A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  “And did you like it in London?” inquired Persephone. “Did you receive a great many offers of marriage? Do tell me all about it!”

  Elinor had some difficulty in complying with this request. She could not truthfully have said that her one London Season had been a great event in her life: her Aunt Elizabeth had felt that she did her duty in having the girl to stay at all, and since she and her lawyer husband did not move in very fashionable circles, she made no great effort to exert herself on her niece’s behalf; the parties to which Elinor had gone had been few and rather dull. However, it was certainly no part of Sir Edmund’s intentions for her to set Persephone against London. Equally certainly, the child’s prospects there were brighter by far than hers had ever been.

  “Well, yes, I liked London a good deal,” she replied. “And I did receive one offer, but I’m afraid it was not very romantic! He was a widower of over forty, and rather stout, and I could not like him.” She did not add that her Aunt Elizabeth had been so much disgusted by her refusal of this eligible parti (for the widower had been well-to-do) as to dispatch her straight back to Aunts Jane and Matilda in disgrace. “He meant well, and was kind, but I could not have spent the rest of my life with him.”

  “I should think not, indeed!” said Persephone sympathetically. “So after you did not marry the fat old widower, what did you do next? Has nothing of an interesting nature ever happened to you?”

  “Oh, then I became governess to a family in Essex,” Elinor said lightly, “and then it chanced that Lady Emberley needed a companion, and that is all there is to tell.”

  She was ruefully aware that she had skated over mention of the one event in her life which Persephone would have considered interesting, and felt a renewed stab of misgiving. Should she not have insisted on telling Sir Edmund the whole? He would have learned it from the aunts’ letters if he had read his way through the family correspondence in that desk of the old lady’s, but he had urged her to burn it all, and she had been glad to do so. Well, perhaps she had done wrong in allowing him to overbear her and persuade her to accompany Persephone to London, but at all events, she vowed to herself, now that she had been overborne, she would do her very utmost to justify the trust he so generously reposed in her.

  Persephone spent much of their journey from Cheltenham the next day busily plying Miss Radley with more questions about London and the Season. Sir Edmund had solved the problem of accommodation in the post-chaise, which was not built to carry three persons inside, by declaring his intention of hiring a saddle horse to ride part of the way, and getting up behind in the dickey if this exercise palled, so that the two ladies were able to talk privately. Several times, when they stopped to change horses at the posting-houses along their way, Sir Edmund noted that his ward was now displaying the natural excitement and anticipation to be expected of a young lady on her way to the capital for her first Season, and was very well satisfied. She had plainly struck up an excellent understanding with Miss Radley, and he congratulated himself yet again on the good fortune which had led him to the house in Royal Crescent.

  Indeed, it was not until Lord Yoxford’s chaise drew near London that the animated conversation between Elinor and Persephone died away. Both, for different reasons, were feeling somewhat apprehensive as the moment of arrival actually approached. Persephone had uncomfortable memories of the tremendous scold Cousin Isabella had given her on their last encounter; Elinor could not but wonder whether Lady Yoxford would really be as pleased to receive her as Sir Edmund thought. Still, the meeting must be faced.

  In the event, Lady Yoxford was discovered reclining on her sofa in the Grey Saloon with an expression of acute apprehension on her own pretty countenance, and clutching a vinaigrette in one hand as if her life depended on it. Quickly realizing, however, that nothing to cause her faintness or severe palpitations was likely to occur in the immediate future, she very soon set down this article. Her imagination, refining upon the Unfortunate Business which sprang to her mind whenever she thought of her young cousin, had led her to forget that even at sixteen, Persephone had been able to behave very prettily if and when she chose. She chose to do so now, and consequently found Lady Yoxford not at all like the hysterically outraged figure of her own memories.

  As for Elinor Radley, a very little conversation with her sufficed to show Isabella Yoxford that her brother had not been mistaken in informing her that he had found the very person to take charge of Persephone. Miss Radley’s quiet elegance and air of good breeding were all that Lady Yoxford could have wished for, and like Persephone (and indeed Sir Edmund) she warmed instantly to the humour that gleamed now and then in her new cousin Elinor’s eyes and smile.

