A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  “There you are mistaken,” said Sir Edmund, with satisfaction. “As I am sure you will agree, Miss Radley must make friends wherever she goes. Another pleasing circumstance is that she has met with some old acquaintances in town.”

  “Old acquaintances?” said Mr. Spalding, startled. “Why, she has not been in London since she was a young girl, and that was only for a month or so! No, no, how could she meet with any old acquaintances there?” He sounded peevish as well as proprietorial, thought Sir Edmund, his irritation with the man giving way to amusement, for all the world as if Elinor had no right to any friends outside Cheltenham!

  “This is a family where she was governess before coming to live with Lady Emberley,” he explained. “A brother and two sisters by the name of Royden, though the elder sister is now married.”

  This innocuous information, much to Sir Edmund’s surprise, appeared to have a powerful effect on Mr. Spalding. “Royden? Royden?” he uttered—yet not as if the name were strange to him. “Oh, dear me, dear me! Tut, tut! This will not do! Dear, dear, dear!” His face, working busily, was a good deal flushed. “Good gracious, this will never, never do!”

  Sir Edmund raised his brows. “Why not?”

  “But I thought you were aware ... I supposed ... perhaps you are not! Dear me, believe me, it will not do! The association is most improper!”

  Assuming an unaccustomed air of hauteur, and liking his companion less and less, Sir Edmund said coldly, “My dear sir, I am at a loss to understand you. I scarcely believe that the company my sister chooses to receive in her house can be described as improper.”

  This overset Mr. Spalding even more, and he uttered several disjointed protests as to his perfect confidence in the propriety of Lady Yoxford’s household, interspersing these avowals with exclamations of distress over this most unfortunate situation.

  “But have no fear!” he weightily assured Sir Edmund, when he had at last regained his composure and his powers of coherent speech. “I have made up my mind! I shall not fail! You may count on me—I shall do what I consider to be my duty!”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Sir Edmund, patiently, “though what I may count upon you for, I really have no notion.”

  “Ah, so you do not know all! I was beginning to fear it might be so. The matter,” pronounced Mr. Spalding, “concerns Miss Radley. If I were to tell you—indeed, I will tell you!” he finished, righteously.

  “Please don’t,” said Sir Edmund, coldly, for Mr. Spalding was someone with whom he decidedly did not wish to discuss his beloved. “I really should infinitely prefer you not to, Mr. Spalding.” His distaste rapidly increasing, he rose to his feet in a manner which unmistakably conveyed the impression that it was time for his guest to finish his wine and depart. This the clergyman did; he was briefly abashed, however, and said with a chuckle, as he took his leave, “Ay, well, mum’s the word, Sir Edmund! But I shall not fail you—no, indeed! How unfortunate it is that I am unable to leave Cheltenham just at present. The rector, you understand, is away, so that all the duties of the parish—and they, I may say, are onerous—devolve upon me! But you may expect to see me in town before very long. Pray, at what number in Upper Brook Street do Lord and Lady Yoxford reside?”

  Sir Edmund saw no way out of giving him the desired information, but hoped very much, as he saw his guest off, that he would not soon be turning up to plague them all at Yoxford House. Especially Elinor. By now pretty well accustomed to Mr. Spalding’s rhetorical manner, he concluded, correctly enough, that he had been referring to whatever youthful peccadillo it was Elinor had wished to confess to him on their first meeting, before taking the post of chaperon to Persephone. Seeing her distress, he had dissuaded her from doing so at the time, and he certainly did not wish to hear about it now from Mr. Spalding. Whatever it was, it was Elinor’s private business, upon which he declined even to speculate; he therefore put the matter out of his mind, and proceeded next day to Bath.

  After going to his hotel, seeing the phaeton and John Digby well bestowed, and changing into the correct attire for paying a morning call, he went to see the Miss Maddens. He was immediately shown into their parlour. Neither the unmixed pleasure on Miss Mary’s good-natured face, nor the expression of alarm that flitted over her sister’s countenance before she schooled it to impassivity, escaped him. He hastened to assure the ladies that Miss Grafton was very well, and without precisely saying so made them aware that this was a mere call of courtesy. From the relief he sensed in Miss Madden, he fancied that she had thought he might have come with a tale of some dreadful deed perpetrated by Persephone, for which her former mentors would be held to blame!

