Джорджетт Хейер - Arabella

“Ay, you need not tell me! this is your doing, Sophia! Poor Henry never had a particle of sense! A dear, good fellow, of course, but when a man has a quiverful of children he needs to be a little sharper than Henry. But you have all your wits about you, my dear sister! You are doing just as you should: the girl’s uncommon handsome, and should do well for herself. Ay, ay, you will be setting about the wedding preparations before the cat has time to lick her ear! Lady Bridlington, eh? One of the London nobs, I daresay: couldn’t be better! But it will cost a great deal!”

“Indeed, you are right, Sir John,” said Mrs. Tallant. “It will cost a very great deal, but when such an opportunity is offered every effort should be made to take advantage of it, I believe.”

“Ay, ay, you will be laying your money out to good purpose!” he nodded. “But can you trust this fine lady of yours to keep half-pay officers, and such-like, out of the girl’s way? It won’t do to have her running off with some penniless fellow, you know, and all your trouble wasted!”

The fact that the same thought had more than once crossed her mind did not make this piece of plain-speaking any more agreeable to Mrs. Tallant. She considered it extremely vulgar, and replied in a repressive tone that she believed she might depend on Arabella’s good sense.

“You had better drop a word of warning in your friend’s ear,” said Sir John bluntly. “You know, Sophia, if that girl of yours were to catch a man of property, and, damme, I don’t see why she shouldn’t!—it would be a great thing for her sisters! Ay, the more I think on it the better I like it! It is worth all the expense. When does she go? How do you mean to send her?”

“As to that, it is not yet decided, Sir John, but if Mrs. Caterham holds by her original scheme, and lets Miss Blackburn go next month—you must know that she is the governess, I daresay—she could travel with Arabella. I believe her home is in Surrey, so she must go to London.”

“But you won’t send little Bella on the stage-coach!”

Mrs. Tallant sighed. “My dear sir, the cost of posting is too great to be even thought of! I own, I do not like it, but beggars, you know, cannot be choosers!”

The Squire began to look very thoughtful. “Well, that won’t do,” he said presently. “No, no, we can’t have that! Driving up to your grand friend’s house in a hackney! We shall have to contrive a little, Sophia. Now, let me see!”

He sat staring into the fire for some minutes, while his sister-in-law pensively gazed out of the window, and tried not to let her mind dwell on what her sensitive husband’s feelings must be, could he but have had the least idea of what she was doing.

“I’ll tell you what, sister!” said the Squire suddenly. “I’ll send Arabella to London in my travelling-carriage, that’s what I’ll do! No sense in wasting money on posting: it don’t matter to the girl if she spends some time on the road. What’s more, those post-chaises can’t take up all the baggage I’ll be bound Bella will have with her. Ay, and this governess of yours will have a box as well, I daresay.”

“Your travelling carriage!” exclaimed Mrs. Tallant, rather startled.

“That’s it. Never use it myself: it hasn’t been out of the coachhouse since my poor Eliza died. I’ll set the men on to furbish it up: it ain’t one of these smart, newfangled barouches, but it’s a handsome carriage—I bought it for Eliza, when we were first married, and it has my crest on the panel. You would not be comfortable, sending the girl off with strange post-boys, you know: much better to let my old coachman drive her, and I’ll send one of the grooms along to sit up beside him, with a pistol in his pocket in case of highwaymen.” He rubbed his hands together, well-pleased with the scheme, and began to estimate how many days it would take a strong pair of horses—or, at a pinch, even four—to reach London without getting knocked-up. He was inclined to think the plan would answer very well, and that Arabella would not at all object to resting the nags a day here or there upon the road. “Or she might travel by easy stages, you know!” he said.

Upon reflection, Mrs. Tallant perceived that this plan had much to recommend it. Against the evils of lingering in the various posting-houses along the route, must be set the advantages of being driven by a steady, trustworthy coachman, and of being able, as the Squire had pointed out, to carry all the trunks and bandboxes in the carriage, instead of having to send them to town by carrier. She thanked him, therefore, and was still expressing the sense of her obligation to him when the young ladies came back into the room.

The Squire greeted Arabella with great joviality, pinching her cheek, and saying: “Well, puss, this is a new come-out for you, eh? I’ll swear you’re in high gig! Now, here’s your mother and I have been putting our heads together, and the long and the short of it is you are to go to London in prime style, in your poor aunt’s carriage, and Timothy-coachman to drive you. How will that be, my lass?”

Arabella, who had very pretty manners, thanked him, and said everything that was proper. He appeared pleased, told her she might give him a kiss, and he would be satisfied, and suddenly walked out of the room, adjuring her to wait, for he had a little something for her. When he came back, he found his visitors ready to take their leave of him. He shook hands warmly with them all, and pressed into Arabella’s a folded banknote, saying: “There! that is to buy yourself some fripperies with, puss!”

She was quite overcome, for she had not expected anything of the sort; coloured, and stammered that he was by far too kind. He liked to be thanked, and beamed at her, and pinched her cheek again, very well satisfied with himself and her.

“But, Mama,” said Sophia, when they were driving away from the Hall, “you will never let poor Arabella go to town in that antiquated carriage of my uncle’s!”

“Nonsense!” replied her mother. “It is a very respectable carriage, and if it is old-fashioned I daresay it is none the worse for that. No doubt you would rather see her dash off in a chaise-and-four, but it would cost as much as fifty or sixty pounds, besides what one must give the postilions, and is not to be thought of. Why, even a pair of horses, so far as we are from London, would mean thirty pounds, and all for what? To be sure, it will be a little slow, but Miss Blackburn will be with your sister, and if they are obliged to stay a day in an inn—to rest the horses, you know—she will be able to look after her, and I may be comfortable in my mind.”

