Arabella Read online

  They were taken to a guest-chamber on the first floor, and handed over there to a housemaid, who brought up hot water for them, and bore their damp coats away to be dried in the kitchen.

  ‘Everything in the first style of elegance!’ breathed Miss Blackburn. ‘But we should not be dining here! I feel sure we ought not, my dear Miss Tallant!’

  Arabella was a little doubtful on this score herself, but as it was now too late to draw back she stifled her misgivings, and said stoutly that she was persuaded there could be no objection. Finding a brush and comb laid out on the dressing-table, she began to tidy her rather tumbled locks.

  ‘They are most gentlemanlike,’ said Miss Blackburn, deriving comfort from this circumstance. ‘Of the first rank of fashion, I daresay. They will be here for the hunting, depend upon it: I collect this is a hunting-box.’

  ‘A hunting-box!’ exclaimed Arabella, awed. ‘Is it not very large and grand, ma’am, to be that?’

  ‘Oh, no, my dear! Quite a small house! The Tewkesburys, whose sweet children I was engaged to instruct before I removed to Mrs Caterham’s establishment, had one much larger, I assure you. This is the Melton country, you must know.’

  ‘Good heavens, are they Melton men, then? Oh, how much I wish Bertram could be here! What I shall have to tell him! I think it is Mr Beaumaris who owns the house: I wonder who the other is? I thought when I first saw him he could not be quite the thing, for that striped waistcoat, you know, and that spotted handkerchief he wears instead of a cravat makes him look like a groom, or some such thing. But when he spoke, of course I knew he was not a vulgar person at all.’

  Miss Blackburn, feeling for once in her life pleasantly superior, gave a titter of laughter, and said pityingly: ‘Oh, dear me no, Miss Tallant! You will find a great many young gentlemen of fashion wearing much odder clothes than that! It is what Mr Geoffrey Tewkesbury – a very modish young man! – used to call all the crack!’ She added pensively: ‘But I must confess that I do not care for it myself, and nor did dear Mrs Tewkesbury. My notion of a true gentleman is someone like Mr Beaumaris!’

  Arabella dragged the comb ruthlessly through a tangle. ‘I thought him a very proud, reserved man!’ she declared. ‘And not at all hospitable!’ she added.

  ‘Oh, no, how can you say so? How very kind and obliging it was of him to place me in the best place, so near the fire! Delightful manners! Nothing high in them at all! I was quite overcome by his condescension!’

  It was evident to Arabella that she and Miss Blackburn regarded their host through two very different pairs of spectacles. She preserved an unconvinced silence, and as soon as Miss Blackburn had finished prinking her crimped gray locks at the mirror, suggested that they should go downstairs again. Accordingly they left the room, and crossed the upper hall to the head of the stairway. Mr Beaumaris’s fancy had led him to carpet his stairs, a luxury which Miss Blackburn indicated to her charge with one pointing finger and a most expressive glance.

  Across the lower hall, the door into the library stood ajar. Lord Fleetwood’s voice, speaking in rallying tones, assailed the ladies’ ears. ‘I swear you are incorrigible!’ said his lordship. ‘The loveliest of creatures drops into your lap, like a veritable honey-fall, and you behave as though a gull-groper had forced his way into your house!’

  Mr Beaumaris replied with disastrous clarity: ‘My dear Charles, when you have been hunted by every trick known to the ingenuity of the female mind, you may more readily partake of my sentiments upon this occasion! I have had beauties hopeful of wedding my fortune swoon in my arms, break their bootlaces outside my London house, sprain their ankles when my arm is there to support them, and now it appears that I am to be pursued even into Leicestershire! An accident to her coach! Famous! What a greenhorn she must believe me to be!’

  A small hand closed like a vice about Miss Blackburn’s wrist. Herself bridling indignantly, she saw Arabella’s eyes sparkling, and her cheeks most becomingly flushed. Had she been better acquainted with Miss Tallant she might have taken fright at these signs. Arabella breathed into her ear: ‘Miss Blackburn, can I trust you?’

