Arabella (34 page)

Mr. Beaumaris, who had picked Ulysses up, paid no heed to all these attempts at self-justification, but addressed himself to his adorer. “What a fool you are!” he observed. “No, I have the greatest dislike of having my face licked, and must request you to refrain. Quiet, Ulysses! quiet! I am grateful to you for your solicitude, but you must perceive that I am in the enjoyment of my customary good health. I would I could say the same of you. You have once more reduced yourself to skin and bone, my friend, a process which I shall take leave to inform you I consider as unjust as it is ridiculous. Anyone setting eyes on you would suppose that I grudged you even the scraps from my table!” He added, without the slightest change of voice, and without raising his eyes from the creature in his arms: “You would also appear to have bereft my household of its senses, so that the greater part of it, instead of providing me with the breakfast I stand in need of, is engaged in excusing itself from any suspicion of blame and—I may add—doing itself no good thereby.”

Ulysses, to whom the mere sound of Mr. Beaumaris’s voice was ecstasy, looked adoringly up into his face, and contrived to lick the hand that was caressing him. On his servants, Mr. Beaumaris’s voice operated in quite another fashion: they dispersed rapidly, Painswick to lay out a complete change of raiment; Brough to set the table in the breakfast-parlour; Alphonse to carve at lightning speed several slices of a fine York ham, and to cast eggs and herbs into a pan; and various underlings to grind coffee-beans, cut bread, and set kettles on to boil. Mr. Beaumaris tucked Ulysses under one arm, picked up the pile of letters from the table in the hall, and strolled with them into his library. To the zealous young footman who hastened to fling open the door for him, he said: “Food for this abominable animal!”—a command which, relayed swiftly to the kitchen, caused M. Alphonse to command his chief assistant instantly to abandon his allotted task, and to prepare a dish calculated to revive the flagging appetite of a Cambaceres.

Mr. Beaumaris, tossing a pile of invitations and bills aside, came upon a billet which had not been delivered through the medium of the Penny Post, and which was superscribed,
Urgent.
The writing, certainly feminine, was unknown to him. “Now, what have we here, Ulysses?” he said, breaking the wafer.

They had not very much. “
Dear Mr. Beaumaris
,”
ran the missive, “
I should be
very much obliged to you
if you would do me the honour of calling in Park Street
as soon as may be convenient to you,
and requesting the butler to inform
me
of the event. I remain, Ever yours most sincerely, Arabella Tallant.
”

This model of the epistolary art, which had caused Miss Tallant so much heart-searching, and so many ruined sheets of hot-pressed notepaper, did not fail of its effect. Mr. Beaumaris cast aside the rest of his correspondence, set Ulysses down on the floor, and bent his powerful mind to the correct interpretation of these few, heavily underlined words. He was still engaged on this task when Brough entered the room to announce that his breakfast awaited him. He carried the letter into the parlour, and propped it against the coffee-pot, feeling that he had not yet got to the bottom of it. At his feet, Ulysses, repairing with enthusiasm the ravages of his protracted fast, was rapidly consuming a meal which might have been judged excessive for the satisfaction of the appetite of a boa-constrictor.

“This,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “was delivered here three days ago, Ulysses!”

Ulysses, whose keen olfactory sense had discovered the chicken giblet cunningly hidden in the middle of his plate, could spare no more than a perfunctory wag of the tail for this speech; and to Mr. Beaumaris’s subsequent demand to know what could be in the wind he returned no answer at all. Mr. Beaumaris pushed away the remains of his breakfast, a gesture which was shortly to operate alarmingly on the sensibilities of the artist belowstairs, and waved aside his valet, who had just entered the room. “My town dress!” he said.

“I have it ready, sir,” responded Painswick, with dignity. “There was just one matter which I should perhaps mention.”

“Not now,” said Mr. Beaumaris, his eyes still bent upon Miss Tallant’s tantalizing communication.

Painswick bowed, and withdrew. The matter was not, in his fastidious estimation, of sufficient importance to justify him in intruding upon his employer’s evident preoccupation; nor did he broach it when Mr. Beaumaris presently came upstairs to change his riding-dress for the blue coat, yellow pantaloons, chaste waistcoat, and gleaming Hessians with which he was wont to gratify the eyes of beholders in the Metropolis. This further abstention was due, however, more to the sense of irretrievable loss which had invaded his soul on the discovery that a shirt was missing from Mr. Beaumaris’s execrably packed portmanteau than from a respect for his master’s abstraction. He confined his conversation to bitter animadversions on the morals of inn-servants, and the depths of depravity to which some unknown boots had sunk in treating Mr. Beaumaris’s second-best pair of Hessians with a blacking fit only to be used on the footwear of country squires. He could hardly flatter himself that Mr. Beaumaris, swiftly and skilfully arranging the folds of his neckcloth in the mirror, or delicately paring his well-cared-for fingernails, paid the least heed to his discourse, but it served in some measure to relieve his lacerated feelