Marrying Miss Hemingford

by Mary Nichols

  They joined Mrs Bartrum, who was looking at Anne in astonishment. How could she possibly know someone in Brighton well enough to take his arm in public? It must be an old family friend, chanced upon by accident. She prepared herself to be civil, but made a note to speak to Anne later about her behaviour. ‘Aunt, may I present Dr Tremayne. You remember, I told you about the little girl who was injured. It was to Dr Tremayne I took her.’

  Mrs Bartrum’s welcoming smile faded, but, unwilling to make a scene, she inclined her head in acknowledgement but did not offer her hand or speak. Justin fumed inwardly, blaming Miss Hemingford for the embarrassing situation in which he found himself. A few years before he would have held his own, but not now. He had chosen his path and he had to walk it; if it meant being looked down on by people like Mrs Bartrum and lectured at by parsons, then he had to put up with it. He bowed. ‘Your obedient, ma’am.’ The next minute he had clapped his hat on his head and was striding away.

  ‘Oh, Aunt, you have frightened him off,’ Anne said.

  ‘I should think so too! Whatever were you thinking of, taking his arm like that? I really am quite mortified. There is Lady Mancroft with her mouth open in astonishment and Captain Gosforth pretending not to notice, though I know he did.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt, don’t take on so.’ She took her aunt’s arm and they began to walk from the churchyard. ‘It was all very innocent. The parson insulted poor Dr Tremayne, bowing and scraping to me when he realised you were my aunt and ringing a peel over the doctor for not going regularly to church. I had to do something to extricate him.’

  ‘Why? You do not know him and he is not a gentleman.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ Anne said, steering her aunt towards The Steine where they had arranged to meet the others who were going to see the monster and to join the picnic. Lord and Lady Mancroft had left in their carriage and would no doubt meet up with them again later. ‘I believe he is a very fine gentleman.’

  ‘He lives and works among the lower ranks.’

  ‘By choice, Aunt, and I admire him for it.’

  ‘One can admire someone without becoming familiar with them. Anne, I despair of you. It is no wonder you have not found a husband if you cannot tell a gentleman from a mushroom.’

  ‘Dr Tremayne is certainly not a mushroom,’ she said. ‘He is making no pretensions to be something he is not. He told me he was a ship’s surgeon in the war and sustained a wound that meant he could not go to sea again. He decided to help the poor instead.’

  ‘You seem to have learned a great deal about him in a very short time, Anne. I understood you had only met him briefly.’

  ‘So I did,’ Anne said, feeling guilty about that second visit to the Doctor, but, judging by her aunt’s reaction to being introduced to him, she was glad she had said nothing of it. ‘But it took no longer for him to tell me than it did for me to tell you.’

  ‘Why did he tell you?’

  ‘Because I asked him. I was interested in the work he was doing. He spends nearly all his time and money on it.’

  ‘No doubt he was boasting to gain your sympathy.’

  ‘No, he is not a boastful man. And in any case I learned some of it from the little girl’s mother. She said he was a saint.’

  ‘Saints are rare beings on this earth, Anne. For all you know, he may be the very opposite. He may have pretensions to be a gentleman and how do you know he does not have some dark secret in his past?’

  Anne hesitated only a moment before replying, admitting to herself that she did find Dr Tremayne a little mysterious. His poor dress and mode of living belied his courteous manners and cultured way of speaking, which was, she supposed, what her aunt had meant. ‘Fustian! You have been reading too many of those romantic novels you are so fond of.’

  ‘I could say the same of you, Anne, making the man out to be a saint, indeed! He is a man, an ordinary man, not even a gentleman, and you will ruin your reputation if you are not more selective in those you consort with.’

  ‘Consort, Aunt?’ Anne laughed. ‘I pass the time of day with a perfectly respectable man and I am consorting…’

  ‘It is how it will be interpreted by society.’

  ‘Then society is a ninnyhammer!’

  ‘Anne, I beg you to be more circumspect. You will have us gossiped about.’

  Anne conceded her aunt was probably right and, though she did not care for herself, she would not for the world have hurt or embarrassed her sponsor. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, squeezing her aunt’s arm. ‘I did not think.’