  Miss Blackburn would have vigorously assured her that she could, but the hand released her wrist, and flew up to cover her mouth. Slightly startled, she nodded. To her amazement, Arabella then picked up her skirts, and fled lightly back to the top of the stairs. Turning there, she began to come slowly down again, saying in a clear, carrying voice: ‘Yes, indeed! I am sure I have said the same, dear ma’am, times out of mind! But do, pray, go before me!’

  Miss Blackburn, turning to stare at her, with her mouth at half-cock, found a firm young hand in the small of her back, and was thrust irresistibly onward.

  ‘But in spite of all,’ said Arabella, ‘I prefer to travel with my own horses!’

  The awful scowl that accompanied these light words quite bewildered the poor little governess, but she understood that she was expected to reply in kind, and said in a quavering voice: ‘Very true, my dear!’

  The scowl gave place to an encouraging smile. Any one of Arabella’s brothers or sisters would have begged her at this point to consider all the consequences of impetuosity; Miss Blackburn, unaware of the eldest Miss Tallant’s besetting fault, was merely glad that she had not disappointed her. Arabella tripped across the hall to that half-open door, and entered the library again.

  It was Lord Fleetwood who came forward to receive her. He eyed her with undisguised appreciation, and said: ‘Now you will be more comfortable! Devilish dangerous to sit about in a wet coat, y’know! But we are yet unacquainted, ma’am! The stupidest thing! – never can catch a name when it is spoken! That man of Beaumaris’s mumbles so that no one can hear him! You must let me make myself known to you, too – Lord Fleetwood, very much at your service!’

  ‘I,’ said Arabella, a most dangerous glitter in her eye, ‘am Miss Tallant!’

  His lordship, murmuring polite gratification at being made the recipient of this information, was surprised to find his inanities quite misunderstood. Arabella fetched a world-weary sigh, and enunciated with a scornful curl of her lip: ‘Oh yes! The Miss Tallant!’

  ‘Th – the Miss Tallant?’ stammered his lordship, all at sea.

  ‘The rich Miss Tallant!’ said Arabella.

  His lordship rolled an anguished and an enquiring eye at his host, but Mr Beaumaris was not looking at him. Mr Beaumaris, his attention arrested, was regarding the rich Miss Tallant with a distinct gleam of curiosity, not unmixed with amusement, in his face.

  ‘I had hoped that here at least I might be unknown!’ said Arabella, seating herself in a chair a little withdrawn from the fire. ‘Ah, you must let me make you known to Miss Blackburn, my – my dame de compagnie!’

  Lord Fleetwood sketched a bow; Miss Blackburn, her countenance wooden, dropped him a slight curtsy, and sat down on the nearest chair.

  ‘Miss Tallant!’ repeated Lord Fleetwood, searching his memory in vain for enlightenment. ‘Ah, yes! Of course! Er – I don’t think I have ever had the honour of meeting you in town, have I, ma’am?’

  Arabella directed an innocent look from him to Mr Beaumaris, and back again, and clapped her hands together with an assumption of mingled delight and dismay. ‘Oh, you did not know!’ she exclaimed. ‘I need never have told you! But when you looked so, I made sure you were as bad as all the rest! Was anything ever so vexatious? I most particularly desire to be quite unknown in London!’

  ‘My dear ma’am, you may rely on me!’ promptly replied his lordship, who, like most rattles, thought himself the model of discretion. ‘And Mr Beaumaris, you know, is in the same case as yourself, and able to sympathise with you!’

  Arabella glanced at her host, and found that he had raised his quizzing-glass, which hung round his neck on a long black riband, and was surveying her through it. She put up her chin a little, for she was by no means sure that she cared for this scrutiny. ‘Indeed?�
� she said.

  It was not the practice of young ladies to put up their chins in just that style if Mr Beaumaris levelled his glass at them: they were more in the habit of simpering, or of trying to appear unconscious of his regard. But Mr Beaumaris saw that there was a decidedly militant sparkle in this lady’s eye, and his interest, at first tickled, was now fairly caught. He let his glass fall, and said gravely: ‘Indeed! And you?’

  ‘Alas!’ said Arabella, ‘I am fabulously wealthy! It is the greatest mortification to me! You can have no notion!’

  His lips twitched. ‘I have always found, however, that a large fortune carries with it certain advantages.’

