Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

“I dare say she does. I know of no reason why she should not,” said Shield rather stiffly.

“There is not any reason, but I do not play Whist or Commerce, and I find such parties quite abominable.”

“That need not concern you, for whatever Sylvester’s views may have been, I feel sure that my mother will agree that it would be improper for you to go out in public immediately after his death.”

“But if I am not to go to any parties, what then am I to do in Bath?”

“Well, I suppose you will have to reconcile yourself to a period of quiet.”

“Quiet?” gasped Eustacie. “More quiet? No, and no, and no!”

He could not help laughing, but said: “Is it so terrible?”

“Yes, it is!” said Eustacie. “First I have to live in Sussex, and now I am to go to Bath—to play backgammon! And after that you will take me to Berkshire, where I expect I shall die.”

“I hope not!” said Shield.

“Yes, but I think I shall,” said Eustacie, propping her chin in her hands and gazing mournfully into the fire. “After all, I have had a very unhappy life without any adventures, and it would not be wonderful if I went into a decline. Only nothing that is interesting ever happens to me,” she added bitterly, “so I dare say I shall just die in childbed, which is a thing anyone can do.”

Sir Tristram flushed uncomfortably. “Really, Eustacie!” he protested.

Eustacie was too much absorbed in the contemplation of her dark destiny to pay any heed to him. “I shall present to you an heir,” she said, “and then I shall die.” The picture suddenly appealed to her; she continued in a more cheerful tone: “Everyone will say that I was very young to die, and they will fetch you from the gaming hell where you—”

“Fetch me from where?” interrupted Sir Tristram, momentarily led away by this flight of imagination.

“From a gaming hell,” repeated Eustacie impatiently. “Or perhaps the Cock Pit. It does not signify; it is quite unimportant! But I think you will feel great remorse when it is told to you that I am dying, and you will spring up and fling yourself on your horse, and ride ventre a terre to come to my deathbed. And then I shall forgive you, and—”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” demanded Sir Tristram. “Why should you forgive me? Why should—What is this nonsense?”

Eustacie, thus rudely awakened from her pleasant dream, sighed and abandoned it. “It is just what I thought might happen,” she explained.

Sir Tristram said severely: “ It seems to me that you indulge your fancy a deal too freely. Let me assure you that I don’t frequent gaming hells or cockpits! Nor,” he added, with a flicker of humour, “am I very much in the habit of flinging myself upon my horses.”

“No, and you do not ride ventre a terre. It does not need that you should tell me so. I know!”

“Well, only on the hunting-field,” said Sir Tristram.

“Do you think you might if I were on my deathbed?” asked Eustacie hopefully.

“Certainly not. If you were on your deathbed it is hardly likely that I should be from home. I wish you would put this notion of dying out of your head. Why should you die?”

“But I have told you!” said Eustacie, brightening at this sign of interest. “I shall—”

“Yes, I know,” said Sir Tristram hastily. “You need not tell me again. There will be time enough to discuss such matters when we are married.”

“But I thought it was because you must have an heir that you want to marry me?” said Eustacie practically. “Grandpère explained it to me, and you yourself said—”

“Eustacie,” interposed Sir Tristram, “if you must talk in this extremely frank vein, I’ll listen, but I do beg of you not to say such things to anyone but me! It will give people a very odd idea of you.”

“Grandpère,” said Eustacie, with the air of one quoting a major prophet, “told me not to mind what I said, but on no account to be a simpering little innocente.”

“It sounds to me exactly the kind of advice Sylvester would give you,” said Shield.

“And you sound to me exactly the kind of person I do not at all wish to have for my husband!” retorted Eustacie. “It will be better, I think, if we do not marry!”

“Possibly!” said Sir Tristram, nettled. “But I gave my word to Sylvester that I would marry you, and marry you I will!”

“You will not, because I shall instantly run away!”

“Don’t be a little fool!” said Sir Tristram unwisely, and walked out of the room, leaving her simmering with indignation.

Her wrath did not last long, for by the time she had taken a vow to put her threat into execution, all the adventurous possibilities of such a resolve struck her so forcibly that Sir Tristram’s iniquities were quite ousted from her mind. She spent a pleasurable hour in thinking out a number of plans for her future. These were varied, but all of them impracticable, a circumstance which her common sense regretfully acknowledged. She was forced in the end to take her handmaiden into her confidence, having abandoned such attractive schemes as masquerading in male attire, or taking London by storm by enacting an unspecified tragic role at Drury Lane. It was a pity, but if one had the misfortune to be a person of Quality one could not become an actress; and although the notion of masquerading as a man appealed strongly to her, she was quite unable to carry her imagination farther than the first chapter of this exciting story. One would naturally leap into the saddle and ride off somewhere, but she could not decide where, or what to do.

Lucy, at first scandalized by the idea of a young lady setting out into the world alone, was not a difficult person to inspire. The portrait drawn for her edification of a shrinking damsel condemned to espouse a tyrant of callous instincts and brutal manners profoundly affected her mind, and by the time Eustacie had graphically described her almost inevitable demise in childbed, she was ready to lend her support to any plan her mistress might see fit to adopt. Her own brain, though appreciative, was not fertile, but upon being adjured to think of some means whereby a lady could evade a distasteful marriage and arrange her own life, she had the happy notion of suggesting a perusal of the advertisements in the Morning Post.

