A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  Miss Grafton eventually consulted her as to the propriety of approaching the other members of the Lark Quartet for news of Mr. Walter, and Elinor thought there could be nothing wrong in a friendly inquiry. A note, duly dispatched to their lodgings, brought Franz to call at Yoxford House. He seemed at first to think he must have been summoned for musical purposes; all of the Lark Quartet were ready and able to play upon more than one instrument, and producing the parts of a clarinet from his pocket, Franz began to fit them together in a businesslike manner. But once the ladies had managed to convey to him their real reason for asking him to call, he bent his mind to the problem. Their conversation was rather laborious, although his command of English was a little better than that of Josef and Johann, and ended disappointingly in the discovery that Robert Walter’s friends had no more notion than Persephone of his whereabouts. As they had no immediate professional engagements together, Franz indicated, they were not particularly surprised at his having gone out of town without letting them know.

  “He is, perhaps, into the country gone?” Franz suggested.

  “Yes, to compose further passages of his opera, do you think?” said Elinor.

  “Ja, ja!” Franz thought this a happy notion, and beamed cheerfully at both ladies. “So ist es ganz sickerlich!” Aware at least that this signified assent, Persephone said, miserably, “But without a word to me? Without even writing, Franz?”

  He could only shake his head helplessly, and offered, “Shall I to his rooms go?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Elinor. “And we will come with you; why not?” So the party set forth to take the air, and a silent little party it was, for as well as the language difficulty, there were thoughts of their own to keep both Elinor and Persephone busy. Nor did anything much come of the expedition: Mr. Walter’s landlady in West Brompton, an amiable, motherly soul, could only say that yes, the young gentleman had left, in a great hurry (though paying his shot first), and no, she didn’t remember him saying when or even whether he would be back. But there, she added indulgently, that was Mr. Walter’s way!

  “Did he take his things with him? I mean, did it look as if he were coming back?” Elinor asked.

  As to that, Mrs. Jenkins could not say either, seeing as Mr. Walter preferred to travel light, so to speak, barring that precious fiddle as he seemed to carry everywhere with him, and he hadn’t brought much baggage to her house in the first place. However, she said kindly, she wouldn’t be letting Mr. Walter’s rooms to any other gentleman yet awhile, in case he should be back.

  Persephone did not look as if there were much in this to console her. And yet perhaps, on reflection, she had found a modicum of comfort in the good lady’s words after all, for on the evening of the day after their visit to West Brompton, she suddenly cheered up considerably. Elinor was glad of it, though a little afraid that Persephone might be clinging to too tenuous a hope.

  Had she known of the incident which really raised Miss Grafton’s spirits, she would have been seriously alarmed, but she remained in happy ignorance of this event. Miss Merriwether the governess was indisposed, so that Elinor had been in the schoolroom amusing the younger children while Persephone had her singing lesson. At the end of the lesson, Signor Pascali had recollected something, and said vaguely, as he left, that he fancied there was a gentleman wishing to see her: a gentleman who had spoken to him in the street, asking that she would remain in the Yellow Parlour after her lesson, when he—this gentleman who had accosted Signor Pascali—would come up to her. Having carefully discharged this message, he was gone, leaving Persephone full of sudden, delighted anticipation, for who could it be but Robert?

  She did not stop to reflect that it was unlike him to make such a secretive rigmarole about calling, as if on purpose to find her alone, or indeed that it was she who had contrived their occasional tête à têtes, such as the one into which Elinor had walked just in time to take Robert’s side. Her face therefore fell quite ludicrously when there came a tap on the door, and an interested parlourmaid ushered in not Robert Walter, but Grenville Royden.

  “You!” she exclaimed, in undisguised disappointment. “Oh, I’m sorry to sound uncivil, Mr. Royden, but—”

  “But you were expecting, or hoping, to see someone else? Well, set your mind at rest, Miss Grafton!” said Mr. Royden. “For I am that person’s emissary!” he dramatically announced. And he closed the door carefully after him.

