He almost thrust his guest into a chair by the fire, and hurried off in search of his wife. He found her in her dressing-gown, in conference with the housekeeper, and surrounded by a litter of bandboxes. She was a handsome woman, dressed in the first style of elegance in a Rutland half-robe, with a striped zephyr shawl, and a somewhat formidable turban. Her nose was high-bridged, and her blue eyes at once penetrating and cold. One glance at her spouse sufficed to make her dismiss the housekeeper; and as soon as this portly dame had curtsied herself out of the room, she said: ‘Well, Ampleforth? What is it?’
‘I have Sale downstairs,’ he said. ‘He has been with me this past half-hour.’
‘Sale!’ she exclaimed, her eyes narrowing.
‘My love, he has made me an offer for Harriet’s hand. He expressed himself with the greatest propriety: I think you would have been pleased to have heard him.’
‘I was beginning to think he meant to cry off!’ she said, in the outspoken way which always made her lord wince. ‘So he has offered at last! He could not have chosen a more awkward moment! The drawing-room is under holland covers already, and it is quite out of the question for us to be asking him to dine. We have only the under-cook here.’
‘Upon my word, I had thought you would have been glad of the news!’ said his lordship, quite astonished.
‘Pray do not talk to me in that foolish manner, Ampleforth! You know very well that I am excessively glad of it, but why he might not have made his offer at a more seasonable time I have not the remotest conjecture. We should have held a dress-party, and the announcement should have been made at it. People will think it a shabbily contrived business!’
‘You forget, ma’am,’ rather feebly suggested his lordship, ‘that we are still in black gloves. It will not be thought wonderful that we do not –’
‘Cousin Albinia, and I know not how many times removed, besides having been as mad as Bedlam for years! I assure you I should not have regarded that! However, it is of no use to repine! The thing is that Sale has been brought up to scratch, and heaven knows I must be thankful for that, for I don’t scruple to tell you, my lord, that I have been fearing Harriet was to be obliged to wear the willow. Where have you put him?’
‘He is in my book-room. I said I must first speak with you.’
‘Very well, I will come directly. I daresay Harriet dressed all by guess this morning, for we are in such an uproar, with half the servants already gone to Ampleforth!’ said the lady, tugging vigorously at the bell-pull. ‘Do not be loitering here, my lord, I do beg of you, but go back to Sale, and say Harriet will come down presently. Oh, is it you, Mrs Royston? No, I did not precisely wish for you, but it doesn’t signify! Be good enough to desire Lady Harriet and Miss Abinger to wait on me here directly! Pray, what do you stay for, Ampleforth? Go down to Sale at once, and entertain him until I come!’
The Lady Harriet was discovered to be in the school-room, helping to keep her younger sisters amused while the nurse busied herself with the packing of their many trunks. At a table in the window, the governess, Miss Abinger, was endeavouring to instruct two stout lads in frilled shirts and nankeen pantaloons in the use of the globes. When Lady Ampleforth’s message was delivered by the panting housekeeper, Harriet jumped up from the floor, where she had been sitting, and instinctively put up her hands to smooth her soft brown curls. ‘Mama wants me?’ she said in a scared voice. ‘Oh, what is it, Royston dear?’
The housekeeper beamed at her knowingly. ‘Ah, that is for her ladyship to tell you, my lady! But what would you say to a lovely young gentleman’s being closeted with your papa?’
Lady Harriet’s large blue eyes dilated; she said faintly: ‘Oh, no!’
Miss Abinger, a sensible-looking woman in the late thirties, rose from her seat, saying in a commonplace tone: ‘Lady Harriet will come to her ladyship directly. You will do well to tidy your hair, my dear. Come into your bedchamber and let me draw a comb through it. You know your mama likes you to be neat in your appearance.’
‘Harry, don’t be gone for ever!’ begged Lady Maria, a buxom twelve-year-old. ‘Ten to one it is only one of Mama’s fusses!’
‘Oh, hush, love!’ Harriet whispered.
