A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  “But why should Grenville do such a thing?” cried Charlotte.

  “To be blunt with you,” said Elinor, her mind ranging back over her various mortifying conversations with Mr. Royden, “I fear he intended to compromise Persephone in such a way that her family would be glad to see her married to him! He—he has hinted at something of the kind ... Charlotte, I am truly sorry that you should learn of your brother’s character in such a way, but no blame attaches to you, none at all! To me, if anyone, for I did have some idea of it! But now, what should we do? Five o’clock, did he say? It is just on five o’clock now!”

  Her anger was increasing as she thought of what, it now seemed plain to her, Mr. Royden had planned for Persephone. It would explain, only too well, the advantage he had seen for himself in playing Cupid, as he had called it. Well, she, Elinor Radley, was going to have the last word! How very surprised he would be to see her coming towards his post-chaise instead of Persephone—indeed, she rather thought she would not let him see who it was until the last moment, lest he perceive the failure of his plan and drive off before she had a chance to say that highly satisfying last word! Snatching up the light pelisse which had covered her gown during the drive home from Richmond, she put it on, and pulled the hood up over her head. “Wait here, Charlotte, and try not to fret!” she said kindly. “I am only going to be a minute! If—if Persephone should come in while I am out, though, you had better not let her come out into the street, where I am going to speak to your brother. Just give her both those letters! And if she seems displeased with what I have done, tell her that—that the person whom I told her I had known in Essex was Mr. Royden. That will make her stop and think—and then she will not believe his lying letter, either. I am sorry to ask you to do this, Charlotte. I suppose you have left word with Mary, or with Mr. Stead, where you are gone? In any event, I shall be back soon!”

  17

  But she was not back soon. Poor Charlotte, sitting in the Yellow Parlour and expecting her return at any moment, became increasingly distressed as she puzzled over the significance of those two letters. Though never especially close to her brother, she found it shocking to believe him capable of the subterfuge Elinor read into his own note. And yet Elinor had sounded so certain, and as if she knew far more than she would say! What did that last remark of hers mean, about knowing Grenville in Essex? Of course she had known him in Essex! Charlotte could not understand; it was all a puzzle, and a wretched one at that. She only wished Conington might come and comfort her.

  Her wish was to be granted. When half an hour had passed, and Elinor was not yet back, the house, which had stood empty all day but for the servants and the indisposed Miss Merriwether, rapidly began to fill with people. The party from Richmond came home, the little boys all happily tired from exercise in the fresh air. Isabella went to the nursery, and after ascertaining that little Maria was perfectly stout again, though rather sleepy, said that she was tired too, and would rest on her bed until it was time to dress for dinner.

  The last member of the party, Persephone, was about to go up to the Yellow Parlour to find Elinor when she met Lord Conington, whom Beale had that moment shown in. Conington, going to call on his betrothed, had learnt from her sister Mary that she was visiting Persephone at Yoxford House, and had decided to follow her there and take her to drive in the Park before escorting her home. He and Persephone agreed that Charlotte and Miss Radley were likely to be found together, and they therefore both went on to the Yellow Parlour.

  Here, however; they found only the woebegone Charlotte, who rose with a gasp of relief at the sight of Conington and cast herself thankfully into his arms, before remembering the message she had undertaken to deliver to Persephone. She did her best to carry out her instructions, but was not very coherent about it, so that all Persephone could at first gather was that Elinor had gone to meet Mr. Royden in her stead. This intelligence caused her to stand perfectly still, her lovely brow rapidly becoming perfectly thunderous in appearance, while she uttered, “Oh, how could she? I suppose she meant well, but why must I be out today, of all days? How unlucky! When your brother said he could arrange everything, I did not think it would be so soon! But where is he now—where is the carriage? I must go!” And suddenly galvanized into motion, she made for the door again.

  “No, no, Persephone, you don’t understand!” cried Charlotte, tearing herself from Conington’s arms and snatching up the two letters from the table “That is, I don’t perfectly understand either, but it is to do with Grenville’s behaving ill in some way—I thought, oh, I feared so when I read this, which I found in his pocket—but here, you must read it! You had better read them both!”

  It was Conington who took the two sheets of paper from her, spread them out on top of the pianoforte, and then, with one agitated damsel on either side of him, studied them earnestly. Persephone, naturally enough, first turned her attention to her own much-delayed letter from Mr. Walter, and read it with dawning comprehension and delight. Her mind, both quicker than Charlotte’s and less understandably reluctant to attribute duplicity to Mr. Royden, leaped, almost as soon as Elinor’s, half-way to Elinor’s own conclusion.

  “Then it was all a hoax!” she exclaimed. “Oh no! Do you know, Charlotte, your brother told me, and he said it was in the strictest confidence, that he—Robert, that is—had been obliged to flee London in the greatest haste for pressing financial reasons, so that it was not safe for him to communicate with me directly, but knowing him to be a friend to us, he said Robert had turned to him for help. And he had this letter in his possession all the time! Oh, how could I be so taken in?”

