Arabella (2 page)

“Well, Mama
did
say it,” argued Betsy, in a whining voice. “And you need not think I do not know about such things, because—”

Sophia interrupted her ruthlessly. “If, Betsy, you do not desire me to tell Papa of your shocking lack of delicacy, I advise you to take yourself off to the nursery—where you belong!”

This terrible threat did not fail of its object. Complaining that her sisters were disagreeable cats, Betsy, went as slowly from the room as she dared, trailing her shawl behind her.

“She is very sickly,” said Arabella, in an excusing tone.

“She is a precocious brat!” retorted Sophia. “One would have thought that she would have had more elegance of mind than to be thinking of such things! Oh, Bella, if only you were to be so fortunate as to make a Splendid Marriage! And if Lady Bridlington is to bring you out I am sure I do not see how you can fail to! For,” she added nobly, “you are by far the prettiest girl
I
have ever seen!”

“Hoo!” interpolated Harry, adding his mite to the conversation.

“Yes,” agreed Margaret, “but if she must have diamond buttons, and tiaras, and—and those things you spoke of, I don’t see how it can be done!”

A damped silence greeted her words. Sophia was the first to recover herself. “Something,” she announced resolutely, “will be contrived!”

No one answered her. Arabella and Margaret appeared to be dubiously weighing her pronouncement; and Harry, having discovered a pair of scissors, was pleasurably engaged in snipping short lengths off a skein of darning-wool. Into this pensive silence walked a young gentleman just emerging from adolescence into manhood. He was a handsome youth, fairer than his elder sister, but with something of her cast of countenance; and it was manifest, from the alarming height of his shirt collar, and the disorder of his chestnut locks, that he affected a certain modishness that bordered on dandyism. The Knaresborough tailor who enjoyed his patronage could not aspire to the height of art achieved by Weston or Stultz, but he had done his best, and had indeed been greatly assisted by the admirable proportions of his client. Mr. Bertram Tallant set off a coat to advantage, and was blessed with a most elegant pair of legs. These were at the moment encased in a pair of buckskin breeches, but their owner cherished in one of his chests of drawers a pair of yellow pantaloons which he had not yet dared to display to his Papa, but which, he rather fancied, turned him into a veritable Tulip of Fashion. His top-boots, on which he expended much thought and labour, were as refulgent as could be expected of boots belonging to a gentleman whose parents were unhappily unable to supply their second son with the champagne indispensable for a really good blacking; and the points of his shirt-collars, thanks to the loving hands of his sisters, were so stiffly starched that it was only with great difficulty that he could turn his head. Like his elder brother James, at present up at Oxford, prior to taking Orders, he had been educated at Harrow, but he was at present domiciled at home, working under his father’s guidance with a view to passing Smalls during the Easter Vacation. This task he had embarked on without enthusiasm, his whole ambition being to obtain a cornetcy in a Hussar regiment. But as this would cost not a penny less than eight hundred pounds, and the termination of the long war with Bonaparte had made promotion unlikely, unless by expensive purchase, Mr. Tallant had decided, not unreasonably, that a civil occupation would prove less ruinous than a military career. He intended that Bertram, once provided with a respectable degree, should adorn the Home Office; and any doubts which the volatile disposition of his offspring might have engendered in his mind of his eligibility for that service, he was nearly able to allay by the reflection that Bertram was, after all, not yet eighteen, and that Oxford University, where he himself had passed three scholarly years, would exert a stabilizing influence on his character.

The future candidate for Parliament heralded his entrance into the schoolroom with a muted hunting-cry, followed immediately by the announcement that some people were unfairly favoured by fortune.

Arabella clasped both her hands at her breast, and raised a pair of speaking eyes to his face. “Bertram, is it
indeed
true? Now, don’t try to roast me—pray don’t!”

“Lord, yes! But who told you?”

“Harry, of course,” replied Sophia. “The children know everything in this house!”

Mr. Bertram Tallant nodded gloomily, and pulled up his sleeves a trifle. “You don’t want him in here; shall I turn him out?” he enquired.

