The Nonesuch Read online

  ‘Well, that’s not very kind! Abandoning me to the company of James, who can never be persuaded to say anything but Yes, miss! and No, miss! What is this plan of yours?’

  ‘I’m going to ride into the village,’ said Tiffany, a hint of defiance in her voice. She cast a sidelong glance at Miss Trent, and added: ‘Well, I mean to call at the Rectory! And you know that pink velvet rose I purchased in Harrogate? I am going to wrap it up in silver paper, and give it to Patience! Especially to wear with her gauze ball-dress! Do you think that would be a handsome present? It was very expensive, you know, and I haven’t worn it, because though I did mean to, last night, I found it didn’t become me after all. But Patience frequently wears pink, so I should think she would feel very much obliged to me, shouldn’t you? And that will just show people! And also I shall invite her to go for a walk with us tomorrow – just you and me, you know!’

  ‘That would indeed be a noble gesture!’ said Miss Trent admiringly.

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t it?’ said Tiffany naïvely. ‘It will be horridly dull, and you may depend upon it Patience will be a dead bore, going into raptures over some weed, and saying it’s a rare plant, or – But I mean to bear it, even if she moralizes about nature!’

  Miss Trent was unable to enter with any marked degree of enthusiasm into these plans, but she acquiesced in them, feeling that they did at least represent a step in the right direction, even though they sprang from the purest self-interest. So she went away to prepare for her long and rather tedious drive to the home of the indigent Mrs Tawton, while Tiffany, tugging at the bell-rope, allowed her imagination to depict various scenes in which her faithless admirers, hearing of her magnanimity, and stricken with remorse at having so wickedly misjudged her, vied with one another in extravagant efforts to win her forgiveness.

  It was an agreeable picture, and since she really did feel that she was being magnanimous she rode to the Rectory untroubled by any apprehension that she might not meet with the welcome which she was quite sure she deserved.

  The Rector’s manservant, who admitted her into the house, seemed to be rather doubtful when she blithely asked to see Miss Chartley, but he ushered her into the drawing-room, and said that he would enquire whether Miss Chartley was at home. He then went away, and Tiffany, after peeping at her reflection in the looking-glass over the fireplace, and rearranging the disposition of the glossy ringlets that clustered under the brim of her hat, wandered over to the window.

  The drawing-room looked on to the garden at the rear of the house. It was a very pretty garden, gay with flowers, with a shrubbery, a well-scythed lawn, and several fine trees. Round the trunk of one of these a rustic seat had been built, and in front of it, as though they had just risen from it, Patience and Lindeth were standing side by side, confronting the Rector, who was holding a hand of each.

  For a moment Tiffany stood staring, scarcely understanding the significance of what she saw. But when Lindeth looked down at Patience, smiling at her, and she raised her eyes adoringly to his, the truth dawned on her with the blinding effect of a sudden fork of lightning.

  She was so totally unprepared that the shock of realization turned her to stone. Incredulity, fury, and chagrin swept over her. Her conquest – her most triumphant conquest! – stolen from her by Patience Chartley? It wasn’t possible! Patience to receive an offer of marriage from Lindeth? The thought flashed into her mind that he had never so much as hinted at marriage with herself, and she felt suddenly sick with mortification.

  The door opened behind her; she heard Mrs Chartley’s voice, and turned, pride stiffening her. She never doubted that Mrs Chartley hoped to enjoy her discomfiture, and because the thought uppermost in her mind was that no one should think that she cared a rush for Lindeth she achieved a certain dignity.

  She said: ‘Oh, how do you do, ma’am? I came to bring Patience a trifle I purchased for her in Harrogate. But I must not stay.’

  She put out her hand rather blindly, proffering the silver-wrapped parcel. Mrs Chartley took it from her, saying in some surprise: ‘Why, how kind of you, Tiffany! She will be very much obliged to you.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Only a flower to wear with her gauze dress. I must go!’

  Mrs Chartley glanced uncertainly towards the window. ‘Won’t you wait while I see whether I can find her, my dear? I am persuaded she would wish to thank you herself.’