  They said no more because they had reached The Steine where their friends were gathering. It was an open grassy area, used by fishermen to dry their nets and by the beau monde to congregate to walk and gossip. Neither side welcomed the other. According to the wealthier inhabitants of the town, the nets were an eyesore and the ladies often caught their heels in them and there were plans afoot to stop the fishermen drying them there. Naturally the fisherman maintained they had been using the open space for generations and it belonged to them. Being Sunday, there were no nets out and no sign of the fishermen.

  ‘Are we all here?’ Lord Mancroft called out, standing beside his carriage ticking off everyone on his fingers.

  ‘We are one missing,’ Annabelle Barry said. ‘Major Mancroft is not here.’

  ‘Here he comes,’ Lady Mancroft said, as the Major drove up in his curricle.

  ‘Mrs Bartrum, would you like to ride with me?’ the Major called out as he pulled up beside them.

  ‘No, thank you, Major, I shall walk with everyone else.’

  ‘What about you, Miss Hemingford?’

  Anne also declined.

  ‘In that case, I will walk too.’ He called to one of the men servants to take the curricle back to the stables and then to join the others at the picnic spot to help set it out and start the fire, while everyone went to see the merman. ‘I’ll wager a sovereign to a groat it is nothing of the kind,’ he said.

  No one was prepared to take him on and, once the servants had been dispatched, the whole party set off across Grand Junction Road to the beach.

  Anne found herself being escorted by the Major. ‘Do all the officers drive curricles?’ she asked him.

  ‘Those that have enough blunt to keep the cattle do,’ he answered. ‘Life in camp can be prodigious boring, you know. And racing horses or curricles is become the thing to do.’

  ‘In the streets?’

  ‘That’s frowned upon, Miss Hemingford. It could be dangerous when there are people promenading.’

  ‘But it does go on?’

  ‘Doubtless there are some hotheads who are prepared to risk it, but usually it is done very early in the day before anyone is about.’

  ‘Before anyone of quality is about, you mean. The fisherfolk rise very early, you know.’

  ‘So they do, but they are not long on the streets, are they? They go to sea and when they return they sell their catch and disappear like rabbits into their burrows.’

  She decided to ignore his deprecating remark, being more concerned with asking her questions. ‘Was there a race last Thursday?’

  ‘I have no idea. Why do you ask?’

  ‘That little girl I spoke of last evening was run down by a speeding curricle which did not stop. It was driven by an officer in the 10th Hussars. I recognised the uniform.’

  ‘I cannot believe one of our officers would behave so casually, Miss Hemingford. Perhaps he was not aware of what he had done.’

  ‘How could he not be aware? The child was flung to the ground and badly injured.’

  ‘Anne, I beg you not to prose on so about those people,’ her aunt put in. ‘It is not your concern.’

  ‘But I am concerned. The man should be reprimanded and all racing banned within the boundary of the town.’

  ‘That may be, but there is nothing you can do about it,’ her aunt said. ‘I doubt anyone would admit to being the culprit.’

  ‘No, but I shall recognise him and his equipage if I ever see
either again.’

  The Major smiled. ‘Oh, dear, that sounds like a threat, Miss Hemingford.’

  ‘Anne, please desist,’ her aunt commanded. ‘We are out to enjoy ourselves and I do not want dissension.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt. I won’t say another word.’

  Mrs Bartrum went off to walk beside the Captain, who had been marching ahead in order to pay everyone’s entrance fee as he had promised. The muslin-clad Barry girls were chatting excitedly, Jeanette on the arm of Lieutenant Harcourt and Annabelle with Lieutenant Cawston, leaving their mother and Sir Gerald to follow more slowly with Lord and Lady Mancroft. Her ladyship was not at all sure she wanted to view this creature, whatever it was, and was already hanging back. It was dead, so there was nothing to fear, her husband told her, to which she retorted that she was not afraid of it, simply worried about catching some horrible disease from the peasants who stood around watching their so-called betters with ill-concealed amusement.

  As Anne approached the entrance, she realised that the woman taking the money was Mrs Smith. She smiled at her. ‘I believe Tildy is still improving, Mrs Smith.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, and soon she’ll be running about and in as much mischief as ever.’