  When he left thirty minutes later, Persephone’s demeanour was quite remarkably changed. It was with an effort that she suppressed her elation before Elinor, who must not know of the news her caller had brought. But suppress it she did, for had she not been bound to complete secrecy by Robert himself, through the agency of Mr. Royden? Recollecting all Elinor’s kindness, she did not like to keep such good news from her—but an awareness that her friend might not necessarily think the news as good as she did helped her to keep her promise of silence, and Miss Radley remained unaware of anything in particular that could have occasioned the obvious improvement in her spirits. No doubt, thought Elinor a little ruefully, the young were simply more resilient.

  Poor Miss Merriwether continued indisposed. The weather was at present rather hot, even for early June, and the governess, who had taken to her bed with a feverish cold, was further debilitated by the course of Blue Pills and quinine draughts prescribed for her, and found that the oppressive heat delayed her recovery. Isabella felt the heat too, and sympathized. She did not mind bearing her part in the care of her younger children while the governess was ill, but confessed that she was glad to have Elinor there, ready to take much of the burden from herself and Nurse. How delightful, in such weather, that her old school friend Jane, now Lady Darsham and widowed young, but with a comfortable jointure, should have invited them to spend the day! For Lady Darsham lived in Richmond, quite close to the Park. “So the twins may romp about there, and work off some of those high spirits. And Edward can play with Jane’s little boy Richard, who is just his age, and it will be so pleasant for the rest of us. Dear Jane’s house is a very pretty cottage orne, Elinor; you will like to see it, and so will Persephone.”

  Elinor was not so sure of the last part of this proposition, but to her relief Persephone assented to the expedition willingly enough, and did not seem inclined to remain in Upper Brook Street instead, in the secret hope of receiving some word of Mr. Walter, from whom nothing had been heard for nearly two weeks now. The party consisted of the ladies of the household and the schoolroom contingent, along with Peggy the under-nursemaid. The Yoxford family carriage was required to transport so many people, even if some of them were not very big, and it transported them at a sedate pace to Richmond, where Lady Darsham, a pleasant woman of Isabella’s age, made them welcome with an elegant cold collation. The house was certainly a pretty one, and the children all seemed ready to enjoy themselves. In the afternoon, they repaired to the Park, where the little boys all played, and Persephone and Elinor helped Maria’s chubby fingers to create a daisy chain, while the two mamas rested comfortably in the shade at the end of Lady Darsham’s garden.

  But perhaps the sun was rather too strong for Maria, or perhaps it was that her bonnet had slipped to one side a little: at all events, after a while she became fretful, and began to sneeze and complain that her head hurt her. “Oh, poor darling!” exclaimed Isabella, when Maria was brought back to her and clambered into her lap, where she sat contentedly enough, though still sneezing every now and then. “Can she have caught poor Miss Merriwether’s cold, I wonder? No, I think not, for that is a feverish cold, and Maria’s forehead is quite cool—but what can be making her sneeze so?”

  “I think it may be the pollen from the grasses,” suggested Elinor. “It does take some people in that way.”

  “Yes, you are very right; so it does. Oh, dear me, Elinor, what should we do? Ought we to leave now? What a shame, when I can hear the boys enjoying themselves excessively, and Edward is so pleased to see his friend! But perhaps, Jane, we should go ... I reall
y do not know!”

  After a little further consultation it was decided that, as the two mothers were reluctant to cut short the visit and spoil the pleasure of the four little boys, and Maria, though a little sleepy, seemed better now she was removed from the long grasses of the Park, Lady Darsham’s own chaise should be brought round, to take the child home with one companion. Elinor offered to go, and as she was a favourite with Maria, and Peggy was still in the Park keeping an eye on the twins, the offer was thankfully accepted. Maria dozed in her arms most of the way home to Upper Brook Street, where she was delivered over to the loving care of Nurse, and Elinor herself, with time on her hands, went to the Yellow Parlour to occupy herself by playing Persephone’s pianoforte.

  No one with any understanding of music could have mistaken her strumming for Persephone’s very superior performance, but the parlourmaid—the same girl who had shown Mr. Royden into the Yellow Parlour a couple of days earlier—was not musical, and almost at once put her head round the door with a conspiratorial, “Oh, Miss Grafton!” Seeing her mistake, she broke off, covered with confusion, a circumstance which mildly puzzled Elinor.

