by Anthea Bell
“Miss Elinor Radley,” said Sir Edmund, “is a lady who until recently was companion to my late cousin, Sophronia, Lady Emberley. Lady Emberley, who lived in Cheltenham, was close on eighty when she died, and I fancy that Miss Radley is of fairly advanced age herself, so you see, it wouldn’t do for me to visit her later in the day than the usual hours for a social call. Old ladies dislike having their settled habits disturbed, and she would think it very uncivil of me to visit her late.”
“But you came to Bath to take me to London!” objected Persephone. “Why should you concern yourself with her?”
Resisting the impulse to tell her that is was none of her business, Sir Edmund patiently explained, “Because in her will, Lady Emberley made me her heir and forgot to make any provision for Miss Radley. I had thought as much from my correspondence with her man of business, a Mr. Stanfield, and when I called briefly upon him on my way down to Bath he confirmed it. That’s a state of affairs which must be remedied at once, and I asked Mr. Stanfield to let Miss Radley know I would call upon her today and hoped she would receive me. So I must go there directly we reach the town.”
There was a pause, during which Persephone was evidently following her own train of thought, for she then observed gloomily, “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“What doesn’t seem fair?” inquired her guardian.
“Everybody leaving you their fortunes!” She shot him a hostile glance. “I mean, you inherited Grandpapa’s baronetcy, did you not? And his estate! It’s not right, when I was his granddaughter and you are only a nephew!”
“My dear child, you’re under a misapprehension!” said Sir Edmund, relieved to have discovered, as he thought, the cause of her ill humour. “Surely Miss Madden explained that your grandfather very properly left the bulk of his fortune to you?”
Persephone responded with a sulky nod.
“So you may set your mind at rest upon that count!” Sir Edmund continued. “He could not help leaving the estate to me, you see, because it is entailed. I assure you, I’d as lief not have it, but as his closest male relative I had no choice in the matter. Everything else, however, is yours, and that makes you a very rich young woman.” He wondered whether to add a little homily on the wisdom of being wary of fortune-hunters, but decided he was not yet on good enough terms with his ward to risk it. Better leave that to Isabella, at some more propitious moment.
“But not a baronet, though.” Miss Grafton was sticking to her guns.
“Well, no—should you wish to be Sir Persephone?” inquired Sir Edmund, gently teasing.
For the first time he saw a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous! Though I shouldn’t mind being Lady Persephone. That would sound pretty!”
“Alas,” said Sir Edmund gravely, “you should have thought of that before your birth, and aimed at the family of a duke or earl for your own, not a mere baronet!” He was pleased to hear this mild pleasantry draw the ghost of a chuckle from her, and continued, lightly, “Of course—not that one would advocate this as grounds for matrimony!—should you find yourself with a titled husband some day, you would be able to call yourself Lady So-and-so: whatever his name may be.”
At this, however, the brief sunny gleam in her eyes instantly vanished, and she said crossly, “Who cares for that? Such Stuff!”
While Sir Edmund agreed, he was a little surprised to hear this opinion expressed by a young lady of only eighteen who showed no other conspicuous signs of maturity. However, he said encouragingly, “Well, that’s very laudable and level-headed of you!” Perhaps, after all, this was the time for the homily? “I may as well say now, Persephone, that you are likely to have a great many young men at your feet, eligible and otherwise, and—”
“Well, I don’t want them!” snapped Persephone. Then a cautiously wheedling note entered her voice, and her pretty brow wrinkled as she said thoughtfully, “I suppose I cannot have control of my fortune until I am one-and twenty?”
“No,” said Sir Edmund firmly.
“Really not?”
“Really not.”
“Oh, it’s too bad!” she exclaimed pettishly.
“Why—do you think I mean to play the part of wicked uncle, and keep you without a proper allowance?” he asked, still gently quizzing her in an effort to draw her out of the dismals. “Come, Persephone, surely you don’t suppose that you will want for anything suitable to a young lady of birth and fortune making her debut in London!”
“London!” uttered Persephone, in tones of the deepest distaste.