‘Good gracious, Harry!’ exclaimed Lady Caroline, who at sixteen bade fair to resemble her mother very nearly, ‘you don’t suppose it is Sale, do you?’
Harriet, blushing furiously, ran out of the room. Miss Abinger said severely: ‘You will oblige me, Caroline, by writing out in your fairest hand, and without blots, fifty times, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his heart from troubles.’ She waited for a moment to be sure that her pupil dared not venture on any retort, and then followed Lady Harriet out of the room, and down one pair of stairs to a bedchamber at the back of the house.
Here, the abigail who was folding her young mistress’s dresses in silver paper betrayed by her air of barely suppressed excitement that the rumour that was already running through the house had reached her ears. She greeted the governess with a gasp, and an involuntary question. ‘Oh, miss, is it true?’
Miss Abinger ignored this impertinence, and trod over to the dressing-table, before which Harriet had seated herself. ‘You have crushed your gown a trifle, my dear, but it will not do to keep your mama waiting, and we must hope that she will not notice it. Let me take that comb!’
Harriet permitted her to remove it from her singularly nerveless grasp. ‘Oh, Abby, you do not think – ?’
‘I think your mama will not like it if you do not bestir yourself, Lady Harriet,’ replied the governess calmly.
Harriet said, in a helpless way: ‘No,’ and submitted to having her hair combed and tidied. She then rose, and with trembling knees followed her preceptress downstairs to Lady Ampleforth’s dressing-room.
Her ladyship cast one comprehensive glance over her daughter, and exclaimed in exasperated accents: ‘Exactly so! Your old plain muslin, and I daresay everything packed up already! Well, it will not do! Miss Abinger, oblige me by seeing to it that Lady Harriet changes her dress immediately! The cambric muslin with the double scallop work at the bottom is what she should be wearing, or if that is not readily procurable, the new sprig gown, with the sleeves drawn at the top with coloured ribbons! My love, Sale is below, with your papa. You will allow your mama to be the first to felicitate you upon the very flattering offer that has been made you!’
‘Gilly!’ Harriet uttered, in a voice so suspended by surprise as to be barely audible. ‘Oh, no! surely you must be mistaken, ma’am!’
A look of annoyance seemed to sharpen Lady Ampleforth’s features. ‘There is no occasion that I know of for these die-away airs, Harriet!’ she said. ‘You are very well aware of your papa’s and my intentions for you!’
‘Oh, yes! But I had not supposed – he has never been particular in his attentions – Mama, I did not think Gilly loved me!’
‘I can only conclude, Harriet,’ said Lady Ampleforth, with a condemnatory glance at Miss Abinger, ‘that you have been taking novels out of some circulating-library, which is a thing I have never permitted.’
‘Oh, no, Mama!’ Harriet faltered.
‘Then I am at a loss to understand where you can have learnt such trumpery notions, and I beg you will not make a figure of yourself by mentioning them again! Sale has expressed himself very properly to your papa, and if he and I are satisfied you have surely nothing to cavil at! He is waiting to address you himself. I trust you know your duty well enough to make it unnecessary for me to tell you in what terms you must answer him.’
‘Oh, Mama, pray – !’
‘Harriet, what is this nonsense?’ demanded her ladyship irately. ‘I will allow it to be a most inconvenient time for Sale to be declaring himself, but so it is always! Men have not the least common sense! But if you mean to tell me that you hold him in aversion –’
‘Oh, no, no!
’
‘Precisely so! You should be grateful to your papa and to me for having permitted you to become pretty well acquainted with Sale, instead of presenting him to you a complete stranger, as might very often happen in my young days, let me assure you! I did not look for this missishness in you, and I can tell you that it is not at all becoming. You have been a little taken by surprise, and that is forgivable: I was quite thunderstruck myself. But you will have time to compose your mind while you change your dress, and I am confident you will conduct yourself just as you should. Now, do not be dawdling here any longer, my dear! Bustle about a little, if you please! I shall come up to your bedchamber to fetch you myself in half an hour, and I hope you do not mean to keep me waiting. Miss Abinger, be so good as to accompany my daughter, and to make sure that she is dressed just as she should be! Her maid has no head, not the least in the world!’
