The Autumn Rose

by Fiona Hill

  A light supper was all that interrupted these several pursuits, and after that most of the company chose to go early to bed. Seabury was an exception, for he had much to think over and could not rest at first: not only was there the problem of Amy Meredith, but Lord Safford (as Lady Beatrice had precisely divined) had made some not terribly subtle references while playing at billiards to the possibility of Seabury’s becoming his son-in-law someday soon, and had also mentioned pointedly how very many years it had been since Lady Susan’s come-out. Seabury could understand Safford’s concern: even if Susan had not been his only child, her marriage was a matter that ought to have been settled long before. After this piece of brilliance, however, poor Seabury’s thinking grew cloudy and muddled, and he could come to no sort of conclusion.

  Lady Caroline and Windle were two who sat up later than the others as well. The latter was of more open habits with regard to her thoughts and sentiments, and so it was principally her affairs which were discussed as they chatted in a cosy sitting-room on the second story of the still house. After the exertions of the evening, it was pleasant to Miss Windle to sit with her hands idle for a time; Lady Caro worked some filagree she had begun in Berkshire. Their colloquy began on a rather excited note, for Mrs. Henry and Miss Windle had fallen to cuffs again just before leaving the drawing-room. Mrs. Henry had begun it (or so said Windle) by remarking heavily, quite à propos of nothing, “And so you never married, Miss Windle?”

  “‘No indeed,’ said I, thinking privately, what a foolish question!

  “‘And I suppose this was by choice?’ continued Mrs. Henry.

  “‘Choice!’ cried I. ‘I should say so. The worst woman in the world, as my own mother was wont to say, is too good for the best man.’

  “‘And yet I suppose your dear mother was married?’ said Mrs. Henry, slyly.

  “I must own, dear Lady Caroline, that this last remark discomposed me not a little. I may even say it angered me, for surely something inspired me to say to her, after a silence, ‘And so you never bore children, Mrs. Henry?’

  “‘No,’ said she, very snappishly.

  “‘And I suppose this was by choice?’ I said, quoting her.

  “‘Indeed it was,’ she hissed out. Oh, she was in a fury! She stalked out of the drawing-room as quick as that, and never said a word all during supper; did you notice?”

  Caroline said she had not.

  “Well, I was very glad for the respite,” Windle said emphatically. “Can you fancy so much impertinence? I am delighted to have put her in a passion.”

  “Let us hope, however,” Caro said mildly, “that it is not a blind passion, for she will have much to keep an eye on with Mockabee here. I wish she could be trusted a little more; it was not very pleasant, I may tell you, watching Amy and the baron play at piquet. In fact, it was extremely dull.” She kept to herself, naturally, the additional annoyance the baron gave her by making oblique allusions to herself and games of chance.

  Upon inquiry, Miss Windle was informed of all Caroline’s suspicions regarding Miss Meredith’s unhealthy attachment to Lord Mockabee. “I shall take it upon myself to watch her,” she declared zealously at the end of this account, “for Mrs. Henry is no more use than a scarecrow.”

  Lady Caroline thanked her.

  “Are we not melancholy, after all, without Lord Romby?” Miss Windle suddenly cried out, when a brief pause had laid to rest the topic of Mrs. Henry.

  Caro looked up in surprise, and dropped a bead as well. “I am sure we none of us rejoice in his absence,” said she carefully, “but I had not thought of the party as melancholy without him.”

  “Had you not?” asked Windle, nearly as surprised.

  Caro shook her head.

  “I wonder if you will marry Edgar Gilchrist after all,” mused Windle aloud a moment later, supremely oblivious of the hop her discourse had taken.

  “My dear ma’am, what makes you imagine such a thing?”

  “Oh, dear! Very often young ladies do marry the squire of the neighbourhood—local gentry—that sort of thing, you know. I suppose they find old friends the most comfortable.”

  “I do not expect to marry for comfort,” Lady Caro pointed out.

  “Still…” said Miss Windle; and was, in fact, still.

  For a short time nothing more was heard in the quiet sitting-room than the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

  “Do you suppose his lordship will ever marry again?” Windle demanded suddenly.

  “Whose lordship?”

  “Why, Lord Romby!”

  “I do not know. It is a little hard to believe he ever was married, I find.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, rather,” said Caro, puzzled. She hoped very deeply that her chaperone was not foolish enough to fancy that Romby, if he ever did take another wife, would take her.