  “Oh, I am so glad that you have come to us!” exclaimed Isabella impulsively, very much like Persephone herself. “And I must own that Edmund has been as good as his word. For he promised me, you know, that as my health is not strong, he would find me someone to help with Persephone’s come-out—and while I suppose it would be wrong of me to say it was fortunate for Cousin Sophronia to die just when she did, because it would be unfeeling to wish one’s relative dead, still, I cannot help but think that since she was bound to die at some time, it was remarkably obliging of her to do so now, and make it possible for you to come here. In fact, I call it providential! And certainly not what Cousin Sophronia would have liked, for she never obliged anybody on purpose.”

  Elinor could not help smiling a little at this view of the workings of Providence, but she secretly agreed with her hostess’s assessment of Sophronia Emberley’s character. There could be little doubt that, given any choice in the matter, Lady Emberley would have died as she had lived, to disoblige her family. However, Elinor was spared the necessity of thinking of a suitable response to Isabella by the irruption into the saloon of the younger members of the family, shepherded by Miss Merriwether.

  Elinor’s own childhood in her father’s country rectory had been a lonely one, and during her brief sojourn as governess at Royden Manor the little girls who were her charges had been kept strictly apart from the rest of their family, being produced in company only for half an hour after dinner, in their best frocks and on their best behaviour. It amazed her to find that, in this decidedly imposing house, Edward, the twins and little Maria were not only tolerated in the drawing room, but actually encouraged to romp and play there. Lord Yoxford and Sir Edmund even broke off their own conversation to swing Thomas and James up in the air, a performance which elicited shouts of glee from the little boys, and Isabella, quite forgetting to sustain a modishly languid air, showed an animated maternal interest in the storybook from which Edward was eager to read aloud to her.

  Before long, the twins were engaged in a reasonably decorous game of hide-and-seek. Miss Radley (who suspected, correctly, that a much rowdier version was commonly played in the nursery) won their hearts by purposely failing to tell them apart. In point of fact it was not too difficult to do so, since although they were identical in feature, Thomas’s face was a little thinner than his twin’s and his figure not quite so chubby, but plainly it was a great object with the little boys to confuse strangers, and Elinor gratified them by pretending, to be entirely at a loss when one or the other popped out from behind a curtain or sofa, demanding, “Thomas or James?” and uttering crows of mirth when she guessed wrong.

  Miss Merriwether, reminding Persephone of the pretty tunes she had been used to play for the twins two years ago, wondered if she would give them the same treat now? Persephone was very willing to go to the pianoforte standing in one corner of the saloon and lift its lid, but it soon became apparent that Thomas and James had now joined their brother Edward in professing utter scorn for such juvenile things as nursery rhymes. Little Maria, however, was very happy to be taken on her cousin’s lap and sung to, contributing her own mite to the performance by banging her plump fists upon the keyboard in a manner which Persephone tolerated with surprising good humour.

  The little boys were all a good deal more in
terested in the contents of the box Elinor had brought with her. This item had come to light in the attic of the Royal Crescent house, and must have stood there for more years than Mrs. Howell and Elinor liked to think. Inside it they had found a collection of curiosities: sea-shells, a delicately carved fan, some ostrich feathers and a blown ostrich egg, a miniature cabinet containing long-dead butterflies, a chunk of quartz showing amethyst gleams, an old and ornately pictured pack of playing cards, a kaleidoscope. It was hard to connect such intriguing frivolities with Lady Emberley: could she ever, Elinor wondered, really have been a child and played with those cards or that kaleidoscope? Presumably it was so, and her ingrained reluctance to dispose of any of her possessions had led her to keep the things hidden away in the attic all this time. It had immediately occurred to Elinor that the contents of the box were just what would have delighted her as a child, and she thought perhaps the younger members of the Yoxford family might like to rummage in such a treasure chest too.

