The Five-Minute Marriage

by Joan Aiken

  “Lord, bless you, yes, dearie,” replied Mrs. Andrews comfortably. “That will give me nice time to finish this piece of tatting, and Mrs. C. can get on with her book, can’t you, ma’am? We’ll be as snug as sevenpence, don’t you worrit your head about us, missie.”

  Mrs. Carteret was likewise acquiescent, only murmuring that the lessons given by Delphie seemed to fall later and later in the day, did children nowadays never stop learning, poor little things? Delphie did not enlighten her mother, for she was not at all certain that Mrs. Carteret would approve of her daughter singing at an evening party, for pay. Singing as an accomplishment was of course very suitable for young ladies, and even the giving of singing lessons was sufficiently genteel—but a paid performance came dangerously close to acting, or performances in opera, which were of course not at all respectable; not for one moment to be considered by any properly brought up young person.

  Delphie therefore retired to the other room to change into her white dress (which she imagined would be suitable enough for such an occasion, but which she knew would immediately arouse comment and inquiry if Mrs. Carteret observed that she had it on). Then she muffled herself from chin to toe in a very old brown velvet cloak, before going in to take her leave.

  “You haven’t had a bite to eat, Miss Delphie,” scolded old Mrs. Andrews. “You didn’t ought to go out giving lessons on an empty stummick.”

  Delphie was too nervous to eat.

  “I—I had a nuncheon during the afternoon. I will have something to eat when I come back,” she promised, picked up her music, and ran out swiftly.

  She had over half an hour’s walk, for Lady Dalrymple lived in Portman Square, and she felt both tired and hungry by the time she arrived, just at the appointed hour. A few carriages were already beginning to roll up to the door. A suspicious footman inquired Delphie’s business, having observed that she arrived on foot. She was swiftly dispatched up a flight of back stairs. On the floor above she was received by another servant, who curtly and summarily indicated the corner of a large saloon which was furnished with a pianoforte and a potted palm. There Delphie established herself, reflecting, not without humor and a certain self-mockery how different had been the treatment at Chase—which earlier she had felt inclined to criticize as lacking civility. She had been shown nowhere to leave her cloak or do her hair; perforce, she bundled the cloak underneath the instrument, and smoothed her banded hair with her fingers, hoping that she would not be the object of any particular notice.

  The promised refreshment did not appear.

  Presently guests began to trickle through the main door in twos and threes. This, it seemed, was the newest fashion in evening parties: a beaufet laid out in one room, instead of a regular dinner. Mrs. Carteret had read aloud a paragraph about such parties from the Ladies’ Magazine. “So much more sensible and economical, dearest!” had been her comment. “I think we should most certainly confine ourselves to that form of entertainment in future!”—a proposal with which Delphie most cordially agreed, though her smile as she did so was somewhat sad, since the Carterets neither gave nor attended parties of any kind at all.

  Ladies in silk dresses with demi-trains, gentlemen in elegant evening black, or in knee breeches and striped silk stockings, if they proposed going on to Almacks, strolled about the room; the air filled with talk and laughter. Delphie was much exercised in her mind as to whether or not she should begin to sing; or should she wait for some instruction from her employer? But presently Lady Dalrymple, a fat little woman in tight pink silk and feathers, whom she remembered to have seen several times at Mr. Browty’s house, came hasting over to exclaim,

  “Sing, pray sing, Miss Carter, why do you not sing? Hawkins, bring up some more ices directly,” and she hurried away again, as fast as she had come.

  Thus adjured, Delphie assembled her courage by playing a vigorous prelude on the pianoforte (which proved to be villainously out of tune) and then bravely accompanied herself in one of her own favorite songs, an Irish ballad. A very few heads turned at the sound of the music when it began, but by the time she had reached the end, it seemed to Delphie that her performance had passed virtually unnoticed; she might as well have been a bullfrog croaking, or a hen cackling. Nobody clapped when she finished the song, so, after a few minutes, she sang another, which was received as indifferently as the first. There was no consecutive audience; guests kept arriving, and others leaving; footmen carried around small trays of refreshments (none of which were offered to Delphie); guests kept pressing into the second room, where the beaufet stood. Thus the evening wore on, and presently Delphie began to feel very tired indeed. She had slept badly and risen early, anxious not to keep Mr. Browty’s coachman waiting; the journey home from Kent, punctuated by Jenny’s amazed questions and comments, had been more of a penance than a pleasure.

