The Five-Minute Marriage

by Joan Aiken

  The old lady, when this was put to her, was delighted to accept.

  “Living in Curzon Street—lor! That’s a very nice part!” she said. “What next! For sure, I’ll be happy to come with you, Miss. Blood’s thicker than brine, but to tell truth, I shan’t weep millstones not to be quite so cheek-by-jowl with Anne and Jenny; good gals, both, as ever stepped, but I can’t abear all those nasty fried onions! And they keep their kitchen in such a pickle! I’d dearly like to get my hands on it, but Anne is that twitty, and up in the stirrups at once if you venture to shift so much as a teaspoon!”

  Delphie promised that, in Curzon Street, where they were to have a kitchen of their own, Mrs. Andrews should reign undisputed mistress of it.

  By this time the ten o’clock pupil had arrived, and Delphie was obliged to concentrate on giving her attention to the lesson, which she endeavored to do conscientiously, though random, anxious reflections would break in: What were they to give Great-uncle Mark for dinner tomorrow, for instance—how could his presence in the house be kept from Mrs. Carteret—should Elaine Carteret be told of their move—how should the china be packed—and would Mrs. Andrews object to the ten children upstairs? And how in the world was the existence of this tribe to be concealed from their great-uncle when he came to the house?

  Delphie was unaffectedly sorry to be moving away from the comfortable presence of the Baggott sisters, who had stood staunchly by her in many a crisis; she strongly doubted whether the languid Una Palgrave would ever become such a sympathetic friend, and was quite certain that she could never be able to render such practical assistance.

  Jenny, too, was very doleful when she heard the news. “Oh, mercy, Miss Delphie! Leaving us? Me and Sis are real put about at the news! The house won’t be the same without you and Missus, it won’t indeed. I hope it’s naught we’ve done or said that’s given you a disgust for the place—?”

  “Of course it is not, goose!” Delphie said warmly. “It is only that—that my cousin has offered us a chance of superior accommodation, close to the park; and for my mother’s sake I thought it right to accept. And after all, we shall be less than a mile away! I shall be forever coming past the chop on my way to give lessons, and shall often be dropping in to find out how you all do—and your Aunt Andrews will be coming back and forth too, I’ve no doubt.”

  “Yes, that she will,” said Jenny, drying her eyes, “and driving Sister into a twit with her fossicking ways. Well, I daresay it’s for your best, Miss Delphie—but what about the lady, eh?”

  “It was his sister all along, Jenny,” said Philadelphia, not trying to pretend ignorance of what Jenny meant. “We should not have been so suspicious.”

  Jenny’s brow cleared wonderfully.

  “In that case, Miss Delphie, I’m sartain it’s for your best! Why, you’ll be as close as currants in no time—but just the same, we shall miss you sore!”

  Delphie had already given Jenny the melancholy message from Mr. Swannup, incarcerated in the Marshalsea, and she now pulled out a little package, which she had wrapped in a scrap of silver paper, and said,

  “Here, Jenny, is a small keepsake, which I wish you will accept in return for all the many, many kindnesses you have done me and Mamma—and also for your very supporting company on my journey to Kent! Now listen: I fear it is not worth a great deal, but I had it valued by Mr. Rumbold at the silversmiths in Old Compton Street, and he tells me that—if you wish—he would give you twelve pounds for it—which would be quite enough to get Mr. Swannup out of jail. So you must do as you think best about it. The decision is to be entirely yours. Some lovers are best left in jail, perhaps!”

  And she folded Jenny’s hand around the packet, which contained a small silver-and-pearl brooch she had had from a child, and hurried away, leaving Jenny gazing after her open-mouthed.

  Soon after noon the carts arrived and the household goods were packed into them; Delphie was just superintending the careful removal of her pianoforte into the first cart when Mr. Browty’s carriage pulled up farther along the street and that gentleman descended, his eyes wide with astonishment.

  “Hey-dey, what’s all this?” he exclaimed. “Moving house, Miss Philadelphia, and you never told Jos. Browty? That’s bad, very bad! You’re not shooting the moon, I trust?”

