‘My blessing on the alliance: she will make you an excellent wife! But wherein do you need my advice? Or are you merely trying to wheedle me into breaking the news to your mama?’
‘No, of course not! I shall tell her myself. Though it would be helpful if you supported me,’ he added, after a reflective moment.
‘I will.’
Julian smiled gratefully at him. ‘Yes. I know: you are such a right one, Waldo!’
‘Spare my blushes! And my advice?’
‘Well, that’s the only thing that has me in a worry!’ disclosed his lordship. ‘I want to come to the point, and although the Chartleys have been as kind and affable as they could be – not hinting me away, or anything of that nature! – I can’t but wonder whether it may not be too soon to ask the Rector for permission to propose to Patience! I mean, if he thought I was a regular squire of dames, because I dangled after Miss Wield, he’d be bound to send me packing – and then it would be all holiday with me!’
‘I hardly think that he will judge you quite as harshly as that,’ replied Sir Waldo, with admirable gravity. ‘After all, you are not entangled with Tiffany, are you?’
‘Oh, no!’ Julian assured him. ‘Nothing of that sort! In fact, she brushed me off after what happened in Leeds, so I don’t think I need feel myself in any way bound to her, do you?’ He chuckled. ‘Laurie cut me out! I was never more glad of anything! Well, it just shows you, doesn’t it? Only think of being grateful to Laurie! Lord! But tell me, Waldo! What should I do?’
Sir Waldo, whose private opinion was that the Rector must be living in the hourly expectation of receiving a declaration from Lord Lindeth, had no hesitation in answering this appeal. He recommended his anxious young cousin to make known his intentions at the earliest opportunity, very handsomely offering, at the same time, to reassure the Rector, if he should be misled into believing that his daughter’s suitor was a hardened roué. Julian grinned appreciatively at this; and for the following half-hour bored Sir Waldo very much by expatiating at length on Miss Chartley’s numerous virtues.
He departed at last, but his place was taken within ten minutes by Laurence, who came in, and stood irresolutely on the threshold, eyeing his cousin in some doubt.
Sir Waldo had sat down at the desk. There were several papers spread on it, but he did not seem to be at work on them. His hands were clasped on top of the pile, and his eyes were frowning at the wall in front of him. His expression was unusually grim, and it did not lighten when he turned his head to look at Laurence. Rather, it hardened. ‘Well?’
If his demeanour had not warned Laurence already that he had chosen an inauspicious moment to seek him out, the uncompromising tone in which this one word was uttered must have done so. Laurence was still holding the door, and he backed himself out of the room, saying hurriedly, as he drew the door to upon himself: ‘Oh, nothing! I only – Beg pardon! Didn’t know you was busy! Some other time!’
‘I advise you not to cherish false hopes! At no time!’ Sir Waldo said harshly.
Under any ordinary circumstances Laurence would have been provoked into lengthy retort, but on this occasion he did not venture to reply at all, but effaced himself with all possible speed.
The door safely shut between himself and his suddenly formidable cousin, he let his breath go in an astonished: ‘Phew!’ Indignation warred with curiosity in his breast, but curiosity won. After looking speculatively at the door for several moments, as though he could see Waldo’s face through its stout panels, he walked away, his somewhat ferret-like brain concentrated on the new and unexpected problem which had presented itself.
It did not take him long to decide that the only possible cause of Waldo’s unprecedented behaviour must be a disappointment in love. It was absurd to suppose that he might be faced with pecuniary difficulties; and, in Laurence’s view, only love or penury could account for so bleak an aspect. At first glance it seemed equally absurd to suppose that his courtship of Miss Trent could have suffered a set-back; but after some moments of reflection Laurence came to the conclusion that this must be the answer. It might seem incredible that a female in her circumstances should rebuff so opulent a suitor, but there could be no doubt that Miss Trent was a very odd creature. But no doubt either that she was as deeply in love with Waldo as he with her. No forbidding frown had marred Waldo’s countenance at the breakfast-table: he had been in particularly good spirits. Then he had driven off, tossing a joking remark over his shoulder to Julian; and although he had not disclosed his destination only a lobcock could have doubted that he was bound for Staples. Julian, wrapped up in his own affairs, might not know that Waldo had visited Staples every day for more than a sennight, but his far more astute cousin knew it. It looked very much as if Waldo had popped the question, and had been rejected. But why?