  Poor Charlotte, ready to sink, was comforted only by the reassuring pressure of Conington’s hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t know!” she said faintly. “Oh, Persephone, I am so sorry, but how could I believe it at first, even when I found the letter? Though I could tell there was something wrong, and so I brought it straight here, indeed I did!”

  “My dearest, don’t distress yourself!” Conington told her. “You did very right.” Since he was in possession of fewer of the facts of the case than the two girls, he was still frowning over the letters. “Sit down, my love, and let Persephone tell us just what passed between your brother and herself.”

  Charlotte readily obeyed, and Persephone was composing her thoughts to try to answer Conington’s question as best she might, when another person walked into the room, unannounced and quite unexpected. Pausing in the doorway, Sir Edmund said affably, “Good afternoon, Miss Royden, Persephone—how d’you do, Conington? I’m just back in town, and Beale told me most of the family now at home might be found upstairs. Where is Elinor, Persephone? Good God,” he said, surprised, as he took in the nature of the expressions on the startled faces turned towards him, “is something the matter? What has happened?”

  At this three mouths opened to pour forth a torrent of disjointed information, but it was Persephone’s voice that eventually rose above the rest as she recollected the message from Elinor which Charlotte had delivered, and which it now seemed to her a matter of considerable urgency to impart to her guardian.

  “And so you see, ” she finished, “it was Mr. Royden, of all people, who behaved so shabbily to Elinor eight years ago—that must be what she meant, Cousin Edmund, and of course if only I had known, I would never have believed a word he said about anything! But she had not mentioned his name, which I suppose was to spare you, Charlotte, for though I’m sorry to speak ill of your brother, and you could not help it, all the same—”

  “Just a moment,” interrupted Sir Edmund grimly. Persephone’s revelation made him feel as blazingly angry as Miss Radley herself had been, not so long before, but the fact showed only in a certain tautness about his mouth. “Let us try to get this straight, shall we?”

  And by dint of some patient questioning, he and Conington eventually more or less achieved this end. “So,” Sir Edmund summed up, “as far as one can tell, Mr. Walter went to Germany on perfectly respectable busin
ess connected with his career, first writing you a note, Persephone, in which—but we won’t stop to discuss its contents now.”

  “I should think not, indeed!” said Persephone, with spirit. “It is private!” She had taken belated possession of the document in question, and was regarding it fondly.

  “Yes, well: this note, however, never reached you till now, but was intercepted by Royden. Or so we assume from the circumstances in which Charlotte discovered it. I wonder, though, why he kept it so long before approaching you with his kind offers of help, Persephone?”

  “I have been wondering the same thing myself,” Conington put in, “and I believe I have the answer. I fancy that this note having fallen into his hands, he may merely have toyed for a while with the thought of what he might do with it—after all, he is not entirely a villain,” he remarked to Charlotte, evidently meaning to comfort her. “But the fact is, he suffered some—er—severe losses at the gaming tables a few nights ago. No, my love, he did not tell you—” this to Charlotte’s gasp of surprise”—but he told me, for he applied to me for money. Which, Sir Edmund, having had a word with my future brother-in-law Stead about Royden’s proclivities, I declined to lend him, thinking it best to begin as I meant to go on.”

  “Wise of you,” agreed Sir Edmund. “But yes, I see your point: it was his pressing financial difficulties—not Robert Walter’s, Persephone—which may well have precipitated his decision to try making reality of something that had, perhaps, been only a fancy before: getting himself a rich wife by hook or by crook! A charming fellow, I must say!”

  “If only I had known sooner!” sobbed Charlotte, in her lover’s arms.

  “Try not to distress her,” Conington begged.

  “I am trying not to distress her, but by God, I should dearly like to distress her brother!” said Sir Edmund. “Well meanwhile Miss Radley, better acquainted than any of us with Mr. Royden’s true character and quite rightly distrusting him, was unaware that he had approached you, was she not, Persephone?”

  “You see, he told me not to mention it to anyone—and I knew Elinor did not like him,” Persephone said in a small voice.

  “So he managed to hoodwink you into believing that Mr. Walter had been obliged to flee his creditors—not, you know, something I would have thought a likely circumstance in connection with that young man,” said Sir Edmund thoughtfully, fixing Persephone with his very blue gaze.

  She hung her head. “I don’t know what Robert will say to me!” she murmured.

  “Well, I have a very good notion,” said her guardian, “but that’s hardly to the purpose now. This communication—” he indicated Mr. Royden’s letter with fastidious distaste, “arose from a previous conversation with you?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “He-he said he had only to make the final arrangements, and then he would transport me to Dover.”

  “Which Elinor, with her superior knowledge of him, took to mean—or so Charlotte says—that he had the intention of abducting you and thus obliging you to marry him, with your family’s approbation! Good God, Persephone, you do seem to be adept at creating an aura of melodrama about yourself!”

  “It’s not my fault,” she protested.