  But if she ceased her performance for even a few moments to rest, a message was sure to arrive from Lady Dalrymple, inquiring why she did not sing? Pray continue at once, Miss Carter. After a while, Delphie had reached the end of her repertoire; she merely began again at the beginning, feeling sure that none of the guests would notice or care; in which assumption she appeared to be correct. Somewhat despondingly, she wondered how long Lady Dalrymple’s evening parties usually lasted; and did her best to divert herself by recalling that yesterday, at roughly this hour, she had been going through the marriage ceremony and having the ring placed on her finger by Gareth Penistone. How the people in this room would stare if they knew such a story about her! It occurred to her that the ring (rather a pretty old one, with the word Forever and the initials C.P. engraved inside it) was still on her finger. She had intended to return it to Mr. Penistone after the ceremony, but the swiftness of his departure had taken her by surprise and it had slipped her mind. She must remember to remove it from her finger before returning home, for Mrs. Carteret would be certain to notice it soon; it was a wonder she had not already done so.

  Suddenly Delphie saw Gareth Penistone.

  He was over on the far side of the room, talking somewhat urgently to an elderly, prosperous-looking man, who was shaking his head in a very decided manner. Gareth had not seen Delphie. That was some relief. She did her best to shrink down behind the music stand of her instrument, hoping that he would not look in her direction, and that if he did so, he would not recognize her among the crowd. To meet again so soon—in such contrasting circumstances—would, she thought, occasion almost unbearable embarrassment to them both—and to herself, especially, mortification, at being discovered so employed! It must be avoided if possible.

  To her dismay, Mr. Penistone seemed to be moving slowly, almost involuntarily, in her direction, as the groups in the room swayed and shifted and broke and reformed. There was no doubt, Delphie thought, stealing a look at him past the music stand, that he was handsome, in his saturnine, hatchet-faced way, that evening clothes set off his well-shaped muscular figure—but he certainly did not look as if he were enjoying himself; having parted from the prosperous man he now wore an expression of harsh impatience, hardly suitable for a party. Now he was talking to Lady Dalrymple—or rather, she was talking, and he was listening; his nostril and lip slightly but unmistakably curled in scorn. Now he was moving farther away; suddenly animated, he was talking to an exceedingly pretty young lady, whose dark hair and diaphanous gauze robe were ornamented with large, almost ostentatious diamonds; thank goodness he is gone, thought Delphie, her fingers running over the keys in a minuet which she knew so well that she could play it without the least need for mental effort.

  (She had stopped singing some ten minutes before, her throat being so tired and dry that the last ballad had come out in a kind of croak; nobody appeared to have noticed that either.)

  Then she heard a silver-haired lady inquire of Lady Dalrymple, who chanced to be standing quite close to the pianoforte,

  “Who was that delightfully fierce-looking young man that you were talking to just now, Letitia?”

  “Flashi
ng black eyes, and as swarthy as a pirate? Don’t waste your time on him, my love,” Lady Dalrymple replied with a tinkling laugh. “He hasn’t a feather to fly with! That’s Gareth Penistone; an excellent figure, I grant you, but they say the poor fellow has not two brass farthings to rub together.”

  “Indeed? No wonder he is making up to Laura Teasdale!”

  “Nothing will come of that! They say she had a tendre for him years ago, but Teasdale was the better catch.”

  “Penistone? Penistone? Is there not money in the family, though? Is he not connected to Lord Bollington—who surely is sufficiently well-found?”

  “Lord bless you, yes, the old ape is as rich as Croesus. Gareth might come into it some time—but then again he might not—they say the old man is very capricious—Gareth has nothing but a little manor in Kent.”

  The other lady asked some question.

  “Gaming, they say!” Lady Dalrymple’s artificial laugh rang out again. “They always say it is gaming when a young man has run through his fortune without any visible reason for it.” She sank her voice to a malicious whisper. Delphie missed the next words. All she could catch was “—petticoat company, I fear! Hardly ever goes into polite society, any more! When he does, of course, hostesses are delighted to welcome him—I account it quite a triumph to have him here tonight—because he is delightfully clever and agreeable; his manners are such as cannot fail to please.”

