“Indeed! Do you mean to make a long stay?” she asked kindly.
“No, oh, no! In fact, I am going back to London tomorrow.” He then thought that she must wonder at his having come over a hundred miles only to spend a couple of days with his friends, and at once created another friend, living in Wiltshire, with whom he said he had been staying for several weeks.
Serena, taking only a casual interest in this, introduced him to Major Kirkby. They all three walked on to the end of the street, where Gerard took his leave, saying that he was pledged to meet his host in Westgate Street. He then walked quickly away down Parsonage Lane, and the Major and Serena, turning to the left, strolled along in the direction of Bridge Street.
“And who is that young fribble? inquired the Major.
She laughed. “Rotherham’s eldest ward. He is guardian to all his cousin’s children, and a very bad guardian, too! He takes not the least interest in them, and this boy he holds in contempt, and is often, I think, very unkind to him. For there is no harm in Gerard, even if, in his efforts to be taken for a Bond Street beau, he does contrive to look very like a counter-coxcomb. I can see you thought him one!”
“Oh, no!” said the Major. “I have seen too many boys of his age trying to come the dandy! Most of them outgrow it quite speedily. He wasn’t at all glad to meet you, was he?”
“Did you think he was not?” she said. “He’s very shy, you know. I daresay you overawed him with your height and your grave countenance!”
“My grave countenance!” he repeated, a tinge of red creeping into it. “Is it so grave?”
“It has been grave since you returned to Bath,” she told him. “Did you find something amiss at home?”
“Not exactly amiss—some tiresome business, too long neglected! My mother is rather unwell!” said the Major, snatching at this excuse, and thankful for the first time in his life that his parent’s chief diversion was to detect in herself unmistakable symptoms of some deepseated disorder.
“I am so sorry!” Serena said, with quick sympathy. “I hope no serious illness?”
“No, I believe—that is, I trust not! The doctor was to visit her this morning.”
“I shouldn’t wonder at it if Bath is to blame. It was tolerable in the spring, but I know of no more enervating town to be in during the summer. It does not agree with Fanny, I know. Have you noticed how hagged she is looking? She says this heavy, windless weather we’ve endured now for a week makes her feel stuffed to death. I know exactly what she means, don’t you? I am conscious of it myself. Everything seems to be an abominable fag, and one becomes languid in spirit, and rather cross. That is to say, I become rather cross! Fanny was never cross in her life.”
“Cross you may be, but not languid in spirit!” he said, smiling.
“Hipped, then, and on the fidgets!” She glanced up at him as she spoke, and saw that he was regarding her with a little trouble in his eyes. She slid her hand in his arm, and said, in her funning voice: “You may take that as a compliment, if you please! Five days you were away! The only marvel is that I did not fall into a lethargy. I daresay I must have done so, had I not been occupied in thinking how shabbily I was used, and how best I should punish you!”
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
“Very much: it was a dreadful bore! I hope you missed me: it would be too bad if I were the only sufferer!”
He responded in kind; and spent the rest of the walk to Laura Place in telling her of the alterations to his house he meant to put in hand. He parted from her on her doorstep. She invited him to come in, and to partake of a nuncheon, but although he longed to see Fanny he knew that he must see her as seldom as possible, and he declined, saying that he had promised his mother to come home within the hour.
“I won’t press you, then. Pray, give my love to Mrs Kirkby, and tell her how sorry I am to hear that she is out of sorts!”
“Thank you, I will. Do we ride tomorrow, Serena?”
“Yes, indeed! Will you—Oh, confound it! Is not tomorrow Wednesday? Then I cannot. I promised I would ride with Emily to Farley Castle. Drive with me instead, later in the day!”
“Willingly! At what time?”
“A little before three o’clock? That is, if Mrs Kirkby will spare you to me.”
“Of course she will. I shall be here!” he promised.
She went into the house, and up the stairs to the drawing-room, where Fanny was seated, with her embroidery-frame in front of her. She looked up, and smiled, as Serena came in, but her eyes were heavy, and her cheeks rather wan. Serena said quickly: “Fanny, have you the headache again?”
