by Fiona Hill
The worthy gentleman looked a little amused: this was not the first time a handsome young lady had sailed into his church with a shuffling young gentleman behind her. “Reverend,” he told her gently. “Would you be—”
“I am Mrs. Amor,” she interrupted him. Then, with a shamefaced glance at Dorothy, who only now understood the whole truth of the matter, she corrected, “I mean, I am Lady Isabella Stanbroke.” Dorothy gave a little gasp, as her young employer continued, “And this is Sir Jeffery de Guere. We should like to be married.”
But de Guere was not going to stand still for this. “My dear, I have already arranged for a minister, as I told you,” he whispered furiously. “In fact, I think we must hurry down there at once, for he will not wait—”
“Oh no, but Reverend—I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, sir.”
“Oates,” he supplied.
“Reverend Oates looks such a kind man. You will marry us, won’t you, sir?”
“As I said last night,” began the gentleman, with a nod at Dorothy, “I should be perfectly—”
“Yes, you see he will do it,” broke in Bella. “Oh please, my darling, I like him so much, and here we are…” She looked anxiously at Sir Jeffery, who had begun to see the trap he was in. Dorothy (who, in addition to her own good qualities, was a broad, strapping, big-boned girl) stood squarely in the aisle behind him, looking none too docile. Before him waited the minister, book in hand; and to his arm clung the tenacious Isabella, a mist of tears already rising in her eyes. Surrounded though he was, he might have escaped even now, had Isabella not written so well the letter she addressed to the Reverend (then unknown to her) when she sent Dorothy out on the previous evening. The letter explained that her honour was at stake and that the cleric was on no account to allow the man she brought in with her the following day to leave before the ceremony was performed. She appealed to his sense of justice, as well as his kindness as a Christian, and in fact had penned such a tender and affecting account of her plight (mostly fabricated, naturally, but not the less moving for that) that the Reverend Oates had very nearly fallen in love with the writer himself. He would sooner have died than allow this so-called gentleman to desert his misguided lady in her desperate hour; so that when he observed de Guere’s increasing discomfiture he spoke up forcefully and at once. He was a vigorous, youthful man himself (Isabella had instructed Dorothy to seek out just such a man), and his voice and bearing both suggested a strength not solely spiritual.
“I should be very happy to unite you in the bonds of matrimony,” said he. “I’m sure my colleague—whoever it was you’ve engaged, sir—will understand how it was.”
“Of course he will,” put in Isabella. “We’ll have the innkeeper pay him just the same. Say you don’t mind, my darling,” she prompted, tugging at Jeffery’s arm.
De Guere had broken out in a sweat. Fingering his cravat uneasily with his free hand, he looked all round the church, before and behind him, as if imagining divine intervention might come to his aid. But divinity had allied itself squarely with Bella: Sir Jeffery was brought to bay. If only Miss Partridge could have seen him, she and a dozen other young women! He made a pretty picture, ringed round by three righteous, expectant faces, a dew of perspiration on his handsome brow.
He did not know to what extent Isabella had played him false. There was no one thing he could point to as conclusively proving she mistrusted him, or had anticipated his duplicity—and yet he had the sense she had outwitted and outplayed him: the fox turning upon the hounds. Inadvertently or by design she had cornered him quite. “Very well,” he finally gasped, his voice faltering and cracking with emotion. “What can I say, my dear, since you are adamant? Though if you would please your husband—”
“You are not quite my husband yet, love. Grant me this one last indulgence, will you not?” begged Isabella prettily, permitting a tear or two to spill over onto her cheek.
Sir Jeffery looked again into the stern eyes of Reverend Oates and decided, again, he must cede. Behind him he could feel Dorothy’s gaze boring into his back. He gave a nod, and in that moment experienced a sensation he had thought was reserved for drowning men, or for those about to be swallowed up by quicksand. The feeling was so vivid that he coughed for a minute, as if fighting for his breath; then he recovered and faced the Reverend squarely. There is always annulment, he thought, clutching at straws as desperate men will do; there is always divorce. But he knew in his heart he was finished: the glorious days of Sir Jeffery de Guere’s bachelorhood were ended. I shall not look, he thought with an inward sigh as he heard the Reverend clear his throat to begin the service, upon their like again.