‘Certainly, Lady Ampleforth,’ said Miss Abinger, in her colourless way. ‘Come, Lady Harriet!’
She laid her hand on Harriet’s trembling arm, and almost propelled her to the door. When she had firmly closed this behind them, she said in a warmer tone: ‘My dear, try to compose yourself! What is the matter?’
‘Oh, Abby, I don’t know!’ Harriet replied, in some agitation. ‘Only I did not look for this, and I do not wish – I do not think – ’
‘Forgive me, but I had not supposed that you were indifferent to the Duke.’
‘Not indifferent, no!’ Harriet said, averting her face. ‘But he – !’
They had reached the half-landing before Miss Abinger replied. She said then: ‘I believe the Duke entertains feelings of the warmest regard for you, my love. He is a very amiable young man, and one who will not fail to treat you with all the courtesy and consideration one could wish for you. Indeed, I think you are to be envied! I know your mind to be of too nice a tone to care for such things, but you will occupy a position of the first consequence, and you will enjoy great wealth. Reflect that in addition to this you will have a husband who partakes of many of your sentiments, and is, I am persuaded, the model of compliance and good-nature.’
‘He does not love me,’ Harriet said. ‘It is his uncle’s doing, and Mama’s. I know it, Abby!’
‘I shall not dispute with you on that head, my dear Lady Harriet, and I believe it will not serve to discuss it. Yet I must venture to tell you that I do not by any means despair of your happiness in this alliance. You know, it is not commonly the thing for persons in your station in life to make what is called a love-match.’
‘No,’ Harriet agreed dejectedly.
They had reached the upper floor by this time. As Miss Abinger grasped the door-handle of Harriet’s bedroom, she added deliberately: ‘You are not always quite at your ease in your home, dear Lady Harriet. I fancy you may be happier in an establishment of your own. But I have said too much, and we shall soon have your mama coming up to fetch you!’
Harriet coloured, but was silent. While Miss Abinger directed the maid to unpack her mistress’s cambric muslin, she waited, looking out of the window between the lace blinds. Her colour faded gradually, and she was able in a few minutes to reply to a chance question with tolerable composure.
It was by no means Miss Abinger’s business to dress the hair of her pupils, but she elected to do so, and with so much taste that when Lady Ampleforth came into the room presently she nodded approvingly, and said: ‘Very well, indeed! I could wish that you had a trifle more countenance, my love, but you look very becomingly. But hold yourself up, if you please! An air of languor can never be pleasing in a girl, remember! Now, if you are ready, we will go downstairs.’
‘I am quite ready, Mama.’
Lady Ampleforth preceded her out of the room, but paused at the head of the stairs to take her hand. ‘There is no need for you to feel the slightest embarrassment, Harriet,’ she said kindly. ‘Sale is a very pretty-behaved young man, and his manners reflect the greatest credit on his upbringing. I only wish your brother had them! I daresay he will do or say nothing to make you blush. Besides, I should not think of leaving you alone together, so have no fears on that score!’
‘No, Mama,’ said Harriet.
Lord Ampleforth and the Duke were standing in front of the fire in the book-room, conversing in a desultory and uncomfortable fashion. Lord Ampleforth was looking rather more harassed than before; and half an hour of his future mother-in-law’s brisk, managing talk had so much oppressed the Duke’s spirits that he bore the appearance more of one about to face a severe ordeal than of a hopeful suitor. He directed an anxious, questioning look at Harriet, but she kept her eyes lowered, and did not perceive it.
‘Ah, my child!’ said Ampleforth, going to meet her. ‘I think your mama has told you that I have just received a very flattering offer for your hand.’ He took it as he spoke, and gave it a fond squeeze. ‘But I have told Gilly that I will not have you constrained, and you shall give him your own answer.’
He drew her forward; the Duke, miserably tongue-tied, managed to utter a few formal sentences; and Harriet, ready to sink, curtsied, and whispered a reply of which ‘very much obliged’, and ‘most truly sensible of the honour’, were the only audible words.