  “No, no, sir, nothing like that; and we should have told you, directly,” she answered, laughing. “It is just that we had the offer of some very superior accommodation in Curzon Street, which—which we had to take up immediately if it was to be secured.”

  “Curzon Street—ah, that’s something like!” he said approvingly. “That will put more roses into your and your Mama’s cheeks than this close little quarter. Well, I will not stand prosing on when you’ve a dozen things to do with each hand! But how would it be if I took your Mama for a drive—I came to invite her, indeed—that would take her away from all this dust and huffle-scufflement for an hour or two?”

  “That, my dear sir, would be the kindest thing you could possibly do,” Delphie said with real gratitude. “For I’ve the hardest job in the world to stop her from trying to do more than she ought. Then, sir, if you will be so kind, you could return her to our new lodgings—by which time I shall hope to have all ready for her there.”

  “Humph,” said Mr. Browty, “I have the greatest respect for you, Miss Philadelphia, but if you can get all this sorted”—he looked at the loaded carts—“and a chamber prepared for your Mama, you are even more of a wonder than I had thought! It seems to me I had best take Mrs. Carteret back for a nuncheon in Russell Square first.”

  “You are too kind to us—but perhaps that would be best,” Delphie agreed thoughtfully. “Only, in that case—if it would not be too much trouble—”

  “Yes?” he said encouragingly, with a twinkle in his eye, which Delphie had observed on occasions when his daughters were trying to wheedle something out of him.

  “If you would not mind returning Mamma to Lady Bablock-Hythe’s residence in Brook Street!” Delphie confessed. “For she and I are expected there at three.”

  Although Delphie would have been glad to prevent her mother from going to Brook Street, Mrs. Carteret was not to be dissuaded. Making the best of the business, Delphie could only hope that her mother’s fickle memory might yield some clue as to Elaine’s identity.

  “Why not? Nothing could be simpler!”

  So Mrs. Carteret, protesting that she had left a hundred things undone, was whisked away in Mr. Browty’s carriage, and Delphie went back to work with a will, sorting their last belongings, and throwing away various odds and ends which were not worth saving. One such article, a child’s picture book with rather crumpled pages, left over from her own early days, she handed to a little ragged boy, one of a group of idle spectators, who stood gazing in the roadway. He gave her a somewhat startled look, and then ducked into the crowd with his treasure. Delphie, forgetting him in an instant, walked into the shop to say good-by to the Baggotts.

  “Until tomorrow!” she said cheerfully. “For I shall be walking past this way then.”

  Both sisters embraced her warmly, and Jenny whispered in her ear,

  “I decided to pop the brooch, love! It’s that pretty it nigh broke my heart to part with it—but well—Sam comes first. Mum’s the word, though—Sis don’t know!”

  “I am sure you did right!” Delphie said warmly.

  Then she jumped onto the tail of the last cart and went riding down to Mayfair with the furniture, delighted that Mrs. Carteret was not there to see and be scandalized by such a proceeding.

  Mrs. Andrews had gone on ahead, and was already installed in the rooms at Curzon Street. With her help, it did not take too long to set out their scanty pieces in the large airy rooms. To Delphie’s surprise, some other pieces of furniture were there already.

  “The gentleman from upstairs come down, missie, an’ I told him what you had got and what you didn’t got,” Mrs. Andrews explained, “and he said as how there were some bits of sticks atop
as he never uses (him being but a single gent) and you mid as well have the use of them. So Mr. Bardwell, that’s his gentleman’s gentleman, brought them down. And I’ve give them a polish and they’ve come up real tiptop! Spare well and have to spend, I alius say. One man’s dish clout is another’s tablecloth. No need to buy new when old will do. That’s right a nice gentleman up there, Miss Delphie! Handsome, kindhearted, and civil-spoken as a beadle!”

  Gareth had plainly made a favorable impression.

  “Wh-what about the children?” Delphie said nervously. “Have you encountered them yet? They live on the top floor, of course!”

  “Bless their little hearts! They’ve been that helpful! The boys was sweeping an’ the gals was dusting, an’ one o’ them lit the fire in the kitchen grate, an’ the others ran errands and carried things about—then I told them they’d best run back to their Ma, so as to give you a bit of peace and quiet, Miss, to settle in, and off they skipped, as biddable as doves! I never saw a set of childer that was likelier, nor better behaved.”