15
Lady Elizabeth gave a whoop. “They’ve found them!” she shouted, leaping up from her perch on the sofa-arm and waving her father’s letter under Lady Emilia’s nose. “They’ve found them,” she repeated joyfully, flinging the paper high in the air and throwing her arms round her friend. “Oh Emmy, Isabella’s safe with my father…I didn’t even know how frightened I was till just this moment.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she released the smiling Emilia and went to retrieve her father’s note. “Thank God, she is found,” she said in a husky voice, and did in her thoughts thank God.
“But where are they? Is she—did Jeffery—oh for the love of heaven, Lizzie, what does your father say?”
Elizabeth hastily scanned the page. “They are all on their way home—your brother, too—and she’s…Oh my Lord, she’s married de Guere.” She sat down abruptly, as if this information had been a rough hand that knocked her down. “She’s married him, Emmy. Well, I suppose,” she went on, striving for a smile, “I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
“I’m so sorry, my dear—” Emilia began, feeling dreadfully at a loss for words.
“Perhaps it’s for the best, who can say?” Elizabeth answered dubiously.
“Your father does not mention an…an annulment?”
Lizzie looked again at the letter. “No, it would seem they are wed and will stay so…Marchmont sends you his best love,” she added, colouring a little, as she always did when saying his name. “They’ve already sent word to Charlie and Lord Weld, though there’s no saying if it’s been received…I think I’d best go wake my mother, don’t you?” she added, for Lady Trevor had taken to lying abed nearly till noon of late, and she had not yet been seen downstairs that day. “She’ll certainly wish to know at once.”
“Remember it will be a shock,” Emilia advised her as she left, then went on aloud, though to herself, “It certainly would shock me to hear my daughter had married Sir Jeffery de Guere. The poor woman! Oh, the poor girl!”
Lady Elizabeth stayed closeted with her mother more than an hour, leaving Emilia plenty of time to shake her head over Isabella’s fate. Then she and Lizzie went over to the Nestling to break the news to Miss Lewis. They found her as Elizabeth had last seen her, on a day-bed in her sitting-room, still pale though apparently a trifle more cheerful. Elizabeth burst out at once with the information, then sent a servant for Lady Lewis and repeated it to her. As had been the case with Emilia, the relief both ladies felt was followed at once by consternation: marriage to Sir Jeffery did not seem a happy fate. Still, after all their anxious conjecture, it was wonderful to know Isabella was whole and safe, and the four ladies drank a celebratory glass of wine together before Emilia and Lizzie returned to Haddon Abbey.
Also before they departed, Amy Lewis dared to ask Elizabeth if her brother had been heard from as well. On being told he and Weld had been advised to come home, the girl first turned pink, then white—the first from natural joy at the thought of seeing her Charlie again, the second from recollecting the voice of Susannah Lemon out on the balcony that terrible night in London. The poor girl had not been at all comforted by Elizabeth’s attempts to reassure her during the past few days; instead she had been spending all her time of late bravely endeavouring to reconcile herself to the idea of a Lady Halcot other than herself, without,
however, much success. The moment she was alone again she indulged in a good cry—not, as she scathingly reminded herself, for joy at Isabella’s safety, nor even for sorrow at the consequences of her rash elopement, but from her purely selfish misery at the realization that Charlie would now be reunited with his father, and so would have an opportunity to discuss with him his marriage to Miss Lemon. Amy tried, in the days that ensued, to pull herself together. That evening she came down to supper for the first time since she had been home, but she did not eat anything. The following morning she appeared at the breakfast table, too, but she looked more like a ghost than anything human. By the afternoon of the succeeding day, when the party headed by the Earl of Trevor at last reached Haddon Abbey, Amy had managed to exhaust herself utterly in these heroic attempts and was hardly even vigorous enough to climb into the carriage and visit her newly married friend. Lady Lewis thought it best that she wait a day in any case. The good woman could only imagine the kind of confusion and high feeling that must be rampant at the Abbey, and she thought it extremely probable that a visit even from so close a friend as Amy would be more intrusive than welcome until a little time had passed. And so Miss Lewis waited yet another day, listless and pale and trying to sound more cheerful than she felt.