Together mistress and maid pored over the columns of this useful periodical. It was not, at first glance, very helpful, for most of its advertisements appeared to be of Well-matched Carriage Horses, or Superb Residences to be Hired for a Short Term. Further study, however, enlarged the horizon. A lady domiciled in Brook Street required a Governess with a knowledge of Astronomy, Botany, Water-Colour Painting, and the French Tongue to instruct her daughters. Dismissing the first three requirements as irrelevancies, Eustacie triumphantly pointed to the last, and said that here was the very thing.

That a governess’s career was unlikely to prove adventurous was a consideration that did not weigh with her for more than two minutes, for it did not take her longer than this to realize that her young charges would possess a handsome brother, who would naturally fall in love with his sisters’ governess. Persecution from his Mama was to be expected but after various vicissitudes it would be discovered that the humble governess was an aristocrat and an heiress, and all would end happily. Lucy, in spite of never having read any of the romances which formed her mistress’s chief study, saw nothing improbable in this picture, but doubted whether Sir Tristram would permit his betrothed to leave the Court.

“He will know nothing about it,” said Eustacie, “because I shall escape very late at night when he thinks I am in bed, and ride to Hand Cross to catch the mail coach to London.”

“Oh, miss, you couldn’t do that, not all by yourself!” said Lucy. “It wouldn’t be seemly!”

Paying no heed to this poor-spirited criticism, Eustacie clasped her hands round her knees, and began to ponder the details of her flight. The scheme itself might be fantastical, but there was a streak of French rationality in her nature which could be trusted to cope with the intricacies of the wildest escapade. She said: “We shall need the stable keys.”

“We, miss?” faltered Lucy.

Eustacie nodded. “But yes, because I have never saddled a horse, and though I think it would be a better adventure if I did everything quite by myself, one must be practical, after all. Can you saddle a horse?”

“Oh yes, miss!” replied Lucy, a farmer’s daughter, “but—”

“Very well, then, that is arranged. And it is you, moreover, who must steal the stable keys. That will not be a great matter. And you will pack for me two bandboxes, but not any more, because I cannot carry much on horseback. And when I reach Hand Cross I shall let Rufus go, and it is certain that he will find his way home, and that will put my cousin Tristram in a terrible fright when he sees my horse quite riderless. I dare say he will think I am dead.”

“Miss, you don’t really mean it?” said Lucy, who had been listening open-mouthed.

“But of course I mean it,” replied Eustacie calmly. “When does the night mail reach Hand Cross?”

“Just before midnight, miss, but they do say we shall be having snow, and that would make the mail late as like as not. But, miss, it’s all of five miles to Hand Cross, and the road that lonely, and running through the Forest—oh, I’d be afeard!”

“I am not afraid of anything,” said Eustacie loftily.

Lucy sank her voice impressively. “Perhaps you haven’t ever heard tell of the Headless Horseman, miss?”

“No!” Eustacie’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me at once all about him!”

“They say he rides the Forest, miss, but never on a horse of his own,” said Lucy throbbingly. “You’ll find him up behind you on the crupper with his arms round your waist.”

Even in the comfortable daylight this story was hideous enough to daunt the most fearless. Eustacie shuddered, but said stoutly: “I do not believe it. It is just a tale!”

“Ask anyone, miss, if it’s not true!” said Lucy.

Eustacie, thinking this advice good, asked Sir Tristram at the first opportunity.

“The Headless Horseman?” he said. “Yes, I believe there is some such legend.”

“But is it true?” asked Eustacie breathlessly.

“Why, no, of course not!”

“You would not then be afraid to ride through the Forest at night?”

“Not in the least. I’ve often done so, and never encountered a headless horseman, I assure you!”

“Thank you,” said Eustacie. “Thank you very much!”

He looked a little surprised, but as she said nothing more very soon forgot the episode.

“My cousin Tristram,” Eustacie told Lucy, “says that it is nothing but a legend. I shall not regard it.”

Had Sir Tristram been less preoccupied he might have found something to wonder at in his cousin’s sudden docility. As it was, he was much too busy unravelling the intricacies of Sylvester’s affairs with Mr Pickering to pay any heed to Eustacie’s change of front. If he thought about it at all he supposed merely that she had recovered from a fit of tantrums, and was heartily glad of it. He had half expected her to raise objections to his plan to convey her to Bath on the day after her grandfather’s burial, but when he broached the matter to her she listened to him with folded hands and downcast eyes, and answered never a word. A man more learned in female wiles might have found this circumstance suspicious; Sir Tristram was only grateful. He himself would be returning to Lavenham Court, but he told Eustacie that he did not expect to be obliged to remain for more than a week or two, after which time he would join the household in Bath, and set forward the marriage arrangements. Eustacie curtseyed politely.

She did not attend Sylvester’s funeral, which took place on the third day after his death, but busied herself instead with choosing from her wardrobe the garments she considered most suited to her new calling, and directing Lucy how to bestow them in the two bandboxes. Lucy, too devoted to her glamorous young mistress to think of betraying her, but very much alarmed at the idea of all the dangers she might encounter on her solitary journey, sniffed dolefully as she folded caracos and fichus and said that she would almost prefer to accompany Miss, braving the terror of the Headless Horseman, than be left behind to face Sir Tristram’s wrath. Eustacie, feeling that to take her maid with her would be to destroy at a blow all the romance of the adventure, told her to pretend the most complete ignorance of the affair, and promised that she would send for her to London at the first opportunity.