Cudgel his brains as he might, Laurence could arrive at no satisfactory answer to this enigma. Had any man but Waldo been concerned he would have been inclined to think that someone had traduced him to Miss Trent: he rather supposed her to be pretty straitlaced. But so was Waldo straitlaced, and what the devil could the most arrant scandalmonger find to say of him that would disgust any female? And was his Long Meg fool enough to believe a story fabricated by one of the jealous tabbies of the parish?
It was all very perplexing, but an answer there must be, which it might be well worth his while to discover. His first scheme to win his affluent cousin’s gratitude had gone awry – it had not taken him very long to realize that no assistance from him had been needed to wean Julian from his attachment to Tiffany Wield – but it might well be that in this new, and very odd, situation lay the means he had been seeking. If, through his agency, the starcrossed lovers became reconciled, it was difficult to see how Waldo – no nip-squeeze, give him his due! – could fail to express his gratitude in a suitable and handsome manner.
Laurence’s spirits had been rapidly sinking into gloom, but they now rose. It had been vexatious to find that his admirable plan to detach the Wield chit from Lindeth had been labour wasted. He did not regret it, precisely, for to have stolen the Beauty from under the noses of her ridiculous swains had been amusing, and as good a way as any other of whiling away the time he had been obliged to spend in an excessively boring place. He had even toyed for a day or two with the thought of wooing Tiffany in earnest, but had soon abandoned the scheme. The idea of tying himself up in wedlock was distasteful to him; and although he might have overcome his reluctance for the sake of Tiffany’s fortune he could not feel that there was the least likelihood of obtaining her guardians’ consent to the match, much less of their relinquishing into his hands the control of her fortune a day before she attained her majority. So however pleasant it might be to flirt elegantly with such an out-and-out beauty the affair was really a waste of time. Its only value was that it now provided him with an excuse for visiting Staples, to see for himself how the land lay there. It might not be easy to coax Miss Trent to confide in him; but although her manner towards him held a good deal of reserve, she had lately begun to show him rather more friendliness; and if she was as blue-devilled as Waldo over the rift between them she might, Laurence considered, be glad to be offered the opportunity to unburden herself. Certainly she would be, if she and Waldo had quarrelled: positively burning to state her grievances, if he knew anything of women! A quarrel, however, seemed highly unlikely: she did not look to be the sort of female to fly into the boughs, or to take affronts into her head; and Waldo’s even temper was proverbial. On the whole, Laurence was more inclined to believe that the trouble must be due to some misunderstanding. Very probably each was too proud to seek an explanation of the other, and no one would be more welcome to them than a tactful mediator. Acting as a go-between might prove to be a wearing task, but in the pursuit of his own ends Laurence grudged no expenditure of effort.
Accordingly, he drove over to Staples that very day, ostensibly to visit Tiffany. He w
as met by the intelligence that Tiffany had gone to Harrogate, and that Miss Trent was laid down on her bed with the headache. He left cards and compliments, and drove off, by no means cast down by this set-back. Laid down with the headache, was she? Promising! That was the excuse females always put forward whenever they had been indulging in a hearty fit of crying: he would have been far more daunted had he found her in excellent spirits.
Waldo’s behaviour that evening was satisfactory too: he wasn’t exactly cagged, but he wasn’t what one could call chirping merry. Agreeable enough when addressed, but for the most part he was in a brown study. Julian had gone off somewhere with Edward Banningham, so there was very little conversation at dinner, Laurence not being such a cawker as to irritate Waldo with idle chatter when it was plain that he didn’t want to talk. When they rose from the table, Waldo shut himself up in the book-room, saying that he was sorry to be such bad company, but that a vexatious hitch had occurred in his arrangements for installing a suitable warden at Broom Hall. Humdudgeon, of course, but Laurence replied sympathetically, and said that there was no need for Waldo to trouble his head over him: he would be happy enough with a book.