When at last she did arrive at the Abbey, things had already settled down a great deal. Lady Trevor looked somewhat worn by her ordeal, but tranquil enough; Elizabeth and Marchmont were not in evidence. Lady Emilia told her they had walked out together in the village. “But I’m sure you have called to see Isabella,” she went on. “Let me go and fetch her for you.”
“Thank you. Is she—”
“She is astonishingly well, as you will see,” Emilia filled in. “De Guere’s having another long talk with Lord Trevor this morning, I think. I know Isabella will be anxious to see you.” With this she departed, leaving Amy to muse doubtfully on the changes marriage might already have wrought in her old friend. She was Lady Isabella de Guere now. How curious! Amy tried the name out aloud to hear how it sounded. She was trying it for the third time, still slowly and questioningly, when its new owner entered the room and threw her arms round her.
“Oh my darling!” exclaimed Bella at once, apparently quite as full of warmth and enthusiasm as she had ever been. Amy asked herself what she had been expecting. For some reason she had thought Bella would be more sober, or more wise, than when they had last met. But here she was, glowing with good health and pleasure at seeing Miss Lewis, drawing back from her for a moment to survey her better, then embracing her vigorously again. “How are you? I am so sorry I could not tell you that I was leaving when I went off with—ah, with my husband,” she ended on a choked giggle, releasing Amy and drawing her to sit on a sofa by her side. “Does it not sound odd to hear me say that? But he is my husband, after all. Have you seen him? Where is he?”
“Lady Emilia says he is closeted with your father,” Amy told her. “But how are you, Bella? Are you happy? Has he…do you regret—”
“No, I do not regret it one bit,” said Bella. “I would do it all over again just the same way, if it needed to be done. It was splendid, simply the most splendid adventure—you have no idea! Of course there were parts of it that were just the tiniest bit trying,” she added, thinking in particular of the second night out of London, when she had sobbed for an hour straight while Dorothy held her hand. “But I found the sweetest maid to keep me company,” she went on, “and you should see how jealous Margaret is” (naming the maid who had served her since she was fourteen). “She nearly had a fit thinking she’d been replaced. But of course I shall keep them both on, for I shall need a dresser as well as a maid since I am to be quite a grand lady, and live in London half the year round.”
Amy, listening, was reminded of a child who ransacks her mother’s wardrobe and joyfully dons her shawls and slippers, then smugly parades up and down before a glass with the silks trailing and the huge shoes clacking on the floor. She tried to put the image out of her head as she answered, “Is it all decided then? You will live in London and—where else?”
“Oh, you don’t think I am deserting you, my love, do you? We are to have Sturton Cottage all to ourselves during the other six months, so we shall only be a stone’s throw away from you. In fact I believe the Cottage is rather closer to the Nestling than the Abbey, don’t you think? How lovely that will be, Amy, only think. You will come and dine with us every day if you like—just you and me and Jeffery. What cosy evenings by the fire…I shall be a matron, you know, so I can invite anybody you fancy as well. Doesn’t it sound delicious?”
In point of fact it sounded rather ghastly than otherwise, but of course Amy could not say so. She was realizing for the first time that her Isabella was hers no longer, and it was beginning to make her want to cry. For a moment she thought Bella rather cruel for not recognising that, while the threesome might sound ideal to her, it only felt to Amy as if she were losing the intimacy she had always shared with Bella; but she soon reminded herself that this was after all the inevitable and natural order of things. One did not dwell forever in the bosom of girlhood friendships: one married and became a wife, and then a mother, and friendships subsisted as they might. Amy’s conviction that she herself was fated not to marry (for if she could not have Charlie she did not want anybody) made this home-truth even less welcome than it might have been, but her lifetime habit of struggling against selfish and useless thoughts came to her rescue now and enabled her to smile at Isabella with something like genuine goodwill.
“I am so happy you are looking forward to it,” she brought out quietly, patting Isabella’s hand. “Naturally I must get better acquainted with Sir Jeffery now. Do you know, I don’t think we have exchanged two words!”
“Of course, you are right—but once you do know him better, you will like him very much, I am sure. He really is the—ah, he is…” She stared off into space for a moment in silence, as if looking for words written on the air. “He has excellent qualities,” she finally said, with a little catch in her voice that went immediately to Amy’s heart.