“It’s nothing! Only a very little headache. I shall lie down presently, and soon be quite cured of it.”
Serena stood looking down at her in some concern. “You look worn to a bone! Tell me, my dear, wouldn’t you like to go away from Bath? I don’t know how anyone can escape being invalidish here, it is so oppressive! Shall we go back to the Dower House?”
“No, no!” Fanny said. “Indeed, I’m not ill, dearest! I daresay if the sun would but shine I should be in a capital way again. I don’t know how it is, but these hot, dull days always give me the headache.”
“We only hired this house until the end of August,” persisted Serena. “Why not leave it now? Do you say no because you think I don’t wish to leave Hector? Tell me truthfully, Fanny! I’ll go with you tomorrow, if you would like it.”
“Dear, dear Serena!” Fanny said, catching Serena’s hand, and nursing it to her cheek. “So good to me! so very good to me!”
“Now, what in the world is this?” Serena rallied her. “I begin to think that you must be more sickly than I had guessed! I warn you, if you talk to me of my goodness—and in such a melancholy voice!—I shall send for a doctor. Or shall it be the Dower House?”
“It shall be neither,” Fanny said, with determined cheerfulness. “I don’t at all wish to leave Bath before I must. Don’t let us prose about my health! Next you will be telling me I look hagged and ridée! Did you hear any news in the town?”
“No news, but I saw a new face: Gerard Monksleigh’s! I wish you might have seen him! Very much the Pink of the Ton, with shirt-points serving as blinkers, and a very dashing waistcoat!”
“Good gracious, I wonder what brings him here? Is Mrs Monksleigh here too?”
“No, he said he was staying with friends in the neighbourhood. Hector thought he wasn’t pleased to see me, but my guess is that—” She broke off suddenly, and a laugh sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I wonder if Hector was right after all? Fanny, do you recall my aunt’s writing to me once that Gerard had been very much smitten with Emily? Can it be that the foolish boy has come here to dangle after her?”
“He would be a more suitable match for her than Lord Rotherham,” said Fanny.
“He would be the worst possible match for her, my dear, for, setting aside the fact that he has no fortune, he is very nearly as silly as she is, and has not yet outgrown the schoolboy. However, it is not all likely that he will be a danger to Ivo, even if he has come to Bath in a lovelorn state. I notice that Emily’s flirtations are always with men a good deal older than herself: her youthful admirers she considers stupid. It won’t do, of course, if Gerard makes a cake of himself by enacting the disappointed lover for the entertainment of the Bath quizzes. I do wonder whether he was telling me a whisker when he said he was visiting friends, or whether he is lurking somewhere in Bath. It will be well, perhaps, if I drop a hint to Emily not to encourage him to dangle after her. She is riding to Farley Castle with me tomorrow.”
She spoke lightly, unaware of the fact that all recollection of this engagement had been banished from Emily’s mind. The four o’clock mail had brought her shocking tidings. Lady Laleham and Lord Rotherham were coming to Bath.
Lady Laleham was so obliging as to disclose the day of her arrival; Lord Rotherham, more alarmingly still, wrote at the end of a brief letter which all too clearly showed impatience, gathering wrath, and a determin
ation to claim his reluctant bride, merely that he proposed to come to Bath immediately, and expected to find Emily not only ready to receive him, but prepared to come to a point. He made no mention of Mr Monksleigh: Lady Laleham, on the other hand, telling her daughter of Gerard’s abortive call at Cherrifield Place, warned her that if, by some chance, he had succeeded in discovering her direction, and was even now in Bath, he must be sent instantly to the rightabout. If Lord Rotherham were to find out that although he had been refused permission to visit his betrothed Mr Monksleigh (who appeared to think himself a rival) was making up to her, he would be very (heavily underscored) and justifiably angry. So, too, would be Emily’s affectionate Mama.