  Can they not? thought Delphie tartly. Just let Lady Dalrymple see him in his ancestral home!

  “But most certainly not the kind of husband you would want for dear Margaret or sweet Elizabeth—not at all a good parti,” Lady Dalrymple concluded firmly, and then, again in her carrying whisper, added something that sounded like “perfectly shameless—understand—mistress—lives in a house on Curzon Street—have it on the best authority—brazen hussy!”

  Delphie was somewhat sourly amused by the avid look of curiosity on the face of the silver-haired lady, as she listened to these revelations, and turned to gaze after the departing Mr. Penistone.

  That, doubtless, was why he was in such a hurry to return to London, Delphie thought. He was impatient to get back to his charmer! No wonder he had to be practically dragooned into that bedside marriage.

  And then she wondered about the girl referred to as Elaine, the other Miss Carteret, the girl to whom Mr. Penistone was supposed to be betrothed. How did she feel about this state of affairs? Not very pleasant for her to be aware that her affianced husband was openly flaunting a mistress in London—or, far away in Bath, was she not aware of it? Despite her indignation at the false substitution, Delphie was almost inclined to pity Elaine. Such a public slight could not fail to be sadly mortifying. What would happen when they were married? And why had Gareth agreed to the marriage in the first place?

  Because of the money, presumably.

  Lady Dalrymple, suddenly observing that her singer had ceased to perform, exclaimed,

  “Miss Carter, Miss Carter, pray, what are you about? Continue singing at once, at once, if you please!”

  “I am afraid, Lady Dalrymple, that I cannot sing any more. I have sung for the best part of three hours now, and my throat has become quite hoarse,” Delphie replied.

  “Really? How very singular—most inconvenient!” Lady Dalrymple commented with displeasure. “Oh, very well—in that case I suppose you had best continue merely playing. It is very provoking! Pray recommence singing as soon as possible, Miss Carter. It is what you are here for, after all!”

  “If I could have something to drink it might help,” said Delphie.

  Lady Dalrymple gazed at her as if she had asked for a seven-course dinner.

  “Drink? You want some drink? Well, you had best ask one of the footmen for that.”

  And she moved hastily away, before Delphie could formulate any other outrageous demands. She looked so ridiculously affronted, in her tight pink silk and pearls and feathers, with her high color and her bulging blue eyes—so like some high-stepping ornamental fowl with its crest indignantly raised—that Delphie could not help chuckling a little as she watched, forgetting that she had some right to indignation herself. Then she turned, with no great hopes, to try to attract a passing footman—and found herself staring straight into the astonished face of Gareth Penistone.

  He seemed quite as taken aback as she was. His dark visage turned distinctly pale, and his knuckles, which were resting on the pianoforte, perceptibly whitened.

  “You! But what—are you doing here?”

  “I could ask the same question,” Delphie said. “But I conclude that Lady Dalrymple is your friend. She can hardly be said to be mine, however!”

  “I do not understand!” he said blankly.

  “I have been employed to sing and play at her party.” Delphie could not resist adding, “And you? What are you doing here? You do not appear to be enjoying yourself greatly?”

  “I came here to meet someone,” he said shortly. His expression conveyed, “And what business is it of yours, pray?”

  Delphie told him with formality, since he had not asked,

  “I am sorry to inform you that your uncle was no better this morning. But he was still—he was still battling. I did not see Mr. Fitzjohn, however. Fidd gave me the report on Lord Bollington.” As he was about to reply—

  “Mr. Penistone!” said Lady Dalrymple, suddenly reappearing, and darting a needle-sharp glance at Delphie. “I should like to present you to a dear friend of mine, Louisa Carmichael.” She gave Delphie another quelling look, and remarked, “You are not hired to converse, Miss Carter! If you can neither sing nor play, you may as well retire, perhaps! I shall tell Mr. Browty, when next I see him, that I consider your talents were highly misrepresented—highly!”