  “Yes, ma’am, she is surrounded by suitors, and has quite a little court of her own!” he told Miss Mary, smiling, in answer to her supposition that dear Persephone did not lack for beaux. (Selina had frowned a little at her sister’s ungenteel choice of noun, but Miss Mary was not deterred by that.)

  “Oh, I knew it!” she cried, eyes shining. “I am so glad. I was sure she would—would take, is not that the expression?”

  “Hmph!” remarked Miss Selina.

  “And does she prefer any one of them above the rest?” breathed Miss Mary, head coyly tilted to one side.

  “Not yet—and we are quite glad of that, as she is still so young. There can be no haste for her to become established.” Miss Selina, he saw, looked as if she did not quite agree with this, and might have been about to make some remark, but then thought better of it. “And I was fortunate enough to persuade a cousin of mine, a Miss Radley, to come to London as her chaperon.” With a slight effort, he prevented himself from talking any more about Miss Radley who, as a total stranger to these good ladies, could be of little interest to them, and brought himself back to the purpose of his visit. He had wondered, though not very optimistically, whether the Miss Maddens themselves would, after all, be able to throw any light on the identity of Persephone’s supposed “friends”, and so continued, “Besides charging me with her love to you—” Miss Mary, he saw, looked gratified, and Miss Madden decidedly sceptical—“Persephone gave me messages for some acquaintances of hers. Very stupidly, I have forgotten their direction. Perhaps you can help me?”

  “Acquaintances?” said Miss Madden. “Oh, you must mean her friends in the school!”

  “No, I believe these people reside in the town; does that sound probable?”

  “Oh, no, not at all! We never allow our girls to mix with the town people!” said Miss Madden firmly, a good deal shocked. “You must be mistaken, Sir Edmund.”

  Well, he thought, he had not been mistaken in supposing it would most likely be unprofitable to question Persephone’s schoolmistresses; whatever she had been up to, she had contrived to pull the wool over their eyes!

  “The name, as I remember, was Ford: Mr. and Mrs. Ford,” he said, proceeding to his next and more hopeful line of inquiry.

  Miss Madden’s brow at once cleared. “Oh, you mean the music master! That explains it! On occasion we do let the girls visit his house, where he has a very superior pianoforte, and the space to hold little concerts. I know that Persephone went, several times.”

  “I’m sure she did. Her musical gifts are remarkable,” said Sir Edmund.

  “They are, are they not?” Miss Madden sounded relieved again—as if she had feared that the excellence of Persephone’s talent might also be held against her personally, thought Sir Edmund. That would amuse Elinor, too; he must remember to tell her! “Mr. Ford,” Miss Madden was going on to assure him, “is a most accomplished teacher! The parents of all our girls have been very well satisfied with his instruction of our pupils on the pianoforte. Mrs. Ford herself plays the harp, and has taught some of the girls as well. When you said acquaintances in the town, I did not know it was only the Fords you meant. But let me write down their direction for you.”

  12

  The address to which Sir Edmund made his way was on the outskirts of Bath, and not in one of the town’s more fashionable str
eets. Indeed, it soon became plain that the Ford family would have had some difficulty in squeezing themselves into one of the elegantly narrow dwellings in the modern crescents and terraces. Theirs was a rambling house of mellow stone, set at the end of a long alley which had obviously been a country lane not so long ago, and looking out over an orchard of old fruit trees and a garden, with fields just beyond. Sir Edmund wielded the ornate but tarnished brass knocker, and was admitted by a little maidservant. He found that he had to raise his voice a good deal to make her understand his business, such was the volume of noise, all of it more or less musical in nature, that drifted into the hallway from the other side of several closed doors. One of these doors opened as he handed the maid his hat and gloves, and a very small girl appeared, carrying a violin half her own size. She looked at him with wide-eyed interest, and ran back into the room, where she could be heard shrilly informing Mama and Papa that there was a gentleman come to call.

