A London Season

by Anthea Bell

  “Two of them—hm,” said Sir Edmund thoughtfully. “And he has left them both here, while he goes haring off to London?” She nodded. “Well, if I could take at least one by surprise ... do you think, my love, you could make a pretence of strong hysterics?”

  “I hardly need to pretend!” she said ruefully. “If I had only kept my head better, they would never had had a chance to knock you down! And you are quite right, we should get out of here, because I am persuaded you ought to see a doctor.”

  “Now, that’s well thought of—not that I share your opinion, but let us try for a fit of hysterics, in the course of which you make it clear that you are seriously alarmed for my health. Can you manage that?”

  “Easily,” said Elinor, shuddering at the memory of those dreadful few minutes when she had thought he might be more than momentarily stunned.

  “Then let’s see what we can do.”

  It proved simpler than might have been expected. Elinor hammered loudly upon the door, screaming at the top of her voice, “Is there anyone there? You must come at once! Oh, is there nobody there?” In a little while these tactics brought heavy footsteps treading along the passage, and Joe’s hoarse voice adjured her to shut her row. Ignoring Joe, she continued, in frantic tones, “Is Mr. Royden there? I must see Mr. Royden!”

  “Can’t,” said Joe succinctly. “He’ve gone to Lunnon, haven’t he?”

  “Then you must fetch a doctor! At once!” she said urgently. “For it was you who hit poor Sir Edmund, wasn’t it? And I can tell you, you will very likely hang for it! Oh, I am so afraid! He is dreadfully pale, and—and his breathing has changed most alarmingly!”

  Giving her an encouraging smile, Sir Edmund lent colour to this statement by drawing several extremely noisy breaths, intermingled with rattles and snores. The man on the other side of the door was presumably impressed by these stage effects, for he hesitated, apparently in a quandary, and eventually, when urged once again by Elinor to think that Sir Edmund’s death would be laid at his door, summoned his companion. “Here, Bob—come and hark at this, will ‘ee?”

  More footsteps in the passage heralded the arrival of Bob, whom Sir Edmund obliged with an increase in the volume of his noisy breathing, while Elinor, summoning up histrionic powers which she had never suspected in herself, declared plaintively, “There! Am I to be left alone in a room with a dying man? I dare say you will both hang, for you may be very sure Mr. Royden will not put himself out to shield you, so if I were you, I would summon a doctor instantly!”

  A whispered conference ensued between Bob and Joe, at the end of which Joe said, guardedly, “Reckon we’d best take a look first, miss. Now, don’t you try nothing on!”

  “Don’t be absurd; how could I?” snapped Elinor, as one at the end of her tether. “Yes, do take a look, and then tell me if he does not stand in need of medical attention.”

  In the event, as Sir Edmund, perhaps influenced by the prospering of his love, had made a remarkably good recovery from the blow which knocked him unconscious, it was his assailant who soon stood in more need of a physician. Joe fell an easy victim to Sir Edmund’s swift lunge the moment the door was opened, and while he fell stunned to the floor, Elinor seized her chance to put out a foot to trip up the other man, Bob, whom she sent flying.

  “Good girl!” said Sir Edmund approvingly, as he picked up Bob’s cudgel and dealt its owner an efficient blow. He surveyed his handiwork, rather pleased with himself. “You might not think it, but I’m a peaceable sort of fellow in general,” he remarked. He then turned briskly to the task of tying up the pair with their own belts, and a couple of ropes that Elinor fetched from the drawing room, where they had been holding back the curtains. By the time he had finished the two men were beginning to stir and to utter imprecations, but he took no notice of these, stopping only after he and Elinor had left the little room and locked the door, to toss the key out of the nearest unshuttered window. It fell almost soundlessly among unseen foliage.

  “The shrubbery, I think,” said Elinor. “Which must be excessively wild and tangled by now.”

  “Good,” said Sir Edmund. “Not that I suppose Mr. Royden will have their welfare very much at heart, but anyone else looking for them will probably have to summon aid to break down that door! Now—did you say there was a housekeeper in the place?”

  “Yes, but she is very deaf. I don’t think she will hear us if we tread cautiously going past the kitchen, and I fancy that will be the best way to go, because the back door is less likely to be locked.”

