There was a pregnant silence, while all the implications of this speech sank into the Vicar’s brain. He said at length, rather wistfully: ‘I had hoped that one day a suitable parti would present himself, to whom I might have given Arabella with a thankful heart.’
Mrs Tallant threw him an indulgent glance. ‘Very likely, my dear, but it would be a great piece of nonsense to pretend that such things happen when one has made not the least push to bring them about! Eligible partis do not commonly appear as by magic in country villages: one must go out into the world to find them!’ She saw that the Vicar was looking a little pained, and laughed. ‘Now, do not tell me that it was otherwise with us, Mr Tallant, for you know very well I met you first at a party in York! I own it was not in the expectation of my falling in love with you that my Mama took me there, but in your turn you will own that we should never have met if I had sat at home waiting for you!’
He smiled. ‘Your arguments are always unanswerable, my love. Yet I cannot entirely like it. I believe Arabella to be a well-behaved girl enough, but she is very young, after all, and I have thought sometimes that her spirits might, lacking wiser guidance, betray her into unbecoming conduct. Under Lady Bridlington’s roof, she would, I fear, lead a life gay to dissipation, such as must make her unfit afterwards for rational society.’
‘Depend upon it,’ said Mrs Tallant soothingly, ‘she is by far too well-behaved a girl to occasion us a moment’s anxiety. I am sure, too, that her principles are too sound to allow her to lose her head. To be sure, she can be a sad romp, and that, my dear sir, is because she has not yet enjoyed the advantages of town polish. I am hopeful of seeing her much improved by a season spent with Bella Bridlington. And if – mind, I only say if! – she were to contract a suitable alliance I am sure you would be as thankful as anyone could be!’
‘Yes,’ agreed the Vicar, sighing. ‘I should certainly be glad to see her comfortably established, the wife of a respectable man.’
‘And not the wife of young Dewsbury!’ interpolated Mrs Tallant.
‘Indeed, no! I cannot suppose that any child of mine could attain happiness with a man whom I must – with reluctance – think a very vulgar fellow!’
‘In that case, my dear,’ said Mrs Tallant, rising briskly to her feet, ‘I will write to accept Lady Bridlington’s most obliging invitation.’
‘You must do as you think right,’ he said. ‘I have never interfered with what you considered proper for your daughters.’
Thus it was that, at four o’clock on this momentous day, when the Vicar joined his family at the dinner-table, he surprised them by making a humorous reference to Arabella’s projected trip. Not even Betsy would have ventured to have mentioned the scheme, for it was generally supposed that he must disapprove of it. But after grace had been said, and the family had disposed themselves about the long table, Arabella began, not very expeditiously, to carve one of the side-dishes, and the Vicar, looking up from his own labours in time to see her place a slightly mangled wing of chicken on a plate, remarked, with a twinkle: ‘I think Arabella must take lessons in carving before she goes into society, or she will disgrace us all by her unhandiness. It will not do, you know, my dear, to precipitate a dish into your neighbour’s lap, as you seem to be in danger of doing at this moment!’
Arabella blushed, and protested. Sophia, the first to recover from the shock of hearing Papa speak with such good-humour of the London scheme, said: ‘Oh, but, Papa, I am sure it will not signify, for ten to one all the dishes are served by the footmen in grand houses!’
‘I stand corrected, Sophia,’ said the Vicar, with dry meekness.
‘Will Lady Bridlington have many footmen?’ asked Betsy, dazzled by this vision of opulence.
‘One to stand behind every chair,’ promptly replied Bertram. ‘And one to walk behind Arabella every time she desires to take the air; and two to stand up behind my lady’s carriage; and a round dozen, I daresay, to form an avenue in the front hall anytime her ladyship increases her covers for guests. When Arabella returns to us she will have forgotten how to pick up her own handkerchief, mark my words!’
‘Well, I don’t know how she will go on in such a house!’ said Betsy, half-believing him.
‘Nor I, indeed!’ murmured Arabella.
‘I trust she will go on, as you not very elegantly phrase it, my child, exactly as she would in her own home,’ said the Vicar.