“Ho!” cried Harry, leaping to his feet, and squaring up to his senior in great good-humour. “A mill!”

“Not in here!” shrieked his sisters with one accustomed voice.

But as they had no expectation of being attended to, each damsel made a dive to snatch her own particular property out of harm’s way. This was just as well, since the room, besides being small, was crowded with knick-knacks. The brothers struggled and swayed together for a brief minute, or two, but since Harry, though a lusty lad, was no match for Bertram, he was very soon thrust outside the room, and the door slammed against him. After dealing the scarred panels a few kicks, and threatening his senior with gruesome reprisals, he took himself off, whistling loudly through the convenient gap occasioned by the loss of one of his front teeth; and Bertram was able to remove his shoulders from the door, and to straighten his cravat.

“Well, you are to go,” he informed Arabella. “I wish I had a rich godmother, that’s all! Much old Mrs. Calne ever did for me, except to give me a devilish book called the
Christian Comforter
,
or some such thing, which was enough to send a fellow to the dogs directly!”

“I must say, I think it was excessively shabby of her,” agreed Margaret. “Even Papa said that if she had thought you had a taste for such literature, she might have supposed that you would find it upon his shelves.”

“Well, my father knows I have no turn in that direction, and this I will say for him, he don’t expect it of me,” said Bertram handsomely. “He may be devilish straitlaced, and full of old fashioned notions, but he’s a right one at heart, and don’t plague one with a pack of humbug.”

“Yes, yes!” said Arabella impatiently, “but does he know of this letter? Will he let me go?”

“I fancy he don’t like it above half, but he said he could not stand in your way, and must trust to your conducting yourself in Society with propriety, and not allowing your head to be turned by frivolity and admiration. And as to that,” Bertram added, with brotherly candour, “I don’t suppose they will think you anything out of the way amongst all the nobs, so there’s precious little chance of its happening.”

“No, I am sure they will not,” said Arabella. “But tell me the whole! What did Lady Bridlington say in her letter?”

“Lord, I don’t know! I was trying to make sense of a whole rigmarole of Greek when Mama came in, and I wasn’t listening with more than half an ear. I daresay she’ll tell it all to you. She sent me to say she wants you in her dressing-room.”

“Good gracious, why could you not have told me that before?” cried Arabella, stuffing the half-finished shirt into a work-bag and flitting out of the room.

The Parsonage, although built on two storeys only, was a large, old-fashioned house, and to reach Mrs. Tallant’s dressing-room Arabella was obliged to traverse several corridors, all carpeted with a worn drugget, and all equally draughty.