  ‘It’s of no consequence. The servant said he fancied she was engaged.’ Tiffany drew in her breath, and said with her most glittering smile: ‘That’s true, isn’t it? To Lindeth! Has he offered for her? I – I have been expecting him to do so this age!’

  ‘Well – if you won’t spread it about, yes!’ admitted Mrs Chartley. ‘But there must be nothing said, you know, until he has told his mother. So you must not breathe a word, if you please!’

  ‘Oh, no! Though I daresay everyone has guessed! Pray – pray offer her my felicitations, ma’am! I should think they will deal extremely together!’

  On this line she took leave of Mrs Chartley, declining her escort to the stable yard, but hurrying out of the house, the flowing skirt of her habit caught over her arm, and one hand clenched tightly on her whip. She was uplifted by the feeling that she had acquitted herself well, but this mood could not last. By the time she reached Staples, all the evils of her situation had been recollected. It no longer mattered that she had behaved so creditably, at the Rectory, for even if Mrs Chartley believed that she was indifferent to the engagement no one else would. Her rivals, Lizzie only excepted, would rejoice in her downfall. She had boasted too freely of being able to bring Lindeth back to her feet by the mere lifting of a finger. She writhed inwardly as she remembered, knowing that it would be said she had been cut out by Patience Chartley. People would laugh at her behind her back, and say sweetly spiteful things to her face; and even her admirers could not be depended on to uphold her.

  When she thought of this, and of what had been the cause of their defection, it had the unexpected effect of drying the tears which till then had been flowing fast. Her predicament was too desperate for tears. She could see nothing but humiliation ahead, and by hedge or by stile she must avoid it. In her view there was only one thing to be done, and that was to leave Staples immediately, and to return to London. But London meant Portland Place, and although she could not suppose that even her aunt Burford would send her back to Staples, where she had been unhappy and ill-used, there was no saying that she might not try again to confine her to the schoolroom, until she brought her out in the following spring.

  Pacing up and down the floor of her bedroom, Tiffany cudgelled her brains, and not in vain. She remembered all at once the existence of her other guardian, bachelor Uncle James, who lived, with an old housekeeper to look after him, somewhere in the City. That, of course, was undesirable, but might, perhaps, be mended. James Burford, on the few occasions when they had met, had behaved much as all the other elderly gentlemen of her acquaintance did: chuckling at her exploits, pinching her ear, and calling her a naughty little puss. If he should not be instantly delighted to receive his lovely niece he could very easily be brought round her thumb. Either she would remain under his roof until the spring, or he must be persuaded to represent to Aunt Burford the propriety of bringing her out during the Little Season. Far less than Aunt Burford would he be likely to insist on her returning to Staples. Indeed, the more Tiffany thought of the wrongs she had suffered the more convinced did she become that no one could possibly blame her for running away. Aunt Underhill had deserted her, not even inviting her to go to Bridlington too; Courtenay had been unkind and boorish to her from the outset; and Miss Trent, whose sole business it should have been to attend her, had neglected her for Charlotte; and had shown herself to be so wholly wanting in conduct as to have allowed her to be exposed to the Mob in Leeds, going off in her carriage with an odious girl to whom she owed no duty at all, and leaving her precious charge
alone in a public inn, to be conveyed back to Staples, unchaperoned, by a single gentleman.

  The difficulty was to decide how the flight could be achieved. Forgetting for a moment that she had cast Miss Trent for the role of villainess in this dramatic piece, Tiffany wondered whether it would be possible to cajole that lady into escorting her to London immediately. Very little consideration sufficed to make her abandon this solution to her problem. Miss Trent was too insensitive to appreciate the necessity of an instant departure; and nothing was more certain than that she would refuse to do anything without first consulting Aunt Underhill. It was even possible that she would advise her charge to live down her humiliation: as though one would not rather die than make the attempt!