“Mama!” said Arabella faintly. “Mama!”

“Good gracious, my love, what is it?”

Arabella dumbly proffered the Squire’s banknote. Mrs. Tallant took it from her, saying: “You would like me to take care of it for you, would you? Very well, I will do so, my dear, or you would be squandering it on presents for your brothers and sisters, perhaps!”

“Mama, it is a bill for fifty pounds!”

“No!” gasped Sophia.

“Well, that is certainly very generous of your uncle,” said Mrs. Tallant. “If I were you, Arabella, I would embroider a pair of slippers for him before you go away, for you will not like to be backward in any little attention.”

“Oh, no! But I never dreamed—I am sure I did not thank him half enough! Mama, will you take it for my dresses, please?”

“Certainly not. That is all provided for. You will find it very much more comfortable in London to have this money by you—indeed, I had hoped your uncle might give you something to spend! There will be little things you may want to purchase, and vails to the servants, you know, and so on. And although your Papa would not like you to gamble precisely, there may be loo-parties, and naturally you would wish to play. In fact, it would be awkward if you did not.”

Sophia opened her eyes at this. “Papa does not like any of us to play gambling games, ma’am, does he? He says that cards are to blame for many of the evils—”

“Yes, my dear, very likely! But a loo-party is quite a different thing!” said Mrs. Tallant, somewhat obscurely. She fidgeted with her reticule for a moment, and then added, a little consciously: “I should not tease Papa with telling him the whole history of our doings today, girls. Gentlemen do not take the same interest in such things as we do, and I am sure he has very much more important things to think of.”

Her daughters did not pretend to misunderstand her. “Oh, I would not breathe a word to him!” said Sophia.

“No,” agreed Arabella. “And particularly not about the fifty pounds, for I am sure he would say it was too much, and I must give it back to my uncle! And I don’t think I could!”

In the end, it was not until after the middle of February that Arabella set out to accomplish the long journey to London. Not only had Mme. Dupont taken more time to make the necessary gowns than had been anticipated, but there had been many details to arrange besides; and Betsy had not failed to delay preparations by contracting a putrid sore throat, and low fever. It was felt to be typical of her.

While Mrs. Tallant still had her hands full, nursing her, Bertram, succumbing to temptation, took French leave of his books and his Papa, and enjoyed a splendid day with the hounds, which culminated in his return to the Parsonage on a farm wagon, with a broken collar-bone. A gloom was thrown over the house for quite a week by this mishap, because the Vicar was not only vexed, but deeply grieved as well. It was not the accident which upset him, for although he did not hunt himself now he had done so regularly in his youth, but (he said) the want of openness in Bertram which had led him to go off without asking permission, or, indeed, even telling his father what he meant to do. The Vicar could not understand such conduct at all, for surely he was not a harsh parent, and surely his sons must know that he did not wish to deprive them of rational enjoyment? He was bewildered, and disturbed, and begged Bertram to explain why he had behaved in such a manner. But it was quite impossible to explain to Papa why one chose rather to play truant, and afterwards take the consequences, than to ask his leave to do something of which one knew well he would not approve.

“How can you explain anything to my father?” Bertram demanded of his sisters, in a despairing tone. “He would only be more hurt than ever, and give one a thundering jaw, and make one feel like the greatest beast in nature!”

“I know,” said Arabella feelingly. “I think what makes him look so displeased and sad is that he believes you must be afraid of him, and so dared not ask his leave to go. And, of course, one can’t explain that it isn’t that!”

“He wouldn’t understand if you did,” remarked Sophia.

“Well, exactly so!” said Bertram. “Besides, you couldn’t do it! A pretty botch I should make of telling him that I didn’t ask leave because I knew he would look grave, and say I must decide for myself, but did I feel it to be right to go pleasuring when I have examinations to pass—oh, you know the way he talks! The end of it would be that I shouldn’t have gone at all! I hate moralizing!”

“Yes,” agreed Sophia, “but the worst of it is that whenever one of us vexes him he very likely falls into the most dreadful dejection, and worries himself with thinking that we are all of us heedless and spoilt, and himself much to blame. I wish he may not forbid you to go to London because of Bertram’s wretched folly, Bella!”

“What a bag of moonshine!” exclaimed Bertram scornfully. “Why the deuce should he, pray?”

It certainly seemed a trifle unreasonable, but when his children next encountered the Vicar, which was at the dinner-table, his countenance wore an expression of settled melancholy, and it was plain that he derived no comfort from the young people’s cheerful conversation. A somewhat thoughtless enquiry from Margaret about the exact colour of the ribbons chosen for Arabella’s second-best ball dress provoked him to say that it seemed to him that amongst all his children only James was not wholly given over to levity and frivolity. Unsteadiness of character was what he perceived about him; when he considered that the mere prospect of a visit to London sent all his daughters fashion-mad he must ask himself whether he was not doing very wrong to permit Arabella to go.

A moment’s reflection would have convinced Arabella that this was the merest irritation of nerves, but her besetting sin, as her Mama had frequently told her, was the impetuosity which led her into so many scrapes. Alarm at the Vicar’s words for an instant suspended every faculty; then she exclaimed hotly: “Papa! You are unjust! It is too bad!”