Silence followed this rebuke. Bertram made a grimace at Arabella across the table, and Harry dug her surreptitiously in the ribs with his elbow. Margaret, who had been wrinkling her brow over her father’s words, ventured at last to say: ‘Yes, Papa, but I do not precisely see how she can do so! It must be so very different to what we are accustomed to! I should not be surprised, for instance, if she found herself obliged to wear her party-gowns every evening, and I am sure she will not help with the baking, or starch shirts, or feed the chickens, or – or anything of that nature!’
‘That was not quite what I meant, my dear,’ responded the Vicar repressively.
‘Will she not be made to do any work at all?’ exclaimed Betsy. ‘Oh, how much I wish I had a rich godmother!’
This ill-timed remark brought an expression of grave displeasure to the Vicar’s face. It was evident to his family that the picture thus conjured up, of a daughter given over wholly to pleasure, was not one he could contemplate with anything but misgiving. Several darkling looks were cast at Betsy, which boded ill for one tactless enough to call down upon her sisters a lecture on the evils of idleness; but before the Vicar could speak, Mrs Tallant had intervened, calling Betsy to order for chattering, and saying cheerfully: ‘Well, and I think Papa will agree that Arabella is a good girl, and deserves this indulgence more than any of you. I am sure I do not know how I shall manage without her, for whenever I want a task performed I know I may rely upon her to do it. And, what is a great deal to the point, let me tell you all! – she never shows me a pouting face, or complains that she is bored, or falls into a fit of the sullens because she is obliged to mend her old gown instead of purchasing a new one.’
It could scarcely be expected that this masterly speech would please the three damsels to whom it was pointedly addressed, but it had the happy effect of softening the Vicar’s countenance. He glanced at Arabella, who was furiously blushing and holding her head bent over her plate, and said gently: ‘Indeed, I am disposed to think that her character is well-established amongst us as one who wants neither sense nor feeling.’ Arabella looked up quickly, her eyes brightened by tears. He smiled at her, and said in a teasing voice: ‘If she will not let her tongue run like a fiddle-stick, nor express herself in terms which I might almost suppose she learns from her brothers, nor play pranks like a hoyden, I really believe I may indulge the hope that we shall not hear from Lady Bridlington that she is sunk quite beyond reproach in London!’
Such was the relief of his children at escaping one of Papa’s homilies that this mild jest was received with a flattering degree of appreciation. Bertram seized the opportunity afforded by the general outcry of laughing protests to inform Betsy in a savage under-voice that if she opened her lips again he would most faithfully drop her in the middle of the duck-pond on the morrow, which promise so terrified her that she sat mumchance throughout the rest of the meal. Sophia, with real nobility of character, then asked Papa to explain something she had read in Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia, which the Vicar, whose only personal extravagance was his purchase of books, had lately added to his library. This was a happy inspiration: while her contemporaries gazed at Sophia in stupefaction, the Vicar, becoming quite animated, expounded at length on the subject, quite forgetting the immediate problems of the hour, and reducing his other offspring to a state of speechless indignation by saying, as he rose from the table, that he was glad to find that he had one daughter at least of a scholarly turn of mind.
‘And Sophy never read a word of the b
ook!’ Bertram said bitterly, when, after enduring an evening in the parlour under the scourge of having passages from Sir John Malcolm’s memorable work read aloud to them, he and his two elder sisters had escaped to the sanctuary of the girls’ bedchamber.
‘Oh, yes, I had!’ retorted Sophia, sitting down on the end of her bed, and curling her legs under her in a way that, could her Mama but have seen it, would certainly have called down reproof upon her head.
Margaret, who was always sent up to bed before the appearance of the tea-tray, and thus had been spared the greater part of the evening’s infliction, sat up, hugging her knees, and asked simply: ‘Why?’
‘Well, it was that day that Mama was obliged to go out, and desired me to remain in the parlour in case old Mrs Farnham should call,’ explained Sophia. ‘I had nothing else to do.’
After regarding her fixedly for several moments, her brother and sisters apparently decided that the excuse was reasonable, for they abandoned the subject.