  “What a dashing figure is his!” Miss Windle ejaculated, and sighed. After this she stared a little longer into space, gave another, deeper sigh, and finally opened her work-basket. What she found inside so astonished and distressed her that she gave a great cry and immediately set to weeping noisily. In the few words and shrieks that pierced her sobs, and by means of suspending Lady Lillian’s ill-fated handkerchief in the air, Lady Caroline was given to understand that the same mischief performed a few weeks before on that scrap of fabric had been repeated.

  “What can it mean, what can it mean?” wailed the aggrieved lady, while Caro pondered the same question in somewhat calmer style.

  “Shall I ring for some wine?” she suggested at length. Miss Windle’s humour improved at once.

  “If you please,” she sniffled, suppressing a smile.

  The wine was fetched and drunk as before, and as before Miss Windle’s nose was seen to gain variety of hue; and, as before, no solution could be found to the puzzle of the unlucky embroidery.

  “Unless,” Windle offered timidly, after two glasses of claret, “unless it were possible…Mrs. Henry—?”

  “The same thought occurs to me, but it seems improbable even she could stoop to so small a revenge.”

  There ensued a brief discussion as to exactly how low Mrs. Henry might be imagined to stoop; this speculation ended only when Miss Windle, half-way through her third glass, suddenly felt sleep overtaking her, and retired abruptly. Lady Caroline was left to muse alone on Mrs. Henry’s character, the question of Amy and Mockabee, Lady Susan and Seabury. She went to bed at last nearly as much in confusion as the viscount himself.

  “Dear sir,” said Lady Safford the next morning, addressing herself to this same Lord Seabury, “dear sir, I wish you will walk out with Susan on the Heath today. She has never walked there with anyone who knows the place at all, and she is so curious about it. I protest, the last time she and I strolled there I almost drowned in questions, and scarcely knew an answer!”

  The reader may suppose from Lady Safford’s words that her daughter was not present while she spoke, but this was not the case. On the contrary, most of the party was there, gathered about the sunny table in the breakfast room, sipping chocolate and coffee and wishing, in general, they had not consumed so much ham. Lady Susan was much accustomed to being talked of in the third person, whether she was in attendance or not, for her parents had begun the habit when she was a little girl, and had never seen any reason to terminate it. “Susan must have a new frock,” and “Susan must have a new tutor,” passed easily into “Susan must be presented this season,” and “Susan must have a new carriage next year,” without a word of objection from the young lady in question. Moreover, Lord Seabury was so used to receiving this kind of application from her mother or father that he heard nothing odd in this one, and readily promised the favour asked.

  Lady Beatrice heard something odd, however, and was all attention when Miss Meredith (at liberty to listen to the others, for once, since Mockabee took his chocolate in bed) begged to be allowed to join them.

  “Oh no, my dear,” cried Lady Safford at once. “I
hoped you would stop here with me! There is a sort of coiffure I saw in the Journal des Dames et des Modes, that I am simply aching to attempt. Susan’s hair is far too fine for it, and I am well past the age when exotic styles may be worn. I was hoping—I pray you will not think me presumptuous—but I was hoping you might permit me to have my dresser try it on you.”

  If she had said she had taken the liberty of hoping Amy would accept a large legacy from her she could not have been more certain of gaining her end—as she perfectly well knew. Lady Beatrice watched in deepening dudgeon as Miss Meredith gleefully engaged to oblige her. The marchioness next turned her attention toward Lady Caroline, across from her at the long table, at whom she stared very hard. Caroline said nothing. “Should not you care to join them my dear?” Lady Beatrice inquired, in a tone very similar to that of a command. “You are partial to walking, I think?”

  “I am, indeed; but Miss Windle and I have already visited the Heath. Besides, Sir Sidney will be arriving this morning, and I should like to meet him when he comes.” While a solid two-thirds of this excuse was true (everything but the desire to meet Pettingill, that is) Lady Caro’s real motive in declining was something like pride. She was by now just as alert to the situation between Susan and Seabury as Lady Beatrice herself, but she refused instinctively to interfere in it. If Seabury meant to offer for a dry fish, so be it. She would wish them happy quite as heartily as anybody else; more heartily, perhaps.

