone, rigid with mortification, jostled by such low-bred persons in the crowd as wished to obtain a closer view of the group in the gutter; pushed out of the way by Lord Lindeth; sharply adjured by Miss Trent not to stand like a stock, but to pick up Patience’s belongings; and left without chaperonage or male protection by those who should have made her comfort and safety their first concern. Even the sporting gentleman in the tilbury had paid her no heed! Patience – Patience – ! – kneeling in the road, with her dress stained with blood, and a ragged and disgusting urchin in her arms, was the heroine of this most revolting piece, while she, the Beautiful Miss Wield, was left to hold as best she might two parasols, two purses, and a load of parcels.

  She listened in seething fury to the plans that were being formulated. The sporting gentleman – he said that his name was Baldock, and that he begged to be allowed to place himself at their disposal – was offering to drive Patience and the dirty little boy to the infirmary; Lindeth was assuring her that he would himself convey the pair of them to the boy’s home (no doubt a hovel in the back-slums of the town!), and Miss Trent was promising to proceed on foot to the infirmary immediately, there to render Patience all the aid and protection of which she was capable. Not one of them had a thought to spare for her ! She was tired; she wanted to go home; out of sheer kindness of heart she had agreed to allow Patience (whom she had never liked) to accompany her to Leeds; she had submitted, without a word of protest, to being dragged all over the town in search of some stupid pink satin; her own companion – hired to take care of her! – instead of escorting her away from this degrading scene was merely concerned with Patience’s welfare; and now she and Lindeth, without the slightest reference to her, were talking of driving that nasty child to his home in her carriage.

  ‘I think I am going to faint!’ she announced, in a penetrating voice which lent no colour to this statement.

  Lindeth, who was lifting the boy out of Patience’s arms, paid no heed; Miss Trent, assisting Patience to her feet, just glanced at her, and said: ‘I can’t attend to you now, Tiffany!’ and Mr Baldock, with no more than a cursory look at her, said: ‘Don’t see why you should faint
, ma’am! Shouldn’t have wondered at it if this lady had, but not she! Didn’t quite catch your name, ma’am, but shall take leave to say you’re a regular trump! No – shouldn’t have said that! Not the thing to say to a female! Beg your pardon: never been much of a lady’s man! What I meant was, you’re a – you’re a –’

  ‘Heroine!’ supplied Lindeth, laughing.

  ‘Ay, so she is! A dashed heroine!’

  ‘Oh, pray – !’ Patience protested. ‘I’m very much obliged to you, but indeed I’m nothing of the sort! If you will be so very good as to drive me to the infirmary, let us go immediately, if you please! He is still bleeding, and I’m afraid he may have injured his leg as well. You can see how it is swelling, and he cries if you touch it!’ She looked round. ‘I don’t know what became of my parcels, and my – Oh, Tiffany, you have them all! Thank you! I am so sorry – so disagreeable for you!’

  ‘Oh, pray don’t mention it!’ said Tiffany, quivering with fury. ‘I like picking up parcels and parasols for other people! I like being jostled by vulgar persons! Pray don’t consider me at all! Or ask my leave to use my carriage for that odious, wicked boy!’

  ‘Well, of all the shrews!’ gasped Mr Baldock.

  Lindeth, who had been staring at Tiffany, a queer look in his eyes, and his lips rather tightly compressed, turned from her, and said quietly: ‘Hand Miss Chartley into your tilbury, will you? I’ll give the boy to her then, and we can be off.’

  ‘Yes, but it will be the deuce of a squeeze,’ responded Mr Baldock doubtfully.

  ‘No, it won’t: I’m going to get up behind.’ He waited until Patience had climbed into the carriage, and then deposited the whimpering child in her lap, saying gently: ‘Don’t be distressed! There’s no need, I promise you.’

  She was feeling ready to sink, and whispered: ‘I never thought – I didn’t know – Lord Lindeth, stay with her! I shall do very well by myself. Perhaps you could hire a carriage for me? Oh, yes! of course that’s what I ought to do! If you would direct the coachman to drive to the infirmary –’

  ‘Stop fretting!’ he commanded, smiling up at her: ‘We’ll discuss what’s best to be done presently. Meanwhile, Miss Trent will look after Miss Wield: I am coming with you!’ He turned, as Miss Trent came up to give Patience her purse, and told her briefly what he meant to do, adding, in an undervoice: ‘Will you be able to come to the infirmary, ma’am? I think you should, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I shall come,’ she replied. ‘Just as soon as I have taken Miss Wield back to the King’s Arms!’

  He looked relieved. ‘Yes, if you please. Then I’ll find Waldo. He’s the man we want in this situation!’

  She had been thinking so herself, and although she was surprised that he should have said it she agreed cordially. It was then his lordship’s turn to be a little puzzled, for he had spoken more to himself than to her, and (since Waldo very much disliked having his peculiar philanthropy puffed-off) was already regretting it. Before it could be established that they were talking at cross-purposes, Tiffany, almost beside herself with rage at their continued neglect, stalked up to them to demand in a voice vibrant with passion how much longer Miss Trent meant to keep her waiting.

  ‘Not an instant!’ replied her preceptress cheerfully, removing from her grasp the parasol and the various packages with which she was still burdened. Over her shoulder, she smiled reassuringly at Patience. ‘I’ll join you at the infirmary directly, Miss Chartley. Now, Tiffany!’

  ‘You will not join her at the infirmary!’ said Tiffany. ‘I wish to go home, and it is your duty to stay with me, and if you don’t do what I want I’ll tell my aunt, and have you turned off !’