  Inclining her head—she did not trust herself to speak—Delphie stood up. Her legs were trembling with hunger and fatigue, and for a moment she was obliged to lean on the pianoforte, to steady herself. She saw Lady Dalrymple and Mr. Penistone glance back, and caught Lady Dalrymple’s voice:

  “—do believe that girl has been drinking. She asked me, in the most brazen, barefaced way imaginable, for a glass of wine! Can you believe it!—Certainly shall not employ her again!”

  Delphie dragged her cloak from under the instrument and edged her way toward the servants’ entrance. Just before walking through the door she glanced across the room again—but Gareth Penistone was out of sight.

  It was not until she had walked half the distance home that Delphie recollected she had not been paid her five guineas. Nor had she given Mr. Penistone back his ring.

  6

  No further invitations to sing at parties followed on from Delphie’s engagement at Lady Dalrymple’s house—presumably Lady Dalrymple had found herself unable to recommend Miss Carter to her friends—but in due course more pupils trickled back from their country holidays, and a number of new ones applied for lessons. Poverty seemed a little less threateningly imminent on the Carterets’ horizon. Delphie managed to earn a few extra shillings in various ways—by writing out menu cards for Floris’s restaurant around the corner, by translating some letters into French for Tellson’s Bank, by reading aloud French memoirs for half an hour a day to an émigré marquise who could not afford to return to France even now that Napoleon was gone.

  Better still, Mrs. Carteret’s health was now improving every day. With the warmer weather, she was able, first, to get out of bed and sit on a chair, then to allow herself to be dressed, then to dress herself. Scrimping and saving, Delphie was just able to pay Mrs. Andrews for a couple of hours a day, and the kind old lady seemed inclined to stay on in London permanently. “For there’s ever so much more to see here than in Edmonton—let alone not being trampled by grandchildren all day long!” Fortunately Mrs. Carteret had not resumed—as yet—any of her frantic and unpredictable activities; though she did, every now and then, threaten to send out the invitations for a ball, a soiree, or a rout party, or murmur,

  “Next week Mrs. Andrews r
eally must start making white soup; and I must write to Totterridges about carpeting for the stairs and pavement, and to Gunters about the ices. Or do you think we should have Searcy’s to do the catering, my dearest? I so particularly wish you not to be worried about anything except dancing with the right partners and keeping a good lookout for an eligible parti.”

  “Pray do not be troubling your head about that, Mamma,” replied Delphie, wondering how great would be her mother’s dismay if she knew that her daughter was already quite extra-legally and unofficially plighted to somebody who had been described by Lady Dalrymple as “not at all a good parti.”

  “What do you know about Gareth Penistone, Mamma?” she asked once, carelessly.

  “My uncle Gareth? Why, how ever do you come to speak of him? He was a great deal younger than my Papa. He was interested in nothing but hunting—was killed by a fall from his horse,” Mrs. Carteret replied with perfect calm. Evidently this branch of the family had no associations to agitate or distress her. “His son became an officer under Lord Wellesley in the Peninsula, and, I think, died at Badajos, but I lost touch with those cousins entirely, of course, after I broke away from the family. Whether the younger Gareth had children, I do not know.”

  I suppose his son would be this Gareth, Delphie thought. She would dearly have liked to continue asking questions about the ancient scandal involving her grandfather, the dairymaid Prissy Privett, and her great-uncle Mark, but did not dare take the risk of disturbing her mother’s tranquillity. For, glancing at a copy of Debrett’s Peerage in a great house where, one morning, she had been obliged to wait in the library for a dilatory pupil, she had realized that her grandfather’s wife, the Miss Howard who had been her mother’s mother, had died the year her mother was born, and her husband had followed her only three years later; from the age of three on, therefore, her mother must have been brought up by Great-uncle Mark and his unsuitable wife—who already had two base-born children of her own. What a childhood! No wonder Mrs. Carteret never referred to it, and had run off from home at the age of sixteen to marry Captain Carteret. She and her own brother, the Tristram who died at sea, must have been bitterly unhappy in such an atmosphere. Delphie thought how much she would have hated to be brought up by Great-uncle Mark, with his sharp voice, his malicious cackling laugh, and his detestation for the whole female sex. It was no wonder Mrs. Carteret hated any mention of Chase.