  No: Miss Trent could only be a hindrance – in fact, it would be wise to be gone from the house before she returned to it. But how was she to get to Leeds? She could ride there: they were too well-accustomed in the stables to her solitary rides to raise any demur; but she thought it would be impossible to carry even the smallest piece of baggage, in which case she would be obliged to drive all the way to London in her habit. Useless to desire the under-coachman to drive her there in the barouche: he would refuse to do it unless she had Miss Trent with her, or her maid. Equally would Courtenay’s groom refuse to let her drive herself in his phaeton.

  A less determined girl might have been daunted at this point; but it had been truly observed of Miss Wield that there were no lengths to which she would not go to achieve her ends. Rather than have abandoned her project she would have walked to Leeds. Indeed, she was trying to make up her mind whether to pursue this dreary course, carrying a bandbox; or to ride, carrying nothing, when a welcome sound came to her ears. She ran to the window, and saw Mr Calver driving up to the house in his hired whisky.

  Tiffany flung up the window, and leaned out to hail him. ‘Oh, Mr Calver, how do you do? Have you come to take me out? I shall be with you directly!’

  He looked up, sweeping off his high-crowned beaver. ‘Very happy to do so! No need to bustle about, however: I must pay my respects to Miss Trent, you know.’

  ‘Oh, she has gone to Nethersett, and won’t be home for hours!’ Tiffany answered. ‘Only wait for ten minutes!’

  This was not at all what he had hoped to hear; nor had he much desire to sit beside Tiffany while she tooled the whisky round the immediate countryside. There seemed to be no object to be gained by dangling after her any longer; and teaching her to drive was an occupation which had begun to pall on him. However, he could think of no better way of passing the time, so he resigned himself.

  He was rather startled, when she came running out of the house some twenty minutes later, to see that she was arrayed in a modish pelisse, with a hat embellished by several curled ostrich plumes on her head, and a large bandbox slung by its ribbons over her arm.

  ‘Here – !’ he expostulated. ‘I mean to say – what the dooce – ?’

  Tiffany handed the bandbox to him, and climbed into the whisky. ‘You can’t think how glad I am that you came!’ she said. ‘I was quite in despair! For I must go to Leeds, and Ancilla set off in the gig quite early, and I don’t know where Courtenay may be!’

  ‘Go to Leeds?’ he repeated. ‘But –’

  ‘Yes, it is the most vexatious thing!’ she said glibly. ‘The dressmaker had sent home my new ball-dress, which I particularly wish to wear at the Systons’ party, and the stupid creature has made it too tight for me. And how to get to Leeds, with the coachman away, and no one to accompany me, I’d not the least notion, until you came driving up the avenue! You’ll take me, won’t you? That will make everything right!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said dubiously. ‘I’m not sure I ought. Seems to me Miss Trent might not think it quite the thing.’

  She laughed. ‘How can you be so absurd? When I have been driving with you for ever!’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘If you don’t escort me, I shall go alone,’ she warned him. ‘I shall ride there, and that won’t be the thing at all. So if you choose to be disobliging –’

  ‘No, no! I suppose I’d better drive you there, if you’re so set on it. You can’t go alone, at all events,’ he said, giving his horse the office. ‘Mind, though! it won’t do if you mean to remain for hours with this dressmaker! I should think it will take us close on a couple of hours to get to Leeds and back again. Did you tell anyone where you was off to?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she assured him mendaciously. ‘Ancilla won’t be in a worry, so you need not be either. And I shan’t be with Mrs Walmer above half-an-hour, I promise you!’

  He was satisfied with this; and although he had little faith in her ability to emerge from a dressmaker’s establishment in so short a space of time, he reflected that he must be certain of finding Miss Trent at home if it was three or more hours before he brought Tiffany back to Staples.

  Tiffany beguiled the drive with lighthearted chatter. Having surmounted the first obstacle to her flight, she was in high good-humour, her eyes glowing with excitement, laughter never far from her lips. Already, in her imagination, she was the petted darling of her Uncle James, and had prevailed upon him to remove from the City to a more fashionable quarter of the town. The humiliation of the previous evening’s party, and the shock of discovering that Lindeth had become engaged to Patience, were rapidly fading from her mind, and would be wholly forgotten as soon as she had put Yorkshire behind her. Fresh, and far more dazzling conquests lay ahead. She had never cared a button for Lindeth, after all; and as for the rest of her court, they were a set of bumpkins whom she would probably never set eyes on again.