‘I declare I was ready to sink when Papa said that about me!’ remarked Arabella.
‘Yes, but you know, Bella, he is very absent-minded,’ said Sophia, ‘and I fancy he had forgotten what you and Bertram did on Boxing Day, and what he said about your inclination for finery, when you pulled the feathers out of Uncle’s peacocks to furbish up your old bonnet.’
‘Yes, perhaps he had,’ agreed Arabella, in a dampened tone. ‘But all the same,’ she added, her spirits reviving, ‘he never said I had no delicacy of principle, which he said to you when he discovered it was you, Sophy, who put one of Harry’s trousers-buttons into the bag in Church that Sunday!’
This was so unanswerable that Sophia could think of no retort to make. Bertram said suddenly: ‘Well, since it is decided that you are to go to London, Bella, I’ll tell you something!’
Seventeen years’ intimate knowledge of her younger brother was not enough to restrain Arabella from demanding eagerly: ‘Oh, what, pray?’
‘You may get a surprise when you are there!’ said Bertram, in a voice of mystery. ‘Mind, I don’t say you will, but you may!’
‘What can you possibly mean? Tell me, Bertram! – dearest Bertram!’
‘I’m not such a saphead! Girls always blab everything!’
‘I would not! You know I would not! Oh, Bertram!’
‘Don’t heed him!’ recommended Margaret, sinking back on to her pillow. ‘It’s all humbug!’
‘Well, it’s not, miss!’ said her brother, nettled. ‘But you needn’t think I mean to tell you, for I don’t! But don’t be surprised, Bella, if you get a surprise before you have been in London very long!’
This ineptitude naturally threw his sisters into whoops. Unfortunately their mirth reached the ears of old Nurse, who promptly sailed into the room, and delivered herself of a shrill homily on the general impropriety of young gentlemen who sat on the ends of their sisters’ beds. Since she was quite capable of reporting this shocking conduct to Mama, Bertram thought it prudent to remove himself, and the symposium came to an abrupt end. Nurse, blowing out the candles, said that if this came to Mama’s ears there would be no London for Miss Arabella; but apparently it did not come to Mama’s ears, for on the morrow, and indeed on all the succeeding days, nothing was talked of in the Parsonage (except in Papa’s presence) but Arabella’s entrance into the Polite World.
The first and most pressing consideration was the getting together of a wardrobe suitable for a young lady hopeful of making a successful début. Earnest perusal of the fashion journals had cast Arabella into a mood of despair, but Mama took a more cheerful view of the matter. She commanded the houseboy to summon the ubiquitous Joseph Eccles up to the Parsonage, and desired the pair of them to fetch down from one of the attics two formidable trunks. Joseph, who had been employed by the Vicar since the first year of his marriage as the farm-hand, considered himself the mainstay of the establishment, and was only too ready to oblige the ladies; and he lingered in the dressing-room, proffering counsel and encouragement in the broadest of Yorkshire dialects until kindly but firmly dismissed.
A pleasing aroma of camphor pervaded the air as soon as the lids were raised from the trunks, and the removal of a covering of silver paper disclosed treasures innumerable. The trunks contained the finery which Mama had worn (she said) when she was just such a giddy puss as Arabella. When she had married Papa she had had no occasion for such fripperies, but she had not been able to bring herself to give them away, and had packed them up and well-nigh forgotten all about them.
Three ecstatic gasps shuddered on the air as three rapt young ladies dropped down on their knees beside the trunks, and prepared to rummage to their hearts’ content.
There were unimagined delights in the trunks: curled ostrich plumes of various colours; branches of artificial flowers; an ermine tippet (alas, turned sadly yellow with age, but it would serve to trim Sophy’s old pelisse!); a loo-mask; a whole package of finest thread-lace; a tiffany cloak, which set Margaret peacocking round the room; several ells of ribbon of a shade which Mama said was called in her young days opéra brulé, and quite the rage; scarves of gauze, lace, and blonde, spangled and plain; a box containing intriguing knots of ribbon, whose names Mama could not quite remember, though she rather thought that that pale blue bunch was A Sign of Hope, and the pink bow A Sigh of Venus; point-lace tuckers, and lappet-heads; a feather muff; innumerable fans; sashes; a scarlet-flowered damask mantua petticoat – what a figure Mama must have looked in it! – and a velvet cloak, miraculously lined with sable, which had been a wedding-gift to Mama, but which she had scarcely worn, ‘because, my loves, it was finer than anything your aunt possessed, and, after all, she was the Squire’s wife, and dreadfully inclined to take a pet, so that I always took care never to give her the least cause to be offended. But it is a beautiful fur, and will make a muff for Arabella, besides trimming a pelisse!’