“My dear, has he been unkind to you?” she demanded, horrified, before considering what she was about to say. “You do love him, don’t you Bella?”
It was clear at once that her friend was struggling to hold back tears. Her brave, reckless air had vanished. She carefully avoided looking into Amy’s soft eyes (for it could only have made her cry more, she knew, to see their tenderness) and answered, “Well, I must confess he is not…to say truth, Amy, he’s been a little disturbed since the wedding. You see, I’m not sure he gave—well I can’t be certain he gave enough thought to what it would be like to be married,” she went on, stressing the word enough, “for he’s been in quite an evil temper…” At this a tear did escape her; she brushed it away hastily. “One or two times he’s even…in any case, I think he will soon be accustomed to it, and we are sure to have a very…happy…life…together.” These last words were delivered so haltingly as to be painful, and at their conclusion Isabella buried her head in her hands and sobbed outright. Amy flung her arms round the weeping girl.
“My darling, don’t live with him until he’s calmer,” she burst out, again without knowing what she was going to say. “You mustn’t allow him to be unkind to you. I won’t have it!”
“I do love him,” Isabella asserted in muffled tones. “It’s just—he hasn’t at all seemed himself since…Oh, Amy, I must confess it to you, even if I never do to anyone else—I don’t think he really meant to marry me at all. In fact,” she went on, sitting up again, her face very white, “I sort of knew that before I went off with him. Of course I always meant to get married,” she clarified, “but I do not believe he did. Amy, I feel such an idiot!”
With these words she crumpled again, and cried for nearly half an hour, while Amy held her and comforted her. Miss Lewis reminded her again and again that she was not obliged to live with de Guere, even if he was her husband, and begged her not to do so until he was behaving
to her much more kindly. She assured her he would do so in time (though she had no way of knowing this) and repeatedly recommended to Bella that she stay in her father’s protection till then.
“That’s another thing,” Isabella broke in, sitting up again and dabbing at her face with a lace handkerchief. “My father has been absolutely the most angelic…it makes me feel twice as bad, you can’t imagine.”
“But of course he has. He only wants you to be happy,” Amy told her reasonably. “How do he and Sir Jeffery get on?”
“Well, naturally there is a great deal of…tension between them,” said Bella, sniffing loudly. She sighed. “But I think they will deal together tolerably well in the end. My father is trying to find some kind of—occupation for Jeffery, to keep him from what he calls his idleness and frivolity. He’s right, of course. Jeffery ought to do something with himself. And then he’s given us Sturton Cottage, as I said, and he’s going to help us sell Jeffery’s bachelor quarters in London so we can take something more suitable together nearer Haddon House. Oh, it’s just mortifying how good he is being! How could I have been so stupid as not to have confided in him in the first place?”
Miss Lewis did not know what to say, so she made little sounds instead.
“Even Lizzie has been decent,” Bella went on, as if this were the most astonishing of all. “And then my mother—! She has never once said a harsh word to me, not once since we’ve been back. I tell you,” she concluded, essaying a little laugh, “if my family were any better to me, I’d simply die of embarrassment. It’s all too much.”
Amy stroked her hand and smiled at her. She felt so sad for Isabella, she quite forgot about Charlie for a minute. In fact, she was meditating on how very lucky she herself was to be surrounded by parents and friends who loved her, and to have her whole life still ahead of her. When she did remember Charlie, it was like a little stab of hardship in the midst of prodigious good fortune, and she went home to the Nestling in much better spirits than she had been able to muster for quite some time. Isabella, collecting herself after Miss Lewis’s departure, felt somewhat comforted too: she had forgotten hitherto what solace Amy’s friendship could bring her. She resolved to regulate her mind a little better from now on, and especially to be sensible and civil towards de Guere. She would try to take the long view of things, she told herself; and though she had forgotten this three times before nightfall, she nevertheless succeeded in remembering it better the next day, and even better on the one after that; so that before the week was out, she was pretty much in the habit of approaching the mending of her splintery marriage with good sense and forthrightness. Heaven knows it did not come easily to her, but her hard work soon began to be rewarded. Sir Jeffery, at first too enraged at having been trapped by this insignificant chit to bother to get to know her any better, gradually calmed down and started looking about him in earnest.