Her father, apparently taking these to mean consent, held out her hand to the Duke, who took it in his own ice-cold one, and kissed it. He said: ‘You have made me very happy. I beg you to believe that I shall do everything in my power to – to make you happy too, Harriet!’
‘No one who knows you could doubt that, Gilly, I am sure!’ Ampleforth said. ‘I don’t scruple to say that you are two very fortunate young persons. I am sure I do not know which of you has the better disposition! Lady Ampleforth, I have something I wish to say to you! We will beg Gilly to excuse us for a minute.’
Her ladyship was so much astonished at having such tactics employed against her that she could think of nothing to say, except what she was too well-bred to say in front of a guest. Her husband was holding open the door, and she saw nothing for it but to leave the room with him. The Duke and his betrothed were left shyly confronting one another.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then the Duke saw how pale Harriet was, and how much her hands trembled, and compassion made him forget his own ill-ease, and he said: ‘I hope you do not dislike it very much! I shall do my utmost not to give you cause for any unhappiness. You won’t find me exacting, I promise, or – or –’
‘No, I do not dislike it,’ Harriet answered, in a low voice. ‘I shall try to be dutiful, and to behave just as you would wish. I – I have always had a – a great regard for you, Gilly.’
‘And I for you, dear Harriet,’ he responded at once. ‘I do think we – we may suit very well. It shall not be my fault if we do not.’
She looked up at that. ‘I hope – oh, I hope it may never be mine! Forgive me! I find myself a little overcome! I had not the expectation – that is, I did not think you were in London, or that – you entertained for me those feelings which –’
She broke off in confusion. He possessed himself of her hand again. ‘Indeed, I am excessively attached to you!’ he stammered. ‘I wish you were not going out of town immediately! It must have been my – my earnest endeavour to show you – But I may come to Bath, and you will allow me to squire you to all the dress-balls!’ he added, with an attempt at lightness.
A smile trembled on her lips. ‘Oh, yes! You know how well our steps suit!’
‘Yes, indeed! I am sure there is no one I am happier to stand up with, for you never make me feel myself to be such a miserable dwarf of a fellow!’
‘Oh, Gilly, how can you? You are no such thing!’
He laughed. ‘Ah, you should hear my cousin Gideon on that head!’
‘You should hear Gayford!’ she retorted, gaining confidence. ‘He calls me a poor little dab of a creature!’
‘Brothers! We shall not care a fig
for them, or cousins either!’ he said. He saw that she was looking less pale, and ventured to kiss her cheek.
Lady Ampleforth came back into the room in time to witness this embrace. Her sharp eyes detected Harriet’s blush, and the way her hand went up as though to clasp the Duke’s coat collar. She said: ‘Well, I make no doubt you have settled it all between you! It is an unfortunate circumstance that we should be going out of town at this precise moment, but I shall look to see you at Ampleforth, Duke, next month. Harriet must go to Bath: there is no getting out of that, for old Lady Ampleforth expects her, and we must not cast her into one of her pets, you know.’
The young couple fell apart guiltily; constraint descended upon them again; and by the time her ladyship had discussed various convenient dates for the wedding-ceremony and estimated the length of time it would take her to procure Harriet’s bride-clothes, the Duke was thankful to take his leave.
When he had been bowed out, Lord Ampleforth, who had been observing his daughter narrowly, said: ‘My dear Harriet, are you quite happy in this engagement? You must not hesitate to tell me if your mind has any misgiving!’
‘No, Papa, I am quite happy,’ she said.
‘Good God, Ampleforth, what can you be thinking of?’ exclaimed his wife. ‘Pray, what more could any girl desire, I should like to know? To be Duchess of Sale! That is something indeed! Harriet, I wish you will come up to my dressing-room, for there is a great deal I want to say to you!’
She swept her daughter out of the room, saying as she closed the door: ‘Your papa has some odd fancies, but I trust I have brought you up to know your duty! It was an awkward business, his calling me out of the room as he did, but I returned to you as soon as I might. Sale looked to be in tolerably good health, I thought.’