  Arrived in Leeds, Laurence, who was unfamiliar with the town, requested her to direct him to a decent posting-house, where the whisky could be left, and the horse baited. ‘Then I’ll escort you to the dressmaker. It won’t do for you to be jauntering about this place alone,’ he said, surveying the crowded street with disfavour.

  This put Tiffany in mind of something which, in her large dreams of the future, she had overlooked. Never having travelled except in the company of some older person, who made all the arrangements, she was ignorant of where, and under what conditions, post-chaises were to be hired; or, failing this, the only mode of travel to which she was accustomed, how one obtained a seat on the stage, or the Mail; and at what hour these humbler conveyances left Leeds for London. She stole a glance at Laurence’s profile, and decided that it would be necessary to enlist his help. It might require some coaxing to obtain it; but she could not doubt that he was one of her more fervent admirers. Courtenay had jeered at her for being taken in by a fortune-hunter; and if Courtenay was right in thinking that the exquisite Mr Calver was hanging out for a rich wife she thought that it would not be difficult to persuade him to render her a signal service. She directed him to the King’s Head, adding that she would like some lemonade, and that there were several private parlours to be hired at this hostelry.

  Laurence was perfectly ready to regale her with lemonade, but he thought it quite unnecessary, and even undesirable, to hire a private parlour. However, since she seemed to take it for granted that he would do so, he kept his objections to himself. But when, in the inn’s yard, he picked up her bandbox, it occurred to him that it was extraordinarily heavy. When Tiffany had first handed it up to him, he had been too much astonished by her festal raiment to pay any heed to the weight of the bandbox, but he now directed a look at her which was sharp with suspicion, and said: ‘Very heavy, this dress of yours, ain’t it?’

  ‘Well, there are some other things in the box,’ she confessed.

  ‘I should rather think there must be! Seems to me there’s something pretty smokey going on, and if there is –’

  ‘I am going to explain it to you!’ she said hastily. ‘But in private, if you please!’

  He regarded her with misgiving; but before he could say more she had flitted a
way from him, into the inn; and it was not until they had been ushered into the same parlour which Lindeth had hired for his memorable nuncheon-party that he was able to demand the explanation.

  Tiffany bestowed upon him her most devastating smile, and said simply: ‘Well, I told you a bouncer! It isn’t a ball-dress. It’s – oh, all manner of things! I am going to London!’

  ‘Going to London!’ repeated Laurence blankly.

  She fixed her glorious eyes to his face in a melting look. ‘Will you escort me?’

  Mr Calver’s carefully arranged locks were too lavishly pomaded to rise on end, but his eyes showed a tendency to start from their sockets. He replied, unequivocally: ‘Good God, no! Of course I won’t!’

  ‘Then I must go alone,’ said Tiffany mournfully.

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ demanded Laurence.

  She sighed. ‘You must know I haven’t. I am going to – to seek the protection of my Uncle James Burford.’

  ‘What do you want that for?’’asked Laurence, unimpressed.

  ‘I am very unhappy,’ stated Tiffany. ‘My aunt has not used me as she should. Or Ancilla!’

  Mr Calver’s intelligence was not generally thought to be of a high order, but he had no difficulty in interpreting this tragic utterance. He said gloomily, and with a regrettable want of tact: ‘Lindeth’s offered for the parson’s daughter, has he? Oh, well! I guessed as much! No use going to London, though: he wouldn’t care a straw!’

  ‘Nor do I care a straw!’ declared Tiffany, her eyes flashing. ‘That’s not why I am determined – determined! – to go to my uncle!’

  ‘Well, it don’t signify,’ said Laurence. ‘You can’t go to London today, that’s certain!’

  ‘I can, and I will!’

  ‘Not with my help,’ said Laurence bluntly.

  No one had ever responded thus to Tiffany’s demands; and it cost her a severe struggle to keep her temper. ‘I should be very grateful to you!’ she suggested.