  Elinor led the way along the corridors to the servants’ quarters. Her memories of the house were accurate; after all, she had spent long enough in going wretchedly over and over in her mind those few months of her brief career as governess here. As they passed the kitchen, whose door stood ajar, they .glanced in; sure enough, it was deserted except for the old lady who sat dozing in the chimney corner, cap awry, and quite undisturbed by the shouts now beginning to sound faintly behind them.

  In a moment they had carefully pulled back the bolts of the door that led out to the stable yard. They stood here for a moment taking deep breaths of the evening air, pleasantly scented as it blew from the tangled wild flowers that had invaded the now twilit gardens.

  “Very well: now for my phaeton,” said Sir Edmund briskly. “And if I can obtain fresh horses in this village, we’ll go back to London—though I’m half tempted to bear you straight off to Waterleys, which is not so very far! However, you’ll see it soon enough, and to do Persephone justice, she is concerned for you, and we ought to set her mind at rest. ” At this point, however, they met with a check. Rounding the corner of the out-buildings to find the spot where he had left his horses tied up, Sir Edmund stopped and exclaimed in annoyance.

  “Damn the fellow—he must have taken my phaeton to help him on his own mad way!”

  “I dare say it looked more convenient than his own wretched post-chaise—and more comfortable too, as well it might!” said Elinor feelingly. “Well—we could take the chaise, perhaps?”

  “I doubt if he has any fresh cattle in the stables, or why risk taking mine, which he must have guessed would not be rested? Yes, that’s one consolation: I pressed them hard to get here, and he’ll have to change them very soon. I imagine the horses that brought you here on the last stage have been dispatched back to their own posting-house by now. No, I think we had better walk to the village and look for some means of transport there—unless you prefer to stay here while I go?”

  “Certainly not,” said Elinor, “I am coming with you.”

  “I own,” said Sir Edmund, taking her arm as they set out across the carriage sweep, “that I would as soon not let you out of my sight again. I’ve suffered quite enough anxiety on your behalf for one day.”

  “Well, and so have I on yours—oh, Edmund! Do you hear that?” She stopped suddenly, holding up a hand.

  “Good God,” said Sir Edmund, a moment later, his mind ranging back over the vicissitudes of the day. “Are we to suppose that the Ancient Britons too are in hot pursuit of you?”

  “Well, I think it is the Hunting Chorus!” said Elinor. “Out of Boadicea, you know! Though what on earth ...?” Her voice died away as a remarkable little procession came into sight around the bend of the drive. It was led by Lord Conington in his curricle, with one of the Lark Quartet—Josef, as it turned out—in the seat beside him. The main party was in the Yoxfords’ britzka, a handsome, spacious vehicle, but less cumbersome than the family travelling carriage. On this fine evening the calash and hood were not in use, and it stood open to the air. It was being driven by Mr. Robert Walter, with Persephone seated on the box next to him, both of them tunefully singing the Hunting Chorus, with hearty emphasis on the repeated melodious cries of, “Juchheisa, juchhei!” Two of their passengers were Franz and Johann. The former was providing his own version of the accompaniment to the chorus on a small horn, while the latter, facing backwards in his seat but still joining in the singing now and the
n, maintained a firm hold upon the bedraggled figure of Mr. Grenville Royden, who was to be seen uncomfortably crouched in the dickey up behind, dripping water all over it.

  20

  “Juchhei!” observed Mr. Walter, with a last flourish of his fine baritone, as the little cavalcade rounded the carriage sweep and drew up in front of the Manor.

  “Ah, Sir Edmund! So you too concluded that this was where he planned to bring Miss Grafton,” said Lord Conington, alighting from his carriage. “And we were all correct. Miss Radley, I do trust you’ve come to no harm?”

  “Elinor!” cried Persephone, scrambling down headlong from the box of the britzka and running to her friend. “Oh, how glad I am to see you! And I am so sorry, for it was all well, nearly all my fault, and Robert was quite angry with me, but as you can see, we have come to rescue you.”

  “Thank you, Persephone, but we contrived to rescue ourselves,” Sir Edmund pointed out.