The combined effect of these two missives was to throw Emily into a fever of apprehension. Converging upon her, each filled with rage and determination, were two dread figures, one of whom would certainly arrive on the following afternoon, the other perhaps even sooner. Between them she would inevitably be crushed. She saw herself being dragged by her mother to the altar, and there delivered into the power of one who by this time figured in her distorted imagination as a merciless ogre. That her grandmother might intervene to save her from this hideous fate never occurred to her, partly because Mrs Floore, not unnaturally, had refrained from expressing to her her opinion of her only daughter; and partly because it was incredible to Emily that her vulgar, goodnatured grandmama could exercise the smallest influence over the far more formidable Lady Laleham. Her only hope of support seemed to lie in Mr Monksleigh’s slender person. Terrifying under any circumstances though the approaching ordeal must be, she felt that if he would only remain at her side to protect her there might be a very faint chance of her surviving it. Or he might be able to think of a way of escape. It was true that the only plan he had so far evolved would not serve the purpose at all, since it depended for its success on the resolution she was well aware that she lacked; but when he learned of the imminent peril in which she stood he might, perhaps, be inspired with further schemes.
Her hope was not misplaced. After looking round the theatre, and perceiving, with a start of surprise, that Mrs Floore was in one of the boxes, Gerard hurried upstairs in the first interval, encountering Mr Goring’s party on their way to the foyer. He received a friendly greeting from Mrs Floore, a slight bow from Mr Goring, and from Emily a look so full of meaning that he at once realized that something of an appalling nature must have happened since the morning. Mr Goring being occupied in guiding Mrs Floore to a seat against the wall, it was an easy matter for Gerard to whisk Emily to the other end of the foyer, where in an urgent undervoice she told him of the letters she had received, and besought his counsel and support.
He showed no tendency to minimize the danger. Indeed, he was more inclined to magnify it. The intelligence that his guardian was coming, like Nemesis, to Bath, transfixed him with dismay, and set his wits working faster than ever before in his life. Emily’s timid suggestion that he should come to Beaufort Square to confront Rotherham at her side, he dismissed hastily, saying with great vehemence: “Useless!”
Emily wrung her hands. “They will make me do just as they say, then! I can’t—I can’t tell them I w-won’t, Gerard! Oh, do you think Mama and Lady Serena may be right, and it won’t be so very dreadful to be married to Lord Rotherham?”
“No,” said Gerard positively. “It would be far worse than you dream of! I tell you this, Emily, Rotherham is a tyrant! He will make you wholly subservient to his will. I have cause to know! You cannot yet have seen him in one of his rages, my poor darling! They are quite ungoverned! His servants are all terrified of him, and with good cause!” He saw that her face was perfectly white, and pressed home his advantage. “You must not meet him! All will be lost, if you come within reach of that—that ruthless despotism! Emily, we must elope!”
It was not to be expected that she would instantly perceive the advantages of this course. She was, in fact, shocked by such a suggestion, but by the time Gerard had regaled her with an account of his own sufferings at Rotherham’s hands, and some liberal prophecies of the horrors in store for her; and had declared himself to be incapable of imagining the extent or effects of the Marquis’s wrath, when he discovered—as discover he would—what had been going on in Bath, she was ready to consent to any measure that would rescue her from her Andromeda-like plight. People were beginning to leave the foyer; Gerard had only time, before Mrs Floore bore down upon them, to warn her not to breathe a word to her, but to meet him in Queen’s Square at ten o’clock on the following morning. “Leave everything to me!” he ordered. “Once in my care you are safe!”
These somewhat grandiloquent words were music to her ears. Naturally dependent, she was only too thankful to be able to cast her cares on to his shoulders; and now that he had ceased to counsel her to face her tyrants with resolution she began to think that she might like him very well as a husband. At least he was kind, and gentle, and loved her very much; and although he was not her ideal she supposed that they might live very contentedly together.
Her mind relieved of its paramount dread, she was able to listen to the rest of the play with tolerable enjoyment, but she did not recover her vivacity, her attitude being languid and listless enough to make Mrs Floore say, as soon as Mr Goring had escorted them home: “Now, Emma-love, you just tell Grandma what’s the matter, and no nonsense! If you’re looking like a drowned mouse all because your ma is coming to stay with me tomorrow, you’re a goosecap! Now, ain’t you?”
“I—I am afraid Mama means to take me away from you, Grandmama!” faltered Emily.