  “Yes, Molly; what is it?” she asked.

  “Well...” said the parlourmaid, doubtfully, and then, seeing nothing for it, held out a sealed letter. “It’s for Miss Grafton, miss, and I was to be most particular to bring it up the back stairs and give it her as soon as ever she came in. But I s’pose I can give it to you just as well, miss?”

  “Yes, to be sure,” said Elinor, and the girl’s brow cleared, as if she were glad to get the errand safely discharged. “Just put it down on the table there, Molly, will you?” And she went on playing until it suddenly occurred to her—as surely it had to Molly?—that there was something odd about a letter’s being delivered to Persephone in such a manner: up the back stairs and straight to her own private rooms, instead of being left in the hall to be brought up by the butler in the normal way. Word from Robert Walter at last? But the back stairs, Elinor thought, were not much in Mr. Walter’s style.

  She rose from the piano, and idly scanned the direction on the letter; almost at once she stiffened, and stood there staring at it. She knew that hand. It was some years since she had last seen it, but she knew it only too well. Grenville Royden had not been a man who composed lengthy love-letters—though she, she remembered wryly, had been much given to heartfelt effusions on paper, such as she now blushed to recollect! But there had been occasional notes of assignation. Oh yes, she knew that hand!

  What should she do? Wait, she decided: wait until Persephone came home, and then gently ask the reason for this clandestine correspondence. She could not like it, and something told her that it was not, as she would have preferred to think, a harmless and insignificant matter.

  As she stood there, a flurry of light footsteps came running up the stairs. Persephone, she thought; were they back already, then? Perhaps one of the other children had fallen a-sneezing too. But no. Next moment the door burst open, and in came Charlotte Royden, in a state of great agitation.

  “Oh!” she cried, as much taken aback as Molly had been. “I thought Persephone would be here—but oh, Elinor, I am glad to find you, for I think it might be better to tell you, and I must—I must tell someone!” With which words she became incapable of telling anyone anything, and cast herself on Elinor’s breast in a flood of tears.

  Perfectly bewildered, and thinking absently with one part of her mind that it would be very pleasant if she, for a change, were able to throw herself into somebody’s arms (preferably Sir Edmund’s) and sob her own heart out, Elinor patted Charlotte gently on the back, stroked her hair, uttered soothing remarks, and generally did her best to calm the half-hysterical girl. She at last succeeded in this endeavour, and said, guiding Miss Royden to a couch by the window, “There, Charlotte dear! Now, tell me, what has happened to upset you?”

  “Oh dear!” hiccuped poor Charlotte. “I am so sorry—I am not commonly so silly, only—only the thing is, I don’t know what to do! I thought at first I would go straight to Conington, but then I could see that it concerned Persephone, and so—”

  “That what concerned Persephone?” asked Elinor patiently.

  Still sniffing, Charlotte opened her reticule and handed Elinor a somewhat crumpled piece of paper.

  “This,” she said.

  It was in a hand that Elinor thought at first she did not know. A spiky, sloping, foreign hand. Then she recollected seeing certain songs written out by Robert Walter for Persephone; this note, too, was addressed to Miss Grafton.

  Plainly set down in a hurry, it nevertheless assured the recipient that all was well, that the writer, alas, had no time to call now if he were to catch the packet from Dover, but she was to rejoice! He had heard from Germany: the wished-for position at Heldenburg was his! He must make haste to present himself to the Prince and accept the offer, to see his father and tell him of his intended marriage—“and then, Liebchen, I return to England to claim you, within these two weeks, God willing. I adore you! In great haste,” wrote Mr. Walter, though not in too much haste to rule out the stave and add a couple of lines of music, which Elinor, sight-reading them, identified after a moment as the happy conclusion of that notable work Boadicea Queen of Britain, wherein the Knights of the Round Table offered suitable praises to Hymen.

  The note, she saw, was dated the very day that Mr. Walter had first failed to call in Upper Brook Street, occasioning Persephone such distress. “But Charlotte, how came you by this?” she asked, puzzled. “Yes, it is certainly for Persephone, but I would swear she has never had it!”