  ‘Oh, you are a man! I shall not allow you to know anything of the matter!’ she cried. ‘You cannot know what it means to be the object of every fortune-hunter, courted and odiously flattered only for your wealth, until you are ready to wish that you had not a penny in the world!’

  Miss Blackburn, who had hitherto supposed her charge to be a modest, well-behaved girl, barely repressed a shudder. Mr Beaumaris, however, said: ‘I feel sure that you underrate yourself, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no!’ said Arabella. ‘I have too often heard myself pointed out as the rich Miss Tallant to be under any illusion, sir! And it is for this reason that I wish to be quite unknown in London.’

  Mr Beaumaris smiled, but as the butler came in just then to announce dinner, he said nothing, but merely offered his arm to Arabella.

  The dinner, which consisted of two courses, seemed to Arabella sumptuous beyond her wildest imaginings. No suspicion crossed her mind that her host, after one swift glance at his board, had resigned himself to the knowledge that the reputations of himself and his cook had been placed in jeopardy; or that that artist in the kitchen, having, with strange Gallic imprecations which made his various assistants quake, rent limb from limb two half-roasted Davenport fowls, and flung them into a pan with a béchamel sauce and some tarragons, was even now, as he arranged a basket of pastry on a dish, undecided whether to leave this dishonoured house on the instant, or to cut his throat with the larger carving-knife. Soup à la Reine was removed with fillets of turbot with an Italian sauce; and the chickens à la Tarragon were flanked by a dish of spinach and croûtons, a glazed ham, two cold partridges, some broiled mushrooms, and a raised mutton pie. The second course presented Arabella with an even more bewildering choice, for there was, besides the baskets of pastry, a Rhenish cream, a jelly, a Savoy cake, a dish of salsify fried in butter, an omelette, and some anchovy toast. Mrs Tallant had always prided herself on her housekeeping, but such a repast as this, embellished as it was by elegant garnitures, and subtle sauces, was quite beyond the range of the Vicarage cook. Arabella could not help opening her eyes a little at the array of viands spread before her, but she managed to conceal her awe, and to partake of what was offered to her with a very creditable assumption of unconsciousness. Mr Beaumaris, perhaps loth to degrade his burgundy, or perhaps with a faint, despairing hope of adding piquancy to this commonplace meal, had instructed Brough to serve champagne. Arabella, having already cast discretion to the winds, allowed her glass to be filled, and sipped her way distastefully through it. It had a pleasantly exhilarating effect upon her. She informed Mr Beaumaris that she was bound for the town residence of Lady Bridlington; created several uncles for the simple purpose of endowing herself with their fortunes; and at one blow disposed of four brothers and three sisters who might have been supposed to have laid a claim to a share of all this wealth. She contrived, without precisely making so vulgar a boast, to convey the impression that she was escaping from courtships so persistent as to amount to persecution; and Mr Beaumaris, listening with intense pleasure, said that London was the very place for anyone desirous of escaping attention.

  Arabella, embarking recklessly on her second glass of champagne, said that in a crowd one could more easily pass unnoticed than in the restricted society of the country.

  ‘Very true,’ agreed Mr Beaumaris.

  ‘You never did so!’ remarked Lord Fleetwood, helping himself from the dish of mushrooms which Brough presented at his elbow. ‘You must know, ma’am, that you are in the presence of the Nonpareil – none other! Quite the most noted figure in society since poor Brummell was done-up!’

  ‘Indeed!’ Arabella looked from him to Mr Beaumaris with a pretty air of innocent enquiry. ‘I did not know – I might not have heard the name quite correctly, perhaps?’

  ‘My dear Miss Tallant!’ exclaimed his lordship, in mock horror. ‘Not know the great Beaumaris! The Arbiter of Fashion! Robert, you are quite set down!’

  Mr Beaumaris, whose almost imperceptibly lifted finger had brought the watchful Brough to his side, was murmuring some command into that attentive but astonished ear, and paid no heed. His command was passed on to the footman hovering by the side-table, who, being quite a young man, and as yet imperfectly in control of his emotions, betrayed in his startled look some measure of the incredulity which shook his trained soul. The coldly quelling eye of his superior recalled him speedily to a sense of his position, however, and he left the room to carry the stupefying command still farther.