  Lady Beatrice, to Caro’s surprise, went so far as to give her a kick under the table, but the manoeuver accomplished nothing. If Caroline had a fault (and she had, truth to tell, several) it was that she was headstrong. On this issue, certainly, nothing could sway her now.

  The consequence of this pleasant domestic scene was that Amy Meredith passed the morning with Lady Safford, her dresser, and a quantity of brushes and pins; Lady Caroline endured a lecture from her benefactor the marchioness that lasted well over half an hour; and Lady Susan Manning walked out, to her parents’ great satisfaction, on the arm of Lord Seabury to Hampstead Heath.

  The first part of this excursion generated no conversation that might be described as remarkable. Indeed, scarcely anything but commonplaces were exchanged. Lady Susan (to make an honest woman of her mother, mainly) took care to interrogate her escort as to the identity of this tree, and that bush, and those blossoms, and anything else she could conveniently point out. When Seabury was obliged to inform her that those pretty white flowers were known as daisies he thought perhaps he smelled a rat; but then, Susan had asked some mighty simple questions during the years of their acquaintance, so that he also thought, perhaps not.

  It was when she stumbled that he really began to suspect a plot. If any fall may be said to be graceful, or natural, Susan’s distinctly was not. It was extremely unconvincing. Susan was not a gifted dancer, and she carried her lack of ability intact into this new field of endeavour. She sat on the ground and bit her lip, however, in a very good imitation of authentic pain. Seabury of course knelt beside her, and asked if she were hurt.

  “No,” said Susan, wincing; and “Yes, I fear I am,” a moment later. “Could you—?” She leaned heavily on his arm and attempted to rise, but failed to support herself more than an instant. “If only I had seen that vine!” she exclaimed, squinting up at him even more markedly than usual.

  There was, in fact, a vine across the path, but it did not look as if it could have offered serious resistance to a colt, let alone a well-formed, healthy young woman. His lordship naturally was silent on this point, restricting his comments solely to the sort traditionally reserved for young ladies who have recently taken a tumble. When he came round to the one about insisting on carrying her home, Lady Susan brightened considerably, then remembered herself and frowned. She finished by accepting, and was dutifully hoisted up into the viscount’s arms.

  The experience must have been reviving, for the injured woman was soon chattering away animatedly. “I do hope,” she said, several times, “that no one of our acquaintance sees us!”

  “And why is that?” asked Seabury, rising warily to the bait.

  “Oh, dear! This is, I fear, rather a compromising situation for me. After all, it might be misinterpreted—”

  “I am sure no one, seeing us, could fail to divine what has occurred,” his lordship interrupted gently. “Even a perfect stranger must guess. Why else, after all, should I be carrying you?”

  Lady Susan essayed a giggle, the first and last (so mournful did it sound, even in her own ears) of her adult life. “I believe that the villains of fairy tales carry off young maidens in just such a manner,” she suggested.

  “Is that so? Well, then, if anyone is gallant enough to try to rescue you, I shall be sure to be lenient with him, on the assumption he read the same fairy tales as you.” Lady Susan, though not an heavy woman, was not a slight one either, and Lord Seabury was beginning to feel the strain of bearing her along. His words came out with increasing difficulty, and he tried to walk a little faster. The house was now within view, as both lady and gentleman noticed, with differing sentiments. The sight inspired Susan to new heights of brazen intimation.

  “Do you know, it is so pleasant being a young maiden, I sometimes think I shall always go on just so. Papa and Mamma fret, now and then, and remind me I ought to be giving them—a grandchild,” she brought out with some difficulty; “but I tell them if they feel that way they ought not to let me lead such a gay life, already so full of happy occasions and worthwhile events. Are you not of my opinion, my lord?”

  Seabury, distracted by the necessity of carrying her yet another quarter mile at least, had little attention to spare for his answer. “I am sure if there is anyone capable of continuing young forever,” he said rather mechanically, “that person is you.”

  “But do you feel a young woman ought to marry?” she persisted. “Is she obliged to do so, merely because she has no brother or sister?”

  “Many young people do marry,” he equivocated, “and from their reports, one must believe the greater part of them happy. From my own singleness, you may observe that I for one have not yet taken their example to heart, however.”

  This was hardly encouraging, but she thought of her parents and persevered. “You say, sir, that you have not yet taken their example to heart,” she began, with quite a heroic stab at archness. “Am I to draw from that that you expect you will someday?”