  Greatly relieved at this excellent start, Delphie helped move the last pieces of furniture into position.

  They now had a commodious parlor, which housed the piano and where Delphie would give lessons, and a large bedroom for Delphie at the front; a spacious room for her mother, looking out onto the very pretty garden at the rear, a decent-sized kitchen, and a smaller but comfortable room for Mrs. Andrews.

  Delphie, looking around their new quarters, could not help rejoicing in the increased amount of air, light, and space; the rooms, too, were so handsomely proportioned that they showed off the Carterets’ modest furnishings to the best advantage, and these, together with the pieces lent by Gareth—an escritoire, a set of chairs, an oval loo table, and a cabinet for china—made a very pleasant impression.

  Delphie wondered where Gareth was—would have liked him to see the rooms—but he did not appear. Doubtless he had gone out. His man Bardwell came down, however, and very civilly offered his assistance if Delphie found that she needed anything moved, or a stiff door eased, or a nail driven in to hang a picture. Delphie thanked him, but was able to assure him that at present his services were not required.

  All was complete to a shade by the time that she must start for Brook Street. She had washed her face and replaced her crumpled gray gown by a clean muslin with a tiffany sash, and put on a bonnet which she had remodeled from one of Mrs. Carteret’s—an old-fashioned Grecian helmet shape, lined with frillings of the leftover gray jaconet. Thus she was respectably, if not modishly dressed—but her Paris parasol, at least, added a touch of elegance.

  The arrival in Brook Street was timed to a nicety. Just as Delphie approached from one end of the street, Mr. Browty’s carriage rolled along from the other direction, and Mrs. Carteret descended, a little cross that she had not been allowed home first, to put on a more stylish dress and to rearrange her hair—but at least she had on the new sarcenet mantle.

  “However, I must say they were all as kind as can be,” she said. “That is a most excellent, unaffected man, Delphie, and the daughters are good little things, neither mouseish nor undesirably putting themselves forward.”

  The carriage departed; Mr. Browty, Mrs. Carteret explained, had regretted that an appointment in the City prevented him from escorting her to Brook Street—and they approached the doorway of Lady Bablock-Hythe’s house. As they did so, the door opened, and a very fashionably dressed lady, in a violet-colored pelisse and hat trimmed with ostrich plumes, came out of it. She was about to mount into a waiting phaeton, when she paused, looking at Mrs. Carteret in a searching and puzzled manner.

  “Can I be mistaken?” she then inquired. “Forgive me, ma’am, if I should seem intrusive and importunate but—can my eyes deceive me? Or do I dream? Am I run mad? Or do I perceive before me my long-lost but most deeply regretted, most sorrowfully mourned friend, cherished companion of my childhood hours, Ella Penistone?”

  “Oh, madam!” cried Mrs. Carteret in turn. “Can it be so? I am all amazement, but sure I cannot mistake—none other could bear those lineaments! You must, you must be my dearly loved schoolmate, Maria Gosport!”

  Both conjectures proved to be correct, and the ladies embraced with tears of joy.

  “But I thought you had married Lord Enderby and departed to the West Indies!” exclaimed Mrs. Carteret.

  “Alas, madam, I did so, but my dear Enderby survived only four years—too good, too excellent creature!—and on his decease, leaving me endowed with a very handsome fortune, and on my thereafter marrying the governor of the island; a truly estimable and benevolent man and a friend of long standing, and on his retiring and observing how deeply desirous I was of once again re-entering my native land, and on my admitting the truth of this, we returned hither some three years since—only to have my second husband follow my first into the tomb! Little then did I apprehend, in my lonely widowhood, that my dearest Ella was still in the land of the living, for a mistaken report had informed me of your death. My beloved friend—how glad I am that it was not so!”