  The melodious notes of pianoforte and harp floated down from the floor above; someone was blowing heartily into a French horn; and when Sir Edmund entered the room into which the tiny violinist had run he had a view, through the long windows at its far end, of a boy of about ten sitting among long grass and cowslips in the orchard beyond, earnestly fingering a flute, for all the world like a faun incongruously attired in nankeen breeches and frilled shirt. Even the smallest infants, it seemed, did not go without musical instruments here, for a child toddling along in leading strings came round a corner of the low garden wall, beating a toy drum, while its slightly older sister pursued it with an air of anxious maternity. A lady whom Sir Edmund took to be Mrs. Ford hurried to the window and called, leaning out, “Oh, Eliza, whatever you do, mind he doesn’t fall into the lily pond—remember, William has taken a part of the fence down to mend it!”

  The maidservant, not surprisingly, had failed to catch Sir Edmund’s name in all this cheerful hubbub, so that he was obliged to introduce himself to the master of the house. Mr. Ford, described by Persephone as old, was not so very aged after all, but a hale and hearty man in his mid-forties, with a shock of thick, greying hair, and an amiably distracted expression on his face. The room where Sir Edmund found himself was a large one, littered with music paper and instruments; there was a bird in a cage, and a great bowl of cowslips on an old oak chest which bore the marks of small, sticky fingers and could have done with a dusting. But that did nothing to detract from the haphazard charm of the place.

  “Persephone’s guardian! Well, well!” said Mr. Ford cordially. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Sir Edmund! Pray let me introduce my wife.”

  Mrs. Ford, having watched her two small offspring safely negotiate the garden wall and disappear among some currant bushes which closed above their heads, turned to greet Sir Edmund. She was a plump, rosy-faced woman with a sweet and slightly harrassed smile, and she adjured her husband to offer Sir Edmund the Madeira—“Yes, John, we do have some Madeira! Oh, Susan, pray fetch the cake,” she told the little maidservant. “My dear John, look in the corner cupboard—there, beside the bookcase!”

  Mr. Ford, who had been muttering vaguely, “Madeira ... is there any Madeira? ... well, I wonder where I can have put it?” did as she suggested, and with a pleased if surprised smile produced a decanter. “Good heavens, Amelia, you were right! How in the world did you know it would be there?”

  “Because that is where we always keep it, my dear! Now, some glasses...”

  “Glasses, yes. Well, well! Where shall I find them, I wonder?” But Mrs. Ford had already located the glasses, which were made of handsome cut crystal and were a trifle dusty, like most of the other objects in the room apart from the musical instruments. However, Sir Edmund had cheerfully drunk much worse wine from far more dubious receptacles in the course of his Continental travels, and sipped the wine appreciatively. The maidservant reappeared with a platter on which a handsome slab of cake reposed, whereupon quantities of children materialized as if by magic—how in the world, Sir Edmund wondered, had they known?—and went away again with slices of cake in their hands. “Only one piece each, mind!” their mother told them, as one tried to take his place in the line a second time. “No, Georgie, that is very naughty and greedy! Eliza, please don’t let Tommy try to stuff any of his into Baby’s mouth again, for you know that though he means it kindly, Baby is far too young to eat cake! Oh dear, you must forgive us, Sir Edmund,” she added cheerfully. “The thing is that the children have a holiday from school today, and Cook is busy with the dinner, and Susan and I have had no chance to tidy up, so that is why you find us all at sixes and sevens! But I dare say you won’t mind! Now, pray sit down and tell us how Miss Grafton is.”

  Sir Edmund, who had taken an instant liking to the Ford family, was happy to comply with this request. As he gave his news of Persephone, he could see the children through the windows and the open door, coming indoors and going out, wandering up and down the stairs, romping and picking flowers in the garden, and (as the evidence of his ears told him) constantly taking up and laying down a wide variety of musical instruments. None seemed older than sixteen, so he thought that any notion of Persephone’s swain being among them might be discounted. “Do all your children play an instrument, Mr. Ford?” Sir Edmund inquired.

  “Why, yes, sir, they all play something! It is only to be expected, you know, when both parents are musical,” said the music master, beaming amiably at his guest. “We sing, too; we can make up quite a little family choir. But alas, none of my children has a voice to equal Persephone’s!” “No, indeed,” agreed their mother. “But then, hers is outstanding!” She suddenly became a little grave, almost intense. “Sir Edmund, I don’t know if you are musical yourself, but perhaps I should inform you that with that voice, Miss Grafton might well rival any professional singer of the day!”