  “Yes, I suppose you did.” Persephone’s face fell. “What a pity!”

  “Why?” he inquired.

  “Because it did seem to me that you and Elinor ... well, never mind that, but I thought Robert would be the means of saving Elinor, and earn your undying gratitude, and then you would place no more obstacles in our way,” she said, disappointed. “Oh, well, I suppose it can’t be helped now! I must say, I had imagined there would be dozens of desperadoes here, who would quite overpower poor Elinor. However,” she added generously, “I am glad for her sake there were not dozens.”

  “Only two,” said Elinor gravely, “and Sir Edmund dealt with those most competently.”

  “But I rather think that Robert, or somebody, has earned my undying gratitude,” remarked Sir Edmund, scrutinizing the damp and shivering figure of Mr. Royden in the dickey. On closer inspection, his person appeared to be not merely drenched through, but plentifully covered with duckweed and slime, and his face bore the marks of rather more rough treatment than Sir Edmund’s one blow could possibly have inflicted. “Er—what precisely did you do with him, Mr. Walter?”

  “Oh, it was splendid!” said Persephone enthusiastically, answering for her suitor. “You see, we met him at the inn, where he was trying to obtain a change of horses. We had stopped there to ask the way, because none of us had been to this house before, not even Lord Conington. Well, Mr. Royden was excessively surprised to see us, and tried to run into the inn and hide in the landlord’s snug, but Robert was much too quick for him, and he and Franz and Johann and Josef all took him outside, and I am not perfectly sure just what they did next, but in the end they threw him into the duckpond, and it made the most tremendous splash!” finished Persephone, with glee.

  The treatment he had received certainly appeared to have sobered Mr. Royden up; the bravado had all gone out of him, along with any grandiose notions of seductions and forced marriages. As soon as Johann let go of him, he clambered down from the dickey in a decidedly undignified manner, scuttling off towards the yard and the back door through which Sir Edmund and Elinor had recently come, and trailing slime and pond-water.

  “Robert, you are not going to let him get away?” cried Persephone.

  “I don’t quite see what else we can do, Miss Grafton,” remarked Conington, who had been seeing to the secure hitching of the horses. “Since it appears that Miss Radley is not after all harmed, he has done nothing, perhaps, to merit more punishment than he has already suffered. And there is Charlotte to be considered, you know she has not deserved to have any scandal attach to her name.”

  “No, very true. Charlotte has behaved most admirably,” said Elinor warmly, smiling upon him.

  “I suppose you are right,” said Mr. Walter regretfully, watching his rival disappear damply round the corner of the house. “I wish, now, that I had—what is it you English say? had planted him a few more facers before we threw him into the duckpond, but no matter! An excellent pond!” he remembered with satisfaction. “So very muddy, so extremely full of weeds!”

  “Yes, I can see it was,” said Sir Edmund, appreciatively. “By the way, has anyone set eyes on my phaeton?”

  “Yes, indeed. It is at the Green Dragon inn, where I have ordered a private parlour, anticipating that we should soon be returning there and might well need refreshment,” Conington assured him.

  “It was when we saw Mr. Royden driving up in it, and I knew it for yours, that we supposed you and Elinor must want rescuing,” added Persephone, evidently still unwilling to relinquish her vision of heroics on the part of Mr. Walter, for there was a hint of grievance in her tone.

  “In that case,” said Sir Edmund, “I suggest that we adjourn to the inn, all of us—all? Good God, whom else have we here?” he inquired, his eyes for the first time falling on the passenger sitting in the far corner of the britzka.

  “Yes, that is a puzzle to me, too,” Persephone confided. “I never met him before. He would come with us, and I can’t for the life of me tell why.”

  “It’s Mr. Spalding!” exclaimed Miss Radley, following the direction of Sir Edmund’s gaze.

  “Yes, Elinor, it is indeed I!” announced the clergyman. His intention was obviously to expatiate upon this theme, but Persephone ruthlessly interrupted him.

  “And he has been prosing on all the way, about coming to save you from yourself, Elinor, and so forth—such stuff! I never heard anyone talk so!”

  “I believe you!” said Sir Edmund.