  ‘And do we really have a merman in here?’ She indicated the tent, where a man in thick fustian breeches, an open shirt and bare feet, stood to lift the flap and let a handful of people in at a time.

  Mrs Smith smiled and shrugged. ‘To be truthful, we don’t know what it is. No one has ever seen one before. But I thought if we charged people to see it, I could pay Dr Tremayne. He has been so good, treating Tildy and coming to see her every day and not a penny piece will he take from us.’

  ‘And have many people come to see it?’

  The woman laughed. ‘They do say curiosity killed the cat. We had lines of people here all yesterday afternoon and ever since we opened again this morning.’

  ‘Is it not putrefying?’

  ‘It started to, but we have packed it in ice and it’s not too bad if you do not stay in the tent too long.’

  Major Mancroft, who had been listening to this conversation, suddenly laughed. ‘Ah, then there will be no opportunity to examine it in detail.’

  ‘Would you wish to?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Only to decide the outcome of the wager.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said dismissively. ‘I do not see how you can establish the properties and description of a merman when no one has ever seen one.’

  They were ducking under the flap of the tent as they spoke. It was gloomy inside and the smell of fish overwhelming, in spite of the ice packed round the creature. Seven or eight feet long, it was lying in a tub of rapidly melting ice. There were stakes and ropes round the tub so that none could approach near enough to touch it, not that any of the grand people in their fine clothes would want to do that. It was enough to see it and recoil in horror.

  The head certainly looked very human. It had a round face with the large glassy eyes, what appeared to be small ears and a huge droopy moustache that covered the mouth. Its body was greyish and there appeared to be a tiny hand, but it had been badly mauled, either by another creature, or by the manhandling it had received when brought aboard the fishing vessel, so it was impossible to tell what its original shape had been. Its tail was certainly that of a large fish.

  ‘It’s a fish,’ the Major said dismissively.

  ‘Or a baby whale.’

  ‘A walrus,’ said someone else.

  ‘But the head is like a man’s. It has hair on its face and little ears.’ This was Jeanette Barry.

  ‘You are letting your imagination run away with you,’ her mother said. ‘Come, I have seen enough. The heat and stench in this tent is enough to bring on the vapours. I need some air.’

  She turned to go, allowing others to file past, and it was then Mrs Bartrum swooned clean away.

  Captain Gosforth, who had heard Anne’s cry of distress, reached her first, scooped the lady up in his arms and carried her outside, where he laid her gently on the shingle. ‘Dear madam,’ he said, fanning her face with a large handkerchief. ‘Do open your eyes.’

  Her eyes remained obstinately closed and her breathing was ragged. Anne flung herself on the shingle beside her. ‘Oh, Aunt, do wake up, I beg you.’ She looked up at the rest of the party all grouped round her, all gaping, not knowing what to do. ‘She hasn’t had a seizure, has she? Oh, I could not bear it. She should never have gone into that tent.’

  The Captain ran to the water’s edge and dipped his handkerchief in the sea, which he handed to Anne, who mopped her aunt’s forehead. She moaned and blinked, said, ‘Oh, dear,’ and fainted away again.

  ‘Give her air,’ Major Mancroft cried, shooing everyone away. ‘How can you expect the dear lady to come about when you are crowding in on her like that?’

  ‘I’ve brought the doctor.’ Mrs Smith suddenly appeared beside Anne. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  The next minute a breathless Justin dropped on the shingle beside Mrs Bartrum. He put his head on her chest and listened. ‘Nothing untoward there,’ he said. ‘Her heart is beating strongly. Her clothes need loosening.’

  ‘What, here?’ Lady Mancroft exclaimed. ‘You cannot possibly undo her gown now with everyone watching.’

  ‘Then don’t watch,’ he snapped without looking at her. ‘Take all these people away.’ He turned to look at the company and spotted the Captain looking at him in astonishment. ‘Tremayne?’ Gosforth queried in surprise.

  Justin smiled grimly. ‘Yes, Captain, as you see.’ He turned back to Anne. ‘Miss Hemingford, I could examine the lady better at my house…’

  ‘Then let us take her there at once.’

  ‘I will carry her,’ Major Mancroft said, unwilling to let his rival have that honour a second time, but Gosforth, for once, did not have his mind on Mrs Bartrum but was watching the doctor, shaking his head from side to side, as if he could not believe what he was seeing.