  “Precisely what my cousin Elinor has said to me—that is Miss Radley, of whom I was telling you. She was very much struck when she first heard Persephone sing.”

  “The thing is, I have been afraid she may not be able to continue with her singing—I have wondered if she will be able to get the voice properly trained, in London?”

  “My dear,” interrupted her husband, “I don’t suppose that Sir Edmund is much concerned with such matters!”

  “Then he ought to be!” said Mrs. Ford, quite fiercely. “For it would be worse than a shame, it would be a sin to let that voice go unheard! And such a loss—to everyone, not least Persephone herself!”

  “I feel sure you are right, ma’am,” Sir Edmund hastened to assure her. “Even I can tell that her performance on the pianoforte is most superior, and her singing is much admired wherever she goes, though I own that I am not competent to judge how she would compare with a professional singer.”

  Mrs. Ford did not look quite satisfied, but here her husband, who seemed to have been mulling over her remarks, spoke up. “You are quite correct, my dear Amelia, although,” he added wistfully, “I suppose that it is immaterial, in Persephone’s station in life. But I am competent to judge of her ability, Sir Edmund, and I can tell you it is a long time since I heard a singer to equal her. What is more, Amelia, you remember, I am sure, how young Robert praised her voice? And he had been in London quite recently, of course, and heard Sontag, and Vestris, and Miss Stephens and Miss Paton, and a great many more. Franz and Josef and Johann agreed with him too, did they not? The very first time they ever heard her!”

  Young Robert, indeed, thought Sir Edmund, not to mention Franz and Josef and Johann! He felt pretty sure he was now coming much closer to Persephone’s deeply regretted friends. And had not Elinor been sure, from an unguarded remark of Miss Grafton’s, that R was the initial of her lost love?

  “I collect that Persephone visited you quite frequently?” he asked.

  “Yes, indeed, the dear child!” said Mrs. Ford, her momentary fierceness gone. “I believe it did her good, you know—not that the Miss Maddens are not very excellent women, to be sure, but I can well understan
d that at times she felt—shall I say, constricted in their seminary? There were not very many girls there with any real liking for music, and certainly none with a talent approaching hers—sometimes it does seem a shame,” she said reflectively, “that young ladies should be made to play the pianoforte or harp just because it is an accomplishment, for if they have no taste for it, what good, pray, will it ever do them or anybody else?”

  “None at all, I imagine, ma’am,” agreed Sir Edmund.

  “Although perhaps we should not complain too much, Amelia,” suggested her husband, with a twinkle, “since we earn our bread by teaching such accomplishments to such young ladies!”

  She laughed. “You are right, John! Dear me, Sir Edmund, I become so provoked by girls who will not take the trouble to practise that I get quite carried away. With Persephone, of course, the case was very different. Yes, she got into the way of coming here—not just for her lessons, you know, but whenever there was a half-holiday, or we had a little evening concert in the big music room upstairs, which will hold quite a number of persons. I own, I miss her! The children were all so fond of her, and I do believe she loved them too. ” No wonder she had seemed rather disappointed in his unmusical twin nephews, thought Sir Edmund, recollecting Persephone’s arrival in London. They must have appeared sadly commonplace by comparison with this charming family of Ford infants who wandered in and out at will, playing on their pipes and fiddles!

  “And no doubt she met other young people of her own age here, from time to time?” he gently suggested.

  “Oh, yes, but there was not the least impropriety, if that is what you were thinking,” Mrs. Ford assured him—though a little defensively, he fancied. “She always had permission from Miss Madden, of course, and naturally, when we held a little Musical Evening of our own and invited Persephone to play and sing, I was there as chaperon.”

  “It all sounds delightful, ma’am, and I wish I could attend one of your Musical Evenings myself,” said Sir Edmund, with his warmest smile. “But about the other people who were there?” he quietly persisted. “Tell me, were they always persons who live in Bath? The fact is, my cousin has been in rather a worry, because Persephone seemed distressed to have left friends behind her when she came to London, although she will say very little about these friends. Of course, Miss Radley has suggested that she might write to them, and thinks she did so but got no answer—and that too seems to have cast her into the dismals. It’s as much to set my cousin’s mind at rest as anything that I wondered—”