  But Mr. Spalding himself was no longer to be deterred. Rising to his feet in the britzka—a move which caused one of the horses to shift and snort nervously, so that the clergyman’s stance became somewhat precarious and he was obliged to hold on to the back of the seat—he began to address the company in general and Miss Radley in particular.

  “I should like,” said he, “to understand the full meaning of this! I have never in my life known anything to equal it. I have been jolted about in what may only be described as a reckless and headlong manner of proceeding along the public highway. No regard has been paid to my sensibilities—”

  “Well, no one asked you to come,” Persephone pointed out, but to no avail; he swept on, taking no notice of her interruption.

  “I have been thrown into the company of persons speaking a foreign tongue, of persons singing in a riotous fashion, and persons playing on musical instruments whilst driving along the road, something which I should not be astonished to find was against the law of the land! In all, Elinor, I have passed what I can only describe as a very uncomfortable couple of hours, and I believe I am owed an explanation! I had not thought you so lost to all sense of propriety—so much a stranger to right conduct—in short, so deluded as once again to go astray in the company of—well, to name names, of Mr. Royden! Not that I condone what these persons have done, either. No, I do not condone it. Neither do I understand it at all.”

  Sotto voce, Persephone supplied her commentary. “And it is of no use whatever trying to explain it to him, because he will not listen.”

  “I had come to London—at, I may say, considerable personal inconvenience,” proceeded the clergyman, “with the express intention of preventing you from adopting such a course of action, but I see I came in vain. I must say directly that, as a man of the cloth, I feel it incumbent upon me, indeed part of my duty to my flock, to think seriously whether I should not reconsider my intention of marrying. I am not sure, after all, that your frivolity may not be so ingrained as to make you unfitted to be the wife of a clergyman, and—”

  “That will do, Mr. Spalding,” said Sir Edmund, losing patience, and feeling himself now justified in expressing indignation on Elinor’s behalf, as she drew closer to him in the face of this verbal onslaught. “She isn’t going to be the wife of a clergyman, she is going to be the wife of a diplomat now seconded to the Foreign Office in London, and if you continue in your present vein I shall very likely begin to resent it, so kindly guard your tongue!”

  “Guard my tongue? Wife of a diplomat?” exclaimed the bewildered Mr. Spalding, sitting down
rather suddenly as the restive horse shifted once more.

  Persephone, however, taking in the fact that her guardian had his arm very firmly and comfortingly round Miss Radley’s waist, cried out, “Oh, famous! I was right! Oh, Elinor, how glad I am! You see, when Cousin Edmund was so very agitated to find you had been carried off, I thought it might be so. And I was right! This is above all things great—isn’t it, Robert?”

  “Sir Edmund, Miss Radley, I wish you very happy,” said the punctilious Mr. Walter, bowing correctly. “Allow me to congratulate you.”

  “By all means!” said Sir Edmund. “Anyone may congratulate us who likes, but do let us first leave this derelict spot to its deplorable owner, and locate the superior comforts of the Green Dragon.”

  Apart from the welcome appearance of Sir Edmund himself at Royden Manor, the Green Dragon was the most pleasing sight to meet Elinor’s eyes that evening. It was a cheerful hostelry of fair size, which also handled all the local posting business, and kept quite a large stable for that purpose. On being informed by Sir Edmund, however, of the number of fresh horses that would be required later, the landlord shook his head a little doubtfully. Two teams were already bespoken, and he hadn’t expected all this coming and going on a day which was nothing out of the ordinary! No one, Sir Edmund sympathetically agreed, could have expected it, and having ascertained that there would at least be a fresh pair for his phaeton and another for Conington’s curricle, he ordered wine and supper, and joined the rest of the party in the private parlour set at their disposal, where a small fire was burning to keep off the night-time chill as darkness fell.

  The events of the evening already had the staff of the Green Dragon in quite a buzz. Rumour had it that Squire had tried to run off with Miss, though which Miss none could rightly say. Squire had certainly turned up driving a phaeton which was none of his, and was subsequently ducked in the pond by the foreign gentlemen, which in the usual way a person wouldn’t hold with, but if Rumour was true, then Squire richly deserved it!