  Miss Tallant, meanwhile, had perceived an opportunity to gratify her most pressing desire, which was to snub her host beyond possibility of his recovery. ‘Arbiter of Fashion?’ she said, in a blank voice. ‘You cannot, surely, mean one of the dandy-set? I had thought – Oh, I beg your pardon! I expect that in London that is quite as important as being a great soldier, or a statesman, or – or some such thing!’

  Even Lord Fleetwood could scarcely mistake the tenor of this artless speech. He gave an audible gasp. Miss Blackburn, whose enjoyment of dinner had already been seriously impaired, refused the partridge, and tried unavailingly to catch her charge’s eye. Only Mr Beaumaris, hugely enjoying himself, appeared unmoved. He replied coolly: ‘Oh, decidedly! One’s influence is so far-reaching!’

  ‘Oh?’ said Arabella politely.

  ‘Why, certainly, ma’am! One may blight a whole career by the mere raising of an eyebrow, or elevate a social aspirant to the ranks of the highest ton only by leaning on his arm for the length of a street.’

  Miss Tallant suspected that she was being quizzed, but the strange exhilaration had her in its grip, and she did not hesitate to cross swords with this expert fencer. ‘No doubt, sir, if I had ambitions to cut a figure in society your approval would be a necessity?’

  Mr Beaumaris, famed for his sword-play, slipped under her guard with an unexpected thrust. ‘My dear Miss Tallant, you need no passport to admit you to the ranks of the most sought-after! Even I could not depress the claims of one endowed with – may I say it? – your face, your figure, and your fortune!’

  The colour flamed up into Arabella’s cheeks; she choked over the last of her wine, tried to look arch, and only succeeded in looking adorably confused. Lord Fleetwood, realising that his friend had embarked on yet another of his practised flirtations, directed an indignant glance at him, and did his best to engage the heiress’s attention himself. He was succeeding quite well when he was thrown off his balance by the unprecedented behaviour of Brough, who, as the second course made its appearance, removed his champagne-glass, replacing it with a goblet, which he proceeded to fill with something out of a tall flagon which his lordship strongly suspected was iced lemonade. One sip was enough alike to confirm this hideous fear and to deprive his lordship momentarily of the power of speech. Mr Beaumaris, blandly swallowing some of the innocuous mixture, seized the opportunity to re-engage Miss Tallant in conversation.

  Arabella had been rather relieved to see her wine-glass removed, for although she would have died rather than have owned to it she thought the champagne decidedly nasty, besides making her want to sneeze. She took a revivifying draught of lemonade, glad to discover that in really fashionable circles this mild beverage was apparently served with the second course. Miss Blackburn, better versed in the ways of the
haut ton, now found herself unable to form a correct judgement of her host. To be plunged from a conviction that he was truly gentlemanlike to a shocked realisation that he was nothing but a coxcomb, and then back again, quite overset the poor little lady. She knew not what to think, but could not forbear casting him a glance eloquent of the warmest gratitude. His eyes encountered hers, but for such a fleeting instant that she could never afterwards be sure whether she had caught the glimmer of an amused smile in them, or whether she had imagined it.

  Brough, receiving a message at the door, announced that Madam’s groom had brought a hired coach to the house, and desired to know when she would wish to resume her journey to Grantham.

  ‘It can wait,’ said Mr Beaumaris, replenishing Arabella’s glass. ‘A little of the Rhenish cream, Miss Tallant?’

  ‘How long,’ demanded Arabella, recalling Mr Beaumaris’s odious words to his friend, ‘will it take them to mend my own carriage?’

  ‘I understand, miss, that a new pole will be needed. I could not say how long it will be.’

  A faint clucking from Miss Blackburn indicated dismay at this intelligence. Mr Beaumaris said: ‘A tiresome accident, but I beg you will not distress yourselves! I will send my chaise to pick you up in Grantham at whatever hour tomorrow should be agreeable to you.’

  Arabella thanked him, but was resolute in refusing his offer, for which, she assured him, there was not the slightest occasion. If the wheelwright proved too dilatory for her patience she would finish her journey post. ‘It will be quite an experience!’ she declared truthfully. ‘My friends assure me that I am a great deal too old-fashioned in my notions – that quite a respectable degree of comfort is to be found in hired chaises!’