  “I was afraid you would say that,” said Charlotte unhappily. “I—I didn’t precisely come by it. That is to say, I think Grenville did.”

  “What!” Elinor’s eyes flew to that other, sealed letter addressed in Mr. Royden’s hand.

  “I had better tell you the whole,” said Charlotte, resolutely gulping back the tears that threatened her again. “You see, Conington gave me a little silver pencil, with a most ingenious mechanism, for writing in my carnet de bal and so forth—and of course I treasured it. Well, last night at the Winters’ rout, I let Grenville have it when he wished to write something down, and looking for it about an hour ago I remembered lending it to him. So as he was not in, I went to look in the pockets of his coat—the one he was wearing at the rout. I did find my pencil, but-well, I found that too. And I know, for she has told me, how unhappy Persephone has been, believing Mr. Walter did not write her even a word of farewell—but he did, after all, didn’t he? And there it is!”

  “Indeed he did,” said Elinor, thinking hard, and rapidly.

  “And I cannot—well, I cannot think what Grenville should be doing with it, unless...” Her voice faltered.

  “Unless he intercepted it,” said Elinor quietly. “Picked it up in passing through our hall, perhaps?” She was casting her mind back to the events of the day whose date stood at the head of Mr. Walter’s letter. “Was the coat in which you found it, I wonder, the one Grenville wore when you and he and Conington dined here, before we all went on to the play together?”

  Charlotte too thought, and nodded.

  “Then that is what he did! And he kept it from Persephone.”

  “But why?” cried Charlotte, baffled and unhappy.

  “That,” said Elinor, “I think we may now discover.” With no further hesitation, she picked up the letter Molly had left on the side table, and opened it.

  Like Mr. Walter nearly two weeks earlier, the writer was in haste, or purported to be. “I have now heard from Robert,” he informed Persephone, “and alas, he is in sad straits! Those jackals, his creditors, are hard on his heels! But as I told you, he swears he will not leave this country without taking you with him as his bride. We have contrived to arrange a passage for you both from Dover, but you must leave this very night, for I fear they will not be long in discovering his hiding place! Once in France, your minds may be easy. I shall have a post-chaise and pair ready
at any hour from five o’clock today, to take you up as soon as you can slip away and convey you to Robert in Dover. It will be standing round the corner from Upper Brook Street, in Park Lane. Believe me, dear Miss Grafton, when I say how happy I am that it has at least fallen to my lot to be of use to you in this sad tangle, and that I remain for ever your most devoted servant, G.R.”

  “Good God!” said Elinor, staring at this remarkable epistle. “What a farrago of nonsense!”

  “What?” inquired Charlotte anxiously.

  Elinor hesitated, and then passed her the letter. “Don’t let it distress you too much, my dear Charlotte, but I think perhaps you had better see it,” she said gently.

  It was a little while before Miss Royden could take in the sense of her brother’s note, and then she sat shaking her head in bewilderment, and saying, “But I don’t understand! What does Grenville mean? These letters—they cannot both be true!”

  “They are not both true,” said Elinor, who was beginning to feel extremely angry, “and I am sorry to have to tell you, Charlotte, that I place a great deal more faith in Mr. Walter’s veracity than your brother’s. Naturally you are fond of Grenville, and he would not show his worse side to you, but oh, I cannot go into detail now, but pray remember that I have known him for a good many years, and—well, he has not always behaved as he ought. However, never mind that now! So far as I can tell from all this, he has spun Persephone a tissue of lies about Mr. Walter, with the object of luring her away from this house with him, under the impression that she is to elope with her lover—something which I know very well Mr. Walter himself would not countenance! No, I don’t believe it for a moment,” she continued, taking back Mr. Royden’s note from Charlotte, and speaking half to herself. “Why, that landlady of his said that even in his haste, he stopped to pay what he owed her! How could Persephone credit such a ridiculous tale? If she had only thought how unlikely it was that he would not write to her himself—though I dare say Grenville told her it would place him in danger of discovery by these supposed creditors, or some such nonsense, and she believed him, for after all, one does not think very clearly when one is in love. Well! How very fortunate, Charlotte, that Mr. Walter’s own note has come into our hands, even if belatedly!”