It was less satisfactory, on the following morning, to find neither Tiffany nor Miss Trent at home, when he called at Staples, but the evening, which was spent by him at the Ashes’ house, was more rewarding. Miss Trent had brought Tiffany to the party, and it was easy to see she’d got the hips. She might smile, and converse with her usual tranquillity, but she was suspiciously pale, and there were tell-tale shadows under her eyes. As soon as she could do so, she went to sit beside a mousy little woman whom Laurence presently discovered to be governess to the children of the house. She was taking care not to glance in Waldo’s direction: rather too much care, thought Laurence. Out of the tail of his eye he watched Waldo cross the room towards her. He couldn’t hear what passed between them, of course, but he was perfectly well able to draw conclusions. He had a pair of sharp eyes, and he saw how tightly her hands were gripping her reticule, and how swiftly the colour rushed into her cheeks and ebbed again. Then Waldo bowed – the bow of a man accepting a rebuff: no question about that! – and went off with Sir William Ash to the card-room. Miss Trent’s eyes were downcast, but they lifted as he turned away, and followed him across the room. Lord! thought Laurence, startled, who would have thought that such a cool creature could look like that? Flat despair! But what the devil had happened to set the pair of them at outs?
The sound of a fiddle being tuned obliged him to drag his mind from this intriguing problem. The first set was forming; and as the dance was of an informal nature, Lady Ash having announced that since all the young people knew one another she meant to leave them to choose their own partners, it behoved him to look about him for an unattached lady. He saw Tiffany, talking vivaciously to Miss Banningham, and to Lindeth, who was clearly waiting to lead the eldest daughter of the house into the set. It did vaguely occur to Laurence that it was unusual to find Tiffany without an eager crowd of admirers clamouring for the privilege of dancing with her, but although he bowed, and smirked, and solicited the honour of leading her on to the floor, his mind was still too much preoccupied to allow of his paying more than cursory heed to this circumstance. Nor did he notice that the lady who was being besieged by suppliants was Miss Chartley.
But Miss Trent noticed it, and she thought that it set the seal on an evening of unalleviated misery. Too well did she know that glittering look of Tiffany’s, that over-emphatic gaiety; and if she was relieved to see, as the evening progressed, that Tiffany was never left without a partner, her relief was soon tempered by the spectacle of Mr Wilfred Butterlaw, a pimply youth suffering from unrequited adoration of the Beauty, leading her charge into a set. Mercifully for what little peace of mind was left to Miss Trent, she could not know that Mr Butterlaw’s evil genius prompted him to blurt out, when he and Tiffany came together in the dance: ‘I d-don’t care a s-straw what anyone says, Miss Wield! I think you’re p-perfect !’
But although she never knew of this essay in tactlessness she was not at all surprised, during the drive back to Staples, to find that Tiffany was in her most dangerous mood, which found expression, not in one of her stormy outbursts, but in brittle laughter, and the utterance of whatever damaging animadversions on the manners or looks of her acquaintances first occurred to her. Miss Trent preserved a discouraging silence, and devoutly hoped that Courtenay, seated opposite to the ladies, would refrain from adding fuel to the fire. So he did, until Tiffany reached the most galling cause of her discontent, and said, with a trill of laughter: ‘And Patience Chartley, looking like a dowd in that hideous green dress, and putting on die-away airs, and pretending to be so shy, and so modest, and casting down her eyes in that ridiculous way she uses when she wants to persuade everyone that she’s a saint!’
‘If I were you,’ interposed Courtenay bluntly, ‘I wouldn’t be quite so spiteful about Patience, miss!’
‘Spiteful? Oh, I didn’t mean to be! Poor thing, she’s close on twenty and has never had an offer! I’m truly sorry for her: it must be odious to be so – so insipid !’
‘No, you ain’t,’ said Courtenay. ‘You’re as mad as fire because it wasn’t you that got all the notice tonight but her ! And I’ll tell you this! –’
‘Don’t!’ said Miss Trent wearily.