It was fortunate that Mama was an indulgent parent, and so very fond of a joke, for the trunks contained, besides these treasures, such old-fashioned garments that the three Misses Tallant were obliged to laugh. Fashions had changed a great deal since Mama was a girl, and to a generation accustomed to high-waisted gowns of muslin and crape, with little puff-sleeves, and demure flounces round the hems, the stiff, voluminous silks and brocades Mama had worn, with their elaborate undergowns, and their pads, and their wired bodices, seemed not only archaic, but very ugly too. What was this funny jacket, with all the whalebone? A Caraco? Gracious! And this striped thing, for all the world like a dressing-gown? A lustring sack – well, it was certainly very like a sack, to be sure! Did Mama wear it in company? What was in this elegant box? Poudre à la Maréchale! But did Mama then powder her hair, like the picture of Grandmama Tallant, up at the Hall? Oh, not quite like that! A gray powder? Oh, Mama, no! And you without a gray hair to your head! How did you dress it? Not cut at all? Curls to the waist at the back? And all those rolls and puffs over the ears! How could Mama have had the patience to do it? So odd as it must have looked, too!
But Mama, turning over half-forgotten dresses, grew quite sentimental, remembering that she had been wearing this very gown of green Italian taffeta, over a petticoat of satin, soupir d’étouffe (unaccountably missing), when she had first met Papa; remembering the pretty compliment paid to her by that rejected baronet when he had seen her in the white silk waist Sophia was holding up (it had had a book-muslin train, and there should be somewhere a pink silk coat, very smart, which she had worn with it); remembering how shocked her Mama had been when she had seen that rose-coloured Indian muslin underwear which Eliza – your Aunt Eliza, my loves – had brought her from London.
The girls did not know where to look when Mama sighed over a cherry-striped gown, and said how pretty it had been, for really it was quite hideous, and it made them feel almost uncomfortable to think of Mama’s being seen abroad in such a garment. It was beyond laughter, so they sat respectfully silent, and wer
e profoundly relieved when suddenly she shook off this unaccustomed mood, and smiled, and said in her own brisk way: ‘Well, I daresay you think I must have looked like a dowd, but I assure you I did not! However, none of these brocades is of any use to Arabella, so we will put them up again. But the straw-coloured satin will do famously for a ball-dress, and we may trim it with some of the point-lace.’
There was a dressmaker in High Harrowgate, an elderly Frenchwoman, who had originally come to England as an émigrée from the Revolution. She had very often made dresses for Mrs Tallant and her daughters, and since she had excellent taste, and did not charge extortionate prices, except during the short season, it was decided that she should be entrusted with the task of making all Arabella’s gowns. On the first day that the horses could be spared from the farm, Mrs Tallant and her two elder daughters drove to High Harrowgate, taking with them three bandboxes full of the silks, velvets, and laces which had finally been selected from Mrs Tallant’s hoard.
Harrowgate, which was situated between Heythram and the large town of Knaresborough, was a watering-place renowned more for the excellent properties of its medicinal springs than for the modishness of its visitors. It consisted of two straggling villages, more than a mile apart, and enjoyed a summer season only. Since upwards of a thousand persons, mostly of valetudinarian habits, visited it then to drink the waters, both villages and their environs boasted more hotels and boarding-houses than private residences. From May till Michaelmas, public balls were held twice a week at the New Assembly Rooms; there was a Promenade, standing in the middle of an agreeable garden; a theatre; and a lending library, much patronised by Mrs Tallant and her daughters.
Arabella Page 3