  She proved to have been right. Edward, fascinated, pulled out all the drawers of the little cabinet of butterflies one by one; Maria took possession of the lump of quartz and hefted it in one small hand, looking as if she would like to hurl it somewhere but could not quite decide where; and the twins, unable to choose between all these splendid things, scrambled for one treasure after another. Isabella, exclaiming at the pretty shells and the ostrich feathers as happily as any of her children, cried, “How clever of you, Cousin Elinor! And do you really mean to say that old Cousin Sophronia kept it in her attic for years and years? Quite forgotten, I suppose!” At the same time, she removed the gleaming stone from Maria, and had just forestalled the child’s threatened howl of vexation by substituting a harmlessly soft but exotically coloured shot silk scarf, when her eldest son entered the room.

  Sir Edmund had withdrawn again with his brother-in-law to one of the large bay windows overlooking the street, and resumed his conversation with him. “Yes, I fancy I shall have to go up to Westmorland in the near future, to see for myself how things stand there. Canning will give me leave of absence, and so—” But here he broke off to greet the newcomer. “Hallo, Charley! Down for the vacation? It’s good to see you.”

  “Speak for yourself, Edmund,” remarked Lord Yoxford, visibly blenching as he surveyed his heir. “Good God, Charley, what the devil is that you’re wearing?”

  As it happened, the Honourable Charles Hargrave was wearing quite a number of striking garments, whose high fashion served mainly to accentuate his youth, although he optimistically fancied they made him look quite the man about town. His blue pantaloons fitted very tightly and were ornamented with much braiding, while his coat, of a deeper shade of blue bordering on violet, boasted rolled lapels and a collar standing up extremely high behind, as well as gigot sleeves which bade fair to rival in width those of his mama’s very fashionable gown. However, it was his fancy marcella waistcoat, composed of broad stripes of alternating crimson and salmon pink, which immediately caught the eye, and it was to this item that his father more specifically referred. Lord Yoxford was a tolerant man, but as one whose own sartorial tastes had been much influenced in his younger days by the quiet elegance of that famous arbiter of fashion George Bryan Brummell, he could not but deplore the decline in popularity of the Beau’s restrained style of dressing and the current tendency of today’s young fops (his son included) to sport waistcoats of violent and often contrasting hues.

  “It’s a waistcoat, ain’t it?” replied Charley defensively, flushing slightly. “Very latest thing—bang up to the echo, sir, I can tell you!” he assured his uncle, lest Sir Edmund, having been out of the country, should require information as to the current mode.

  “Very fine indeed, Charley,” said Sir Edmund, perfectly straightfaced. “Take no notice of your father; it is good to see you. I had forgotten that you’d be down from Cambridge this month.”

  Until Charley’s arrival the previous day, the circumstance had slipped Isabella’s mind too. Had it not done so, it would have figured high among her objections to receiving Persephone into her household. She entertained the liveliest fear that her eldest son, who had recently become very vulnerable to feminine charms, might fall an instant victim to Persephone’s undeniable beauty. The thought caused her to get up off the floor, where she had been playing in the most animated manner with her younger children, and subside on her sofa again, murmuring, “Pray forgive me if I lie down for a moment, Cousin Elinor, for my health is not strong!”

  She closed her eyes, but opened them again almost directly, glancing anxiously from susceptible young man to lovely young woman. However, her face quickly cleared when, after being introduced to Miss Radley and murmuring something civil, her son turned to his cousin and said only, “Let you loose from Bath, have they, young Persephone?” It was obvious that the passage of two years, though it had wrought considerable changes in Miss Grafton, left her still a child in Charley’s eyes, to be regarded as just another member of his large family, since he added with kind condescension, “Tell you what—I’m taking these brats to Exeter “Change tomorrow, to see the lions and tigers.” For Charley, notwithstanding the affectations of fashion, was a good brother to the younger boys. “You can come too, if you like.”

  But Persephone declined this treat, explaining that her very first errand in London must be to buy a pianoforte.

  “A pianoforte?” protested Lady Yoxford. “Why, you may play this one, my dear!” She indicated the piano at which Persephone had been picking out nursery rhymes for little Maria.