  ‘We have a cart,’ Mrs Smith said. ‘It smells a bit…’

  ‘Fetch it,’ Justin said, and when it arrived took off his coat and laid it in the bottom so that Mrs Bartrum was not dirtied by fish scales, though there was nothing that could be done about the smell. Anne walked beside it as the men manhandled it up the beach and on to the road, glad that her aunt was still not fully conscious; this undignified mode of travel would have mortified her. Once on the road it was easier and a few minutes later Mrs Bartrum was lifted off and carried into the doctor’s consulting room. The Major and the Captain, having been ushered out by Mrs Armistead, stood in the waiting room, wondering what to do while everyone else had remained at the end of the narrow street, reluctant to venture down it. ‘Please, do go on with the picnic,’ Anne said. ‘The servants will have it all prepared and there is no sense in standing around here. I am sure all will be well.’ She did not wait to see if they went, but hurried to join her aunt and shut the door on them.

  Mrs Armistead was already taking off her aunt’s outer garments and undoing her stays. ‘Why women need to lace themselves up so tight I shall never understand,’ Justin said, washing his hands in the bowl on a side table; he washed his hands frequently, Anne noted. They were long fingered, well manicured, smooth. ‘Just asking for trouble.’

  Anne was taken aback, not only by his words, but by the swift way Mrs Armistead was stripping her aunt of her clothes in front of the doctor. It just was not done for a lady to be seen in that state of undress by anyone other than her husband—sometimes not even him—and that included doctors. Diagnosis was usually done with question and answer; if that did not suffice, the patient was examined with hands fumbling under skirts and petticoats. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, putting her hand on Mrs Armistead’s arm. ‘My aunt—’

  ‘Is a woman like the rest of us,’ Mrs Armistead retorted. ‘How can the doctor tell what is wrong if he cannot see and touch?’

  As soon as the last of the lacing had been loosened, Mrs Bartrum took a hu
ge breath and her eyelids fluttered open. ‘Ah,’ Justin said, standing over her. ‘Now you can breathe, madam, you are feeling better, is that not so?’

  ‘Where am I?’ She struggled to sit up, and seeing her state of undress, gave a little cry and fainted again.

  ‘Now see what you have done,’ Anne said, picking up her aunt’s gown and covering her. ‘How could you be so unfeeling? She is not one of your common sailors, nor a peasant, to strip her of her dignity.’

  ‘She has not been stripped of her dignity, merely her outer garments,’ he said. ‘But as it is patently obvious that her swooning was the result of too tight clothing, combined with the heat and smell in that tent, I do not need to examine her. Mrs Armistead, you may help the lady to dress. And, as my presence seems to embarrass her, I will take myself off.’

  He turned about and left the room, just as Mrs Bartrum moaned and regained her senses. ‘Anne?’ she queried weakly.

  ‘Yes, Aunt.’ Although Anne was still seething, she spoke gently and took her aunt’s hand. ‘You fainted clean away in that tent on the beach. We could not bring you round. Doctor Tremayne was sent for and we brought you here. He says—’

  ‘I heard what he said. I did not swoon again, but I was so mortified I could not look at him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Now help me dress and let us get out of here’

  ‘Aunt, you did have your stays laced very tight…’

  ‘Of course I did. How else could I keep my figure?’

  ‘But if it makes you faint…’

  ‘I have never done it before.’ She turned to Mrs Armistead, who was helping her dress. ‘Go on, woman, I’m not made of china. Lace me up again.’

  When at last she was dressed again, with a slightly larger waist, Anne left her to go in search of Dr Tremayne.

  He was sitting at the table in the drawing room, making notes, but looked up when she knocked and entered. He pushed the notes to one side and rose. ‘Miss Hemingford.’

  ‘Doctor Tremayne.’

  They fell silent. The clock ticked loudly in time with Anne’s heartbeat. She did not know what to say to him. She had been embarrassed and outraged on her aunt’s behalf, knowing how the dear lady would feel, and yet, she knew in her heart, he was right. How could doctors diagnose and treat their patients properly if they were not allowed to examine them except at a distance? She wanted to storm at him and thank him in the same breath.