  The boldness of this made her cheeks burn, while its bluntness struck fear into Seabury’s heart. “I am my father’s heir,” he reminded her in what amounted to a mutter. “I am therefore as vulnerable as yourself to the accusation that my continuing single is selfish.”

  To Lady Susan’s unutterable chagrin, they were now on the gravel drive that led to the viscount’s house. Spurred on by the near exhaustion of the muscles in his arms, as well as by dread of hearing Susan’s next sally, Lord Seabury practically ran the remaining distance. When Hedgepeth opened the door his master thought he had never been so glad to see anybody in his whole life. He flew, burdened though he was, to the nearest sofa (it chanced to be in the drawing-room) and deposited Lady Susan upon it. She, poor soul, fought back tears as she listened to his orders: call Lady Safford, fetch a physician, prepare a restorative cordial, find some feathers or a vinaigrette. Glancing back at the patient, Seabury thought somewhat dimly that for the first time that morning she looked really distressed. Poor creature! What hurt her was something worse than a turned ankle, he reflected, though how much worse he could not guess. No matter! A strong impulse, as strong as any he had ever experienced, swept the observation from his mind, forbidding him to concern himself with her case any more than long familiarity and the duty of host to guest dictated. The moment Lady Safford arrived he quit the room, a wave of relief rushing through him.

  “Lord Seabury!” He heard his name whispered loudly behind him just as he was entering the only library—a quite inadequate one—the Hampstead house afforded. It was Caroline who called him: she s
tood at the other end of the corridor beckoning frantically. As he approached her she explained, “Mockabee is in there, waiting for Amy. I thought you would not like to encounter him alone just yet.”

  She was correct in this hypothesis. In fact he had been in search of a little solitude; but now that Lady Caroline had happened along, he discovered himself just as pleased. He thanked her, hesitated, then said quickly, “Lady Susan has turned her ankle, I am afraid. Should you like to walk on the Heath with me, so we may discuss—him?” he concluded, glancing at the library door.

  Caro, fresh from the sermon read to her by Lady Beatrice, assented promptly. Something in Seabury’s demeanour informed her at once that the walk on the Heath had failed of its mission, and that Susan had not extracted an offer from him.

  “I daresay,” Seabury continued in a lower tone, “that it will be best if we depart without fanfare. Lady Susan is still in the drawing-room, awaiting the doctor. Will you think it dreadfully strange of me if I suggest we—ah, sneak out?” It had occurred to him that to return to the scene of the accident with another young lady just minutes after fetching the first one home was not the most gentlemanlike behaviour one could imagine, or even the wisest; still, Lady Caroline looked charming, and seemed disposed to be agreeable, and his desire to be out with her in the fresh air was almost beyond control.

  Fortunately for that desire, Caroline answered at once, “On the contrary, I think it delicious. Let us steal away directly, without a word to anyone.”

  The two made a swift, unheralded escape to the Heath.

  Chapter VI

  “Dear ma’am, I could not think of it,” Sir Sidney Pettingill said fussily half an hour later. The words that issued from his glistening lips were addressed to Lady Susan, who still lay upon her sofa in the long drawing-room, professedly nursing her twisted ankle. The physician who had come to look at her had been sent away directly by Lady Safford, who explained that her daughter’s injury was now discovered to be of no moment; and Lady Safford herself was engaged in an intense conference with her husband in the small suite of rooms allotted to them. Lady Susan consequently lay alone in the drawing-room, too discouraged and disappointed to care to move; besides, she supposed she ought to maintain the pretense of having hurt her foot for a little while at least—even if Lord Seabury, as she had by now concluded, did not intend to look in upon her until later. She had thought it was he whose light tap on the half-shut doors she had answered with a listless, “Pray come in”; but in fact it had been Sir Sidney. She had sat up upon the couch, peeping over the back towards the doorway, and had been more than a trifle startled at the sight of Pettingill. Ever polite, he had at once offered to remove himself from her temporary quarters; she had assured him his coming was most welcome, and that she was not sorry for the company. It was in answer to this assurance that the courteous remark recorded above was made, and Pettingill followed it with the information that Lady Susan “must be odiously fatigued, and doubtless cursed the intruder inwardly even as she so kindly welcomed him aloud.”