“Bless your sweet heart!” exclaimed Mrs Floore, planting a smacking kiss upon her cheek. “So you don’t want to leave your grandma! Well, I don’t deny I love to hear you say so, my pet, but there’s reason in all things, and I can’t say that I’m surprised your ma’s got to be a trifle impatient. I’ll be bound she’s got her head full of your bride-clothes by this time—and so will you have before you are very much older! Lord, how I do look forward to reading all about you when you’re a Marchioness! You think about what’s before you, pet, and never mind about your old grandma!”
This bracing speech, excellent in intention though it was, shut the door on confidence. Grandmama, as much as Mama, wished to see Emily a Marchioness. Emily kissed her, and went upstairs to bed, planning her escape on the morrow, praying that it might not be frustrated by the arrival of her betrothed, and wondering where Gerard meant to take her.
20
Serena, arriving in Beaufort Square at eleven o’clock on the following morning, mounted on her good-looking mare, and attended by her groom, was a little surprised not to see a livery horse waiting outside Mrs Floore’s house. Fully alive to the honour of being invited to ride with so noted a horsewoman, Emily had formed the practice, on these occasions, of ordering her hired hack to be brought round quite twenty minutes too soon, and of running out of the house, the instant she saw, from her lookout in the dining-room window, that neat figure rounding the corner of the square.
“You had better knock on the door, Fobbing,” Serena said, holding out her hand for his bridle.
He gave it to her, but before he had reached the front door, it opened, and Mr Goring stepped out. He came up to the mare, and, looking gravely into the beautiful face above him, said: “Lady Serena, Mrs Floore desires me to ask you if you will be so good as to come into the house for a moment.”
Her brows rose swiftly. “I will do so, certainly. Is anything amiss?”
“I am afraid—very much amiss,” he replied, in a heavy tone. He held up his hand. “May I assist you to—”
“No, I thank you.” One deft, practised movement, and her voluminous skirt was clear of the pommels. The next instant she was on the ground, and giving her bridle into Fobbing’s hand. She caught up her skirt, swinging it over her arm, and went with Mr Goring into the house. “Is Emily ill?” she asked.
“No, not ill. It will be better, I daresay, if you learn from Mrs Floore what has o
ccurred. I myself arrived here only a short time ago, and—But I will take you up to Mrs Floore! I should warn you that you will find her in considerable distress, Lady Serena.”
“Good God, what can have happened?” she exclaimed, hurrying towards the stairs, her whip still in her hand.
He followed close on her booted heels, and on the first floor slid in front of her, to open the door into the drawing-room. Serena went in, with her free stride, but checked in astonished dismay at the spectacle that met her eyes. The redoubtable Mrs Floore, still attired in her dressing-gown, was lying back in a deep wing-chair, her housekeeper holding burnt feathers to her nose, and her maid kneeling before her and chafing her hands.
“My dear ma’am—! For heaven’s sake, what dreadful accident has befallen?” Serena demanded.
The housekeeper, shedding tears, sobbed: “It’s her poor heart, my lady! The shock gave her such palpitations as was like to have carried her off! Years ago, the doctor told me she should take care, and now see what’s come of it! Oh, my lady, what a serpent’s tooth she has nourished in her bosom!”
The maid, much moved, began to sob in sympathy. Mrs Floore, whose usually rubicund countenance Serena saw to have assumed an alarmingly grey tinge, opened her eyes, and said faintly: “Oh, my dear! What shall I do? Why didn’t she tell me? Oh, what a silly, blind fool I have been! I thought—What am I to do?”
Serena, casting her whip on to the table, and stripping off her elegant gauntlets, said, in her authoritative way: “You shall remain perfectly quiet, dear ma’am, until you are a little restored. Get up off the floor, woman, and fetch some hartshorn, or a cordial, to your mistress immediately! And take those feathers away, you idiot! Mr Goring, be so good as to help me move her on to the sofa!”
He was very willing, but a little doubtful, and said in a low voice: “I had better call up the butler: she is too heavy for you, ma’am!”
Serena, who had quickly arranged some cushions at the head of the sofa, merely replied briefly: “Take her shoulders, and do not talk nonsense!”
Bath Tangle Page 27