  ‘Without a character!’ nodded Miss Trent, tucking a hand in her arm, and firmly propelling her down the flagway. ‘And if I were to take you home, abandoning Miss Chartley, her mama would no doubt demand my instant dismissal too, so in either event I must be totally ruined. I am quite sick with apprehension! But if I were you, Tiffany, I would take care how I exposed myself !’

  ‘How I exposed myself ?’ gasped Tiffany. ‘When it was that odious Patience Chartley, with her insinuating ways, behaving like a hoyden, just to make everyone think her a heroine –’

  ‘Do, Tiffany, strive for a little conduct!’ interrupted Miss Trent. ‘I am not going to bandy words with you in public, so you may as well keep your tongue.’

  This, however, the outraged beauty was far too angry to do, delivering herself all the way to the King’s Arms of a tirade which was as comprehensive as it was absurd. Miss Trent refused to be goaded into retort, but she could willingly have slapped her spoilt charge. She did indeed point out to her that she was attracting the undesirable notice of such passers-by who were privileged to overhear scraps of her diatribe; but although Tiffany lowered her voice she continued to scold.

  It might have been supposed that the violence of her emotions would have exhausted her by the time the King’s Arms was reached; but she was made of resilient fibre, and the recital of her wrongs and the condemnation of every one of her companions were merely the prelude to a storm which, as experience had taught Miss Trent, would involve her, when it broke, in embarrassment, startle everyone within earshot, and culminate in a fit of shattering hysterics. She knew it to be useless to reason with Tiffany; so when they reached the posting-house she almost dragged her into the parlour which Lindeth had hired for the day, and left her there, saying mendaciously that she was going to procure some hartshorn. Tiffany had already begun to cry in an ominously gusty way, but Miss Trent did not believe that she would work herself into hysterics if no one was present to be shocked or distressed by her passion. She was quite capable, of course, of doing something outrageous when she had lashed herself into one of these fits; but Miss Trent, after rapidly reviewing the circumstances, thought that the worst she could find to do in the middle of Leeds would be to order her aunt’s coachman to put the horses to, and to have herself driven back to Staples immediately. When John-Coachman refused to obey this order, as he certainly would, there would really be nothing left for her to do but to smash the china ornaments on the mantelpiece.

  Miss Trent might regard the situation in this practical light; but she was much more worried than she had allowed Tiffany to suspect. Her first duty was undoubtedly to that intransigent damsel, and by no stretch of the imagination could this duty be thought to include taking her into the back-slums of the town; but when Mrs Chartley had permitted her daughter to join the expedition she had done so in the belief that she would be respectably chaperoned. Neither she nor Miss Trent, of course, could have foreseen the accident which had made this double chaperonage so difficult; but that she would think it extremely reprehensible of Miss Trent to leave Patience to the sole protection and escort of Lord Lindeth was beyond doubt, or (in Miss Trent’s own opinion) censure. Somehow the two conflicting duties must be reconciled. Try as she would, Miss Trent could hit upon no better solution to the problem than to enlist Sir Waldo’s support, just as Lindeth had suggested. If he could be induced to keep Tiffany amused until Patience’s protégé had been restored to his parents the unfortunate episode might yet end happily.

  So it was not to procure hartshorn for Tiffany that Miss Trent hurriedly left the parlour, but to make all speed to the infirmary, whence she meant to send Lindeth off post-haste to find his cousin.

  In the event, Sir Waldo entered the King’s Arms just as she was about to leave the house. Never had she been more thankful, nor more relieved! She exclaimed impulsively: ‘Oh, how glad I am to see you! Sir Waldo, you are the one person who may be able to help me in this fix, and I do beg that you will!’

  ‘You may be very sure that I will,’ he replied, looking a little startled, but maintaining his calm. ‘What fix have you fallen into, and what must I do to extricate you from it?’

  She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Oh, dear! I must seem to you to have flown into
alt! I beg your pardon! It wasn’t precisely I who fell into a fix, but –’

  ‘Just a moment!’ he interrupted. ‘Do you know that there is blood on your dress?’

  She cast a cursory glance down her own person. ‘Is there? Yes, I see – but it’s of no consequence!’

  ‘Well, as you don’t appear to have sustained any injury, I’ll accept your word for that,’ he said. ‘Whose blood is it?’

  ‘I don’t know – I mean, I don’t know what his name is! A little boy – but I must tell you how it all happened!’

  ‘Do!’ he invited.

  As concisely as she could, she put him in possession of the facts, making no attempt to conceal from him that it was not the accident which had thrown her into disorder, but Tiffany’s obstructive behaviour. ‘I know it must seem incredible that she should fly into one of her rages at such a moment,’ she said earnestly, ‘but you know what she is!’

  ‘Of course I do! It is exactly what I should have expected of her. How could it be otherwise when the rôle of heroine in this stirring drama was snatched from her, and she found herself a mere spectator? Where is she now?’

  ‘Upstairs, in the parlour where we ate nuncheon. That was the reason, of course, and I don’t know what enraged her the more: your cousin paying no heed to her, or that absurd Mr Baldock saying he didn’t see what cause she had to faint! Yes, it’s all very well for you to laugh, sir! I own, I should think it very funny myself if it didn’t concern me so nearly. Do you see now what a fix I’m in? I can neither leave Tiffany alone here for heaven only knows how long, nor can I abandon Miss Chartley! I never was more distracted! But your cousin said that you were the man to help us in this situation, and, although it surprised me a little that he should say so, I perceived immediately that he was perfectly right! Sir Waldo, will you be so very obliging as to stay with Tiffany – divert her, you know! – while I go with Patience to wherever the boy lives?’