The living of Heythram was respectable, being worth some three hundred pounds a year, in addition to which the present incumbent was possessed of a small independence; but the claims of a numerous family made the recarpeting of passages more a thing to be dreamed of than an allowable expense. The Vicar, himself the son of a landed gentleman, had married the beautiful Miss Theale, who might have been expected to have done better for herself than to have thrown her cap over the windmill for a mere younger son, however handsome he might be. Indeed, it had been commonly said at the time that she had married to disoblige her family, and might, if she had chosen, have caught a baronet on her hook. Instead she had fallen in love with Henry Tallant at first sight. Since his birth was genteel, and her parents had other daughters to dispose of, she had been permitted to have her way; and apart from wishing sometimes that the living were worth more, or that Henry would not put his hand in his pocket for every beggar who crossed his path, she had never given anyone reason to suppose that she regretted her choice. To be sure, she would have liked to have installed into the Parsonage one of the new water-closets, and a Patent Kitchen Range; or, like her brother-in-law up at the Hall, have been able, without feeling the pinch, to have burnt wax candles in all the rooms; but she was a sensible woman, and even when the open fire in the kitchen smoked, and the weather made a visit to the existing water-closet particularly disagreeable, she realized that she was a great deal happier with her Henry than ever she could have been with that almost forgotten baronet. She naturally concurred in his decision that whatever became of their daughters their sons at least must receive every advantage of education; but even while employing every shift of economy to ensure the respectable maintenance of James and Bertram at Harrow she was gradually building her ambitions more and more on the future of her eldest and most beautiful daughter. Without precisely regretting the circumstances which had made it impossible for herself to shine farther afield than York and Scarborough, she was determined that Arabella should not be similarly circumscribed. Perhaps it had been with this hope already at the back of her mind that she had invited her school-friend, Arabella Haverhill, who had contracted such a brilliant match, to stand as godmother to her infant daughter. Certainly her resolve to send the younger Arabella to make her debut into society under the aegis of Lady Bridlington was of no very recent date. She had maintained throughout the years an infrequent but regular correspondence with her old friend, and was tolerably certain that fashionable life had in no way impaired the easy good-nature which had characterized the plump and cheerful Miss Haverhill. Lady Bridlington was not herself blessed with daughters—she was, in fact, the mother of only one child, a son, some seven or eight years older than Mrs. Tallant’s daughter—but from her friend’s point of view this was a decided advantage. The mother of a family of hopeful girls, however goodnatured, would not be in the least likely to take under her wing yet another young female in search of an eligible husband. But a widow in comfortable circumstances, with a strong inclination for all the amusements of fashion, and no daughters to launch upon the world, might reasonably be supposed to welcome the opportunity of chaperoning a young protégée to the balls, routs, and Assemblies she herself delighted in. Mrs. Tallant could not conceive it to be otherwise. Nor was she disappointed. Lady Bridlington, crossing several sheets of gilt-edged notepaper with her sprawling pen, could not imagine why she should not have hit upon the notion herself. She was excessively dull, and liked nothing in the world so much as having young persons about her. It had long been a grief to her, she wrote, that she had no daughter of her own; and as she had no doubt that she would love her dearest Sophia’s girl on sight she should await her arrival in the greatest impatience. Mrs. Tallant had had no need to mention her object in sending Arabella to town: Henry Tallant might consider that Lady Bridlington’s letters betrayed little but folly and frivolity, but her ladyship, however lacking in mental profundity, had plenty of worldly sense. Sophia might rest assured, she wrote, that she would leave no stone unturned to provide Arabella with a suitable husband. Already, she hinted, she had several eligible bachelors in her eye.

It was small wonder, then, that Arabella, peeping into her mother’s dressing-room, should have found that admirable lady lost in a pleasant daydream.

“Mama?”

“Arabella! Come in, my love, and close the door! Your godmother has written, and in the kindest way! Dear, dear creature, I knew I might depend upon her!”

“It’s true then? I am to go?” Arabella breathed.

“Yes, and she begs I will send you to her as soon as may be contrived, for it seems that Bridlington is travelling on the Continent, and she is quite moped to death, living in that great house all alone. I knew how it must be! She will treat you as her own daughter. And, oh, my dearest child, I never asked it of her, but she has offered to present you at one of the Drawing-rooms!”

This dizzy prospect took from Arabella all power of speech. She could only gaze at her mother, while that lady poured out a list of the delights in store for her.

“Everything I could wish for you! Almack’s—I am sure she will be able to procure you a voucher, for she knows all the patronesses! Concerts! The theatre! All the
ton
parties—breakfasts, Assemblies, balls—my love, you will have such opportunities! you can have no notion! Why, she writes that—but never mind that!”

Arabella found her voice. “But Mama, how shall we contrive? The expense! I cannot—I
cannot
to go London without any clothes to wear!”

“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Tallant laughing. “That would present a very odd appearance, my love!”

“Yes, Mama, but you know what I mean! I have only two ball dresses, and though they do very well for the Assemblies in Harrowgate, and country parties, I
know
they are not modish enough for Almack’s! And Sophy has borrowed all Mrs. Caterham’s
Monthly Museums
,
and I have been looking at the fashions in them, and it is too lowering, ma’am! Everything must be trimmed with diamonds, or ermine, or point-lace!”