The interpolation was unheeded. ‘If you don’t take care,’ continued Courtenay ruthlessly, ‘you’ll find yourself in the suds – and don’t think your precious beauty will save you, because it won’t! Lord, if ever I knew such a corkbrained wag-feather as you are! First you drove Lindeth off with your Turkish treatment, then it was Arthur, and to crown all you hadn’t even enough sense to keep your tongue about what happened in Leeds, when it was Patience that showed what a game one she is, not you! All you did was to scold like the vixen you are!’
‘A game one?’ Tiffany said, in a voice shaking with fury. ‘Patience? She’s nothing but a shameless show-off ! I collect you had this from Ancilla! She positively dotes on dear, demure little Patience – exactly her notion of a well-brought-up girl!’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t! Miss Trent never told us anything but that Patience had snatched some slum-brat from under the wheels of a carriage, with the greatest pluck and presence of mind! Nor did Lindeth! And as for Patience, she don’t talk about it at all! You did all the talking! You was afraid one of the others would describe the figure you cut, so you set it about that Patience had created an uproar just so that people should think she was a heroine, but that it was all a fudge: no danger to the brat or to herself !’
‘Nor was there! If Ancilla says –’
‘Wasn’t there? Well, now, coz, I’ll tell you something else! Ned Banningham was in York t’other day, staying with some friends, and who should be one of the people who came to the dinner-party but the fellow who nearly drove over Patience? I don’t recall his name, but I daresay you may. Very full of the accident he seems to have been! Told everyone what a trump Patience was, and how she didn’t make the least fuss or to-do, and what a stew he was in, thinking she was bound to be trampled on. Described you too. Jack wouldn’t tell me what he said, and I’d as lief he didn’t, because you are my cousin, and I ain’t fond of being put to the blush. But Ned told Jack, and of course Jack told Arthur, and then Greg got to hear of it – and that’s why you got the cold shoulder tonight! I daresay no one would have cared much if you’d said cutting things about Sophy Banningham, because she ain’t much liked; but the thing is that everyone likes Patience! What’s more, until you came back to Staples, and peacocked all over the neighbourhood, she and Lizzie were the prettiest girls here, and the most courted! So take care what you’re about, Beautiful Miss Wield!’
Eighteen
By the time Miss Trent was at liberty to seek her own bed after that memorable party she was so much exhausted that she fell almost instantly into a deep, yet troubled sleep. The drive back to
Staples had ended with Tiffany in floods of tears, which lasted for long after she had been supported upstairs to her bed-chamber. Miss Trent, thrusting aside her own troubles, applied herself first to the task of soothing Tiffany, then to that of undressing her, and lastly to the far more difficult duty of trying to point out to her, while she was in a malleable condition, that however brutal Courtenay might have been he had spoken no more than the truth. Bathing Tiffany’s temples with Hungary Water, she did her best to mingle sympathy with her unpalatable advice. She thought that Tiffany was attending to her; and found herself pitying the girl. She was vain, and selfish, and unbelievably tiresome, but only a child, after all, and one who had been flattered and spoilt almost from the day of her birth. She had met with a severe check for the first time in her headlong career; it had shocked and frightened her; and perhaps, thought Miss Trent, softly drawing the curtains round her bed, she might profit by so painful a lesson.
She did not come down to breakfast, but when Miss Trent went to visit her she did not find her lying in a darkened room with a damp towel laid over her brow and smelling-salts clasped feebly in her hand, as had happened on a previous and hideous occasion, but sitting up in bed, thoughtfully eating strawberries. She eyed Miss Trent somewhat defensively, but upon being bidden a cheerful good morning responded with perfect amiability.
‘No letters yet from Bridlington,’ said Miss Trent, ‘but Netley has just brought up a package from the lodge. I couldn’t conceive what it might be until I saw the label attached to it, for a more unwieldy parcel you can’t imagine! My dear, those idiotish silk merchants haven’t sent patterns, but a whole roll of silk! They must have misunderstood Mrs Underhill – and I only hope it may match the brocade! I shall have to take it to Mrs Tawton in the gig. Will you go with me? Do!’
‘No, it will take hours, and I can’t, because I’ve made a plan of my own.’