“My dear,” said Sir Edmund gently, “I wish you will tell me why you are so set against going to London?”
She evaded the direct question, and resorted to counterattack. “You don’t know anything!” she cried, fiercely. “You don’t know anything about it at all!”
“No,” Sir Edmund agreed, “and I can’t help wishing I did. Won’t you tell me? We are your own family, you know. I won’t eat you! Nor will your Cousin Isabella—”
“Her! She doesn’t even like me!” interrupted Persephone.
“Oh, but indeed she does!” Sir Edmund assured her. Here, perhaps, lay the real root of the trouble: Isabella, who, in the heat of the moment, had no doubt expressed herself pretty forcibly at the time of the Unfortunate Business. Knowing his sister’s real good nature, he felt that Persephone was labouring under a misapprehension, and was only sorry that the matter had rankled so long. “I fancy she may once have given you a scold, my dear, but that’s all in the past, and she is most sincerely attached to you. You know that she doesn’t enjoy very stout health, or she would have brought you out last year—but now we mean to engage some suitable lady to help her take you about to all the routs and parties. And I promise you we won’t accept anyone for that post unless you yourself like her,” he added shrewdly.
His carefully judged words, however failed of their effect. “Some old cat, of course!” commented Persephone, flinging herself back less than elegantly against the squabs of the post-chaise. “But it is all of a piece! Thinking you can—can cajole me with routs and parties! Overbearing my wishes, just because I’m not of age! Tearing me from all closest to my heart!” she continued, warming to her theme. “Wrenching me from those I hold most dear!”
This was a little too much for Sir Edmund, who could not help mildly protesting, “Really, Persephone, you cannot have wished to remain at the Miss Maddens’ seminary all your life! Of course you hold the good ladies in affection, and I’m glad of that, but—”
“Oh them!” Persephone dismissed the Miss Maddens. “They were old cats too! At least—” as her conscience momentarily smote her—“at least, Miss Madden was. Miss Mary was more of a nice, soft old pussy-cat! But I didn’t mean them. I have friends in Bath!”
Sir Edmund hoped she would expand upon this theme, even if it meant he had to listen to a string of confidences about her girlish friendships at school, but she appeared to recollect herself suddenly, and in answer to his look of inquiry merely tightened her lips, adding, bitterly, “True friends!”
And she would say no more until, nearly half an hour later, as the chaise at last approached the spa town of Cheltenham, she roused herself to take up the conversation apparently just where she had left it off, remarking in the same discontented tones, “And now you are bent on dragging me with you to call on some other frowsty old cat! It’s too bad of you, it is indeed, and I think you are the greatest beast in Nature!”
3
Disposed as he still was to regard Jack’s daughter as a child rather than a young woman, Sir Edmund found this decidedly infantile burst of temper comical and even touching, but their arrival in Royal Crescent spared him the task of composing a reply of sufficient gravity. The chaise was soon drawing up outside the elegant, narrow facade of the house that had been occupied by Sophronia, Lady Emberley, until her recent demise full of years and—if the truth were told—full of ill will towards the greater part of her fellow men. This event had occurred over three m
onths before, and there were no obvious signs of mourning left about the house. Sir Edmund, who intended to have the place put up for sale, gave it only a cursory glance before directing John Digby and the postilion to find their way to the Plough, and then, with Persephone, mounting the short flight of steps to the front door.
A quick look at his ward’s face confirmed his impression that discontent and a sense of grievance were still seething within her. He thought, ruefully, that while he might be an old hand at dealing with the wilier politicians of Europe around the conference table, he had not the same happy knack with a wilful girl of eighteen. However, he knew better than to utter anything so sure to achieve the opposite of its intended effect as a sharp reproof, and said only, in a low voice, “I know you’ll make yourself agreeable to Miss Radley, Persephone. Old ladies are so easily flustered and distressed, are they not?”
Persephone cast him a suspicious glance, but had not time to reply, for the door was being opened by an elderly butler. His wrinkled face was wreathed in smiles, but to judge by his failure to respond to Sir Edmund’s civil greeting, he must have been stone deaf: he said not a word, but continued to smile with the utmost amiability.
A moment later, however, a neat, capable-looking woman in late middle age appeared in the hallway behind him. Straightening her apron and bobbing a curtsey, she launched into a speech of welcome, proving as voluble as the butler was silent. “And you must please to forgive us, sir, being all at sixes and sevens as we are!” she concluded, as Sir Edmund handed his hat and gloves to the old man. “For Miss Radley’s been that busy, sorting out my lady’s things—you see, sir, my lady never could abide to throw anything away, and if you’ll pardon me for saying so, oh, but she could be such a twitty old lady when crossed! Well, so it has all fallen on Miss Radley’s shoulders, and when she told us we might expect to see you today, why, Joshua here, who is my husband, sir, and Howell is our name, Joshua says to me it’s his place to open the door. But I says to him—for you must know, sir, hard of hearing as he is, I can make him understand me—how will you ever hear the doorbell, Joshua, says I? Why, Mary, says he, you must listen for it and give me a bit of a nudge, and then I can open the door to Sir Edmund, as is only right, says he, and you can take him in to see Miss Radley! So that is what we did, sir,” said Mrs. Howell, unnecessarily. “And now, if you and the young lady will just step this way?”
Evidently satisfied that he had played his due part in the proceedings, Howell had disappeared half-way through his wife’s speech. She was now ushering Sir Edmund and his ward through the hall, and into a drawing room which lay at the back of the house.
With memories of his draconian Cousin Sophronia in his mind, Sir Edmund hardly expected to receive so immediately pleasant an impression as he did on entering this apartment. The hall itself had seemed cluttered with graceless furniture, just the kind of thing he would have imagined the old lady to possess, and certainly the drawing room contained a number of similar pieces: large, dark and heavy, some of them covered by dustsheets. These, however, had all been pushed to one end of the room, which was not particularly tidy, and indeed appeared to be in a kind of transitional state, as though it were being progressively dismantled. But it had large windows, through which the late afternoon sun streamed in, and a bright little island of comfort and warmth had been created beside one of these, at the other end of the room from the crowded furniture. Here, a fire of fruitwood logs burned clear and fragrant in the grate, some elegant chairs were disposed on a handsome Persian rug, and there was a sizeable desk in the bay of the window itself, standing in a pool of sunlight. This desk was covered with neat stacks of paper, and a young lady sat at it writing.
Sir Edmund was looking about him for his late cousin’s companion, described to him by Mr. Stanfield as a very respectable spinster lady. Miss Radley, he knew, was a distant connection of Lady Emberley’s on the other side of her family from himself, and that was all the information he had about her. He now saw that the girl at the desk had risen, putting down her pen, and was coming to meet him.
“Sir Edmund Grafton?” she said, in a pleasantly modulated voice. “How do you do? I am Elinor Radley. I think Mr. Stanfield has mentioned to you that I was Lady Emberley’s companion for the last seven years.”
Rapidly readjusting his ideas, Sir Edmund said, “I am very glad to meet you, Miss Radley; let me introduce my ward, Miss Persephone Grafton.”
At a second glance, he saw that the lady was less young than he had at first supposed, being perhaps about five or six and twenty, and with a quietly assured manner that was not that of a girl. She was no dazzling beauty like Persephone, but nevertheless there was something very taking about the warm smile which extended to her fine grey eyes, her shining chestnut hair arranged in neat bands, and her slim figure in its sober dove-grey gown trimmed with black crape ribbon.
For her part, Miss Radley, who had felt a very natural curiosity about Lady Emberley’s heir, was looking appraisingly at Sir Edmund. She liked what she saw: a tall, well-knit and athletic frame, clad in white doeskin pantaloons and a riding coat of blue superfine; a lean, strong-jawed face with what she suspected were deceptively lazy blue eyes, and a humorous set to the mouth. The first grey, she saw, showed in Sir Edmund’s dark hair. From his easy manner, no one would have guessed how different he found Miss Radley from the elderly spinster of his imaginings, had not Persephone given him away by uttering a delighted trill of laughter (the first he had yet heard from her) and exclaiming, “Why, you’re not an old cat after all!”
“Well, I hope not,” said the other girl, gravely, “but one can never tell when old cattishness may overtake one, to be sure! I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Grafton.”
“You see,” confided Persephone, whose sulks seemed magically to have evaporated, as if unable to withstand the pleasant warmth of this room, “he was persuaded you were as old as the hills, and I have been most sternly adjured, I promise you, not to do or say anything at all, because old ladies are so easily flustered! Oh, how comical!”
“And how mortifying to me!” said Sir Edmund, smiling. He could not but be thankful for the improvement in Persephone’s temper which Miss Radley had instantly, and apparently without the smallest effort, brought about, but he added ruefully, “Will you leave me with no credit at all, Persephone? But for you I might have extracted myself from my misapprehension without anyone’s being the wiser! I see, Miss Radley, that I must confess I was expecting an elderly lady, someone of my late cousin’s own generation—though I really don’t know why. I dare say Persephone will now inform you that I have dragged her here against her will to visit you, because old ladies are sticklers for keeping correct hours!”
“No, I won’t, though you did say so,” Persephone promptly replied. “Because I think I am glad now that I came, and you did not take me to the Plough directly. So there!” she finished, challengingly.
“Good gracious, you mean you have only this moment arrived in Cheltenham? My dear Miss Grafton, you must be quite worn out!” exclaimed Miss Radley, with ready sympathy. “Do pray sit down—and you too, sir. I’m sure you would be glad of some refreshment after your journey.” She indicated the chairs by the fireside, pressed a bell near the desk, and when Mrs. Howell appeared requested some Madeira for Sir Edmund. “And is there any of your excellent lemonade left, Mrs. Howell? Good—then please bring a glass of it for Miss Grafton.”
“Thank you, Miss Radley, you are very kind. I must apologize,” said Sir Edmund, “for my late arrival; we were delayed on the road.”
“Well, I’m sorry for the inconvenience to you.” Elinor Radley had seated herself at the desk again. “But I own that, for my part, I was quite glad to have the time to finish putting Lady Emberley’s effects in order for you. The papers in the desk here were the very last of it—you may say that I ought to have completed the task days or even weeks ago, but—”
“I should most certainly say nothing of the sort!” protested Sir Edmund.
“It must have been a thankless task indeed! I collect there was a great deal to be done?”
“Well, there was,” she confessed, “for Lady Emberley was—was so very much attached to the possessions of a lifetime, and so given to habits of economy, that she was quite distressed by the notion of disposing of anything whatsoever.”
Was a miserly, acquisitive old jackdaw, thought Sir Edmund, adding his own unspoken gloss to this.
“Here, for instance,” said Miss Radley, pointing to a bundle of papers, “is what I do believe must be every receipted bill she received over the last twenty years. And this is her correspondence with Mr. Stanfield, which of course she did quite right to keep, and this—” she indicated the biggest pile of all—“consists of letters from her family, all preserved for many years, as you can see.”
“What an excessively boring time you must have had, sorting all that out! I fancy that a bonfire is the place for all but Mr. Stanfield’s papers!”
Sir Edmund was mildly intrigued to see a faint flush rise to Miss Radley’s cheeks, and wondered what he could have said to occasion it. But she answered only, “Do you really think so? I own, I am not in favour of going through life cumbered with old possessions and papers myself! But I don’t believe,” she said earnestly, “that I have given or thrown away anything of interest or value. Whenever we were in the least doubt, Mrs. Howell and I have been consulting one another. Ah, here is Mrs. Howell!” And the Madeira and lemonade were brought in.
“How delicious this is! Thank you!” said Persephone, sipping from her glass, and beaming at the gratified housekeeper. Once again, Sir Edmund was astonished by the change in her. Let the child but continue in this frame of mind, he told himself, and she will be back in Bella’s good graces directly—and if I know Bella’s kind heart, they will deal extremely well together! He drank some of his own Madeira, and turned back to Miss Radley once the housekeeper was out of earshot.