  “Yes, but not all the time; I should disturb you,” said Persephone, and then rather spoiled the effect of her thoughtfulness by trying out the instrument again, and pronouncing, “Besides, I need one of better quality than either this or the schoolroom piano, and Cousin Edmund says that is one thing he will not grudge me!”

  “I shan’t grudge you anything in the nature of a reasonable request, I hope,” said Sir Edmund mildly. “And this, my dear Bella, is a very reasonable request, as I think you’ll agree when you have heard Persephone play and sing.”

  “Very likely,” said Lady Yoxford, vaguely; she was not herself musical. “Well, of course she shall have a pianoforte, then—it can stand in the Yellow Parlour; yes, that would be the very place! But you will have a great many more purchases to make too, my dear: gowns, and hats, and—oh, all manner of things! So you will hardly be playing music all the time!” Persephone looked as if she might contradict this, but thought better of it as Isabella, her kind heart warming to the beautiful and unexpectedly pretty-behaved girl before her, and beginning to enjoy the prospect of bringing her out, went on, “There will be routs, you know, and balls and masquerades and assemblies! Breakfasts, and all sorts of evening parties! So we must lose no time in getting you a wardrobe. George, we should hold a ball for Persephone, don’t you think? Yes, I am persuaded we should! I shall not mind the exertion a bit, not now I have Cousin Elinor to help me. How delightful it will all be!”

  6

  How delightful indeed, thought Elinor, waking in London that first morning to see a dappling of spring sunshine on the prettily patterned bedroom wallpaper; to hear the voices of knife-grinder and seller of cresses in the alley down the side of the house, offering their services and touting their wares to the staff below stairs; to catch the occasional sound of horses’ hooves ringing out in the clear morning air as a carriage drove down Upper Brook Street. In Persephone’s place, she thought, she could have wished for nothing better in the world. If it came to that, she herself had very little left to wish for!

  She was slightly disconcerted, however, when her charge joined her in the sunny breakfast parlour and remarked ingenuously that it was not so bad here after all. “At any rate,” announced Miss Grafton, “I am determined to make the best of it, and one Season is not such a very long time!” What, Miss Radley wondered, did Persephone suppose lay beyond that first Season? She could only conclude that the child’s mind was still running on the
unknown suitor who, she surmised, had been left behind in Bath—or no, not in Bath: on a walking tour in Wales! For Elinor had not for an instant been led astray by the use of the plural when Persephone spoke of her absent friends. A walking tour in Wales, and in changeable spring weather too, was hardly a diversion commonly undertaken by young ladies, or even by an entire family. If there were more than one friend in question, no doubt Persephone’s swain was accompanied by some other young man.

  Well, if her fancy were engaged, it was very natural that she should regret the suitor from Bath for a while, but Elinor trusted that her thoughts would soon be given a new direction. Her guardian might hope that the prospect of parties and new gowns would serve that purpose, but for her own part, Elinor was tolerably sure that music was the best way to distract Persephone’s mind. So she drank her tea, ate her bread and butter, and proposed that they go and put on their pelisses, to be ready for Sir Edmund whenever he arrived in Upper Brook Street to escort them in search of the very necessary pianoforte, as he had promised to do.

  And really, thought Elinor some three weeks later, so much had happened in that space of time that the mind of the most lovelorn ought to have been distracted! The piano was duly procured. Sir Edmund, while willing and able to guide the ladies around town, was hardly required for any other purpose, since it transpired that Persephone herself was fully conversant with the names of the best emporiums to visit, and the makes and qualities of all the instruments they had to offer. Elinor wondered where she got her knowledge. It took her a long time to make her choice, and by the time she had tried almost every pianoforte in the establishment where her fancy finally came to rest, most of the staff of the place and quite a number of prospective customers had gathered round to listen to her. “Why, we are having quite a concert!” she exclaimed gaily, looking up and becoming aware of her audience for the first time. “Cousin Edmund, my mind is made up: I will take this one.”