  The ladies embraced again and then, the clock of St. George’s, Hanover Square, striking the hour and reminding the erstwhile Lady Enderby of a pressing engagement in Upper Wimpole Street for which she had been about to set out, the friends were obliged to quit one another, but not without making arrangement to meet again and hear one another’s histories. Delphie very cordially invited her mother’s long-lost friend to be their first guest in Curzon Street and come to breakfast on the day after the following.

  “Lord, Lord,” murmured Mrs. Carteret to herself as they rang the bell and were admitted by a manservant. “Only to think of my setting eyes on Maria Gosport again. She was my particular friend at the Miss Pinkertons’ school; but when she married and departed from this country, I had thought never to see her more!”

  She was so absorbed and delighted in this discovery that she took very little notice of their surroundings, but kept murmuring and exclaiming to herself. Delphie, on the contrary, looked about her with great interest. She guessed that this was a furnished house, hired for the Season; but if so it was a very expensive one, fitted up with considerable magnificence, though with little true elegance of taste; the servants were arrayed in gorgeous liveries; and the whole was on so grand a scale that it seemed more like a hotel than a private residence.

  Upon Delphie’s giving their names to the principal manservant, with the information that Miss Carteret expected them, they were asked to step upstairs; Miss, they were informed, would receive them in her own apartments.

  After this they were ushered into a suite of rooms on the second floor which, though sufficiently grand, were not on the scale of those below; and there the other Miss Carteret was waiting for them. She, however, was very fine; she had on the most dashing half-dress imaginable, made of sea-green Berlin silk and embellished with bugle trimming and a demi-train; by the side of it the two visiting ladies’ dresses looked countrified and shabby; but Delphie could not help secretly thinking that if she had such a fair complexion and pale blue eyes, she would not have chosen that particular shade of green for a gown.

  Delphie greeted her politely, and said, “Allow me to present my mother, Mrs. Carteret.”

  “Quite a coincidence, is it not?” murmured Mrs. Carteret amiably, quite unaware of the young lady’s very piercing regard, for she was gazing all about her with a very absentminded expression. “I believe my dear Richard did have some very distant cousins who resided in Westmorland—or was it Wigtownshire? At all events it was in the North and began with a W—you will be from that branch of the family, I daresay? Gracious me, only imagine running into my dear Tussy again—for Tussy we would always be calling her, I wonder why? Stay, I recollect that it had something to do with an India tussore silk that she had from her grandmother—”

  Plainly more than a little baffled by Mrs. Carteret’s ramblings, Miss Elaine directed an inquiring and haughty look at Delphie, who calmly explained that her mother
had had the good fortune to encounter an old friend in Brook Street. This appearing to be of no interest whatsoever to Miss Carteret, she begged them to be seated, and then called out,

  “Durnett! Pray bring in the refreshments!”

  A hard-faced woman of middle age, dressed plainly in a stuff dress, with a maid’s apron and a great cap that covered her hair completely, here brought in a tray with ratafia and glasses and a plate of sweet biscuits. She wore, Delphie noticed, an extremely sour expression, and subjected both visitors to as sharp a scrutiny as her mistress had previously done. Then, having poured and handed glasses of ratafia, instead of leaving the room, she busied herself at the far end of it, first sorting slowly through a box of ribbons and laces, then tidying out the papers in a writing desk.

  She appeared, Delphie thought, to be listening to their conversation.

  “Now, ma’am,” said Elaine, sipping her ratafia and giving Delphie a cool, businesslike stare, “we have to discuss what’s to be done.”

  Delphie politely set her lips to the rim of her glass, but she did not drink, for she strongly disliked the almond flavor of ratafia.

  “What do you have it in mind to do, ma’am?” she inquired, setting down her glass again.

  “We cannot go on like this!” cried Miss Carteret.

  “Can you perhaps make yourself a little plainer, ma’am?”

  “Oh, it is all too provoking! It is quite ridiculous that there should be two of us claiming to be the same person! I have always been accepted as—as my uncle’s great-niece; he has paid for me and supported me; I think, therefore, that you should write a declaration, renouncing any claim to inheritance in the event of—of my uncle’s demise.”

  “You are of the opinion that I should do that?” inquired Delphie levelly.

  “Most certainly I am! Otherwise—if he should die—how could it be known which of us—some mistake might be made—”