  “No: you merely infect others with your own liking for such heroics,” said Sir Edmund, more cuttingly than he had meant, for he could see she was upset, and had not intended to let his inclination to blame her distract him from the point at which he was driving. “Very well: so Elinor went out in your place to meet Mr. Royden, and tell him his amiable plan was frustrated. No doubt she had some very well chosen words to say to him! We learn from this—” he again indicated the letter—“that there was to have been a post-chaise waiting on the corner of Upper Brook Street and Park Lane at five, which is when you, Charlotte, say she went out. I saw no such equipage when I came that way twenty minutes ago. It is now nearer six than five o’clock. Where, then, is Elinor?”

  There was a moment’s stricken silence as the implications of what he had said sank in, and Sir Edmund looked grimly from one to another of his companions.

  “Good God!” said Conington, at last. “Why did we not think of that before? You don’t mean, sir—can you think it possible that Royden has—well, carried off Miss Radley instead of Persephone?”

  “Oh no!” moaned poor Charlotte.

  “It does look rather like it, doesn’t it?” said Sir Edmund. He was making for the doorway as he spoke, but there he was brought up short by an excited threesome chattering to one another in German: Franz, Josef and Johann, all remarkably cheerful, and followed by a rather flustered Beale, who exclaimed, catching sight of Sir Edmund, “Oh, sir, these foreign gentlemen—they would come up to see Miss Grafton, sir, and really, there was no stopping them!” It was plain that the three young musicians were delighted to see Sir Edmund, that fluent speaker of German; they shook him heartily by the hand, and embarked upon much excited verbiage in their own tongue. Equally plain, to the others present, was the fact that Sir Edmund was barely able to force himself to stay and listen to them for civility’s sake. Or perhaps it was also for Persephone’s sake, since after a while he cut them short, to communicate to her the drift of what they had been saying

  “Well, you may put all Royden’s fustian about creditors, and so forth, out of your head,” he told her. “It seems that your friends here have just met with some fellow from the Continent—a Flemish flautist, I understand?” A vigorous nod from Franz confirmed this. “Yes, well: a Flemish flautist who is himself acquainted with Mr. Walter, and indeed met and conversed with him on his way to Germany last week. He was then bound for the state of Heldenburg, just as he says in his note, where he intended to transact his business with all possible speed—again, just as he says there. By your friends’ reckoning, and given a good passage, he should be back in London at any time now. That is, if he hasn’t changed his mind about you, Persephone—damned if I wouldn’t change my mind over a girl as ready as you to believe such stuff,” he added, unchivalrously.

  Persephone took surprisingly little offence at this. “Yes, I should have known it was all a hoax,” she agreed. “And I am sure Elinor will say so too. But, Cousin Edmund, where are you going?”

  “To find her, of course-where do you suppose?” And he was thrusting his way past the three young musicians when Conington, who had been doing some thinking of his own during these last exchanges, said, “Just a moment, Sir Edmund!”

  “Yes?”

  “Another thing has occurred to me: suppose, after all, Royden did not mean to be in the post-chaise himself, but commissioned his servants to carry Persephone off? They might not have known Miss Radley was not Persephone!”

  “The same thought struck me, too,” said Sir Edmund, “since I can tell you, from my own experience, that no one who had any alternative would choose to go a long journey cooped up with Persephone in a closed carriage! No, I am assuming that Miss Radley has been bundled into this damned chaise, and borne off to be delivered to Royden instead of my ward, when she thought only to confront him here in the street. Unwise of her, perhaps, but in all the circumstances very understandable.”

  “And when he finds out the mistake,” said Conington carefully, picking his words with one eye on his betrothed, “do you think she is likely to come to any harm?”

  But Sir Edmund’s temper was visibly wearing thin. “Any possibility of that,” he said, “is just what I am anxious to avert.”

  With which he turned on his heel and was gone from the room, not stopping to shut the door, so that the others could hear him as he made his way downstairs, urgently commanding Beale to have his phaeton brought round again instantly from Lord Yoxford’s stables, with four fresh horses put to it.

  “He does seem concerned about Elinor, doesn’t he?” inquired Persephone pensively, of nobody in particular.

  At the front door, however, Sir Edmund seemed to suffer some further delay, for his voice could be heard mingled with that of another man, and with occasional interpolati
ons from Beale. The conversation, whatever it was, was brief enough, and was concluded by Sir Edmund, his voice rising in barely controlled impatience, saying, “For God’s sake, man, I’ve no time to discuss that! Not now! Oh, go on up, you’ll find ‘em all in the Yellow Parlour, but I can’t stay for anything whatever just at present!” And the door slammed behind him as the other man’s rather lighter tread was heard on its way up the stairs.

  No more than Sir Edmund himself did the newcomer appear to feel that he required to be formally announced by the butler. A moment later, to the inexpressible joy of Persephone, Mr. Robert Walter entered the room, crying,

  “Seffi! You are here!”

  The fact that he was there was perhaps the more surprising, as Persephone, from the depths of his embrace, incoherently tried to make him understand. She was not very successful.

  “But no, no! A good, swift crossing, a chaise and four, and I am back,” he assured her fondly. “What is all this about a note? Two notes? Liebchen, this I do not understand, but it can be of no moment now. Listen: though my father does not quite like me to marry an Englishwoman, all else is well, and he will soon come round to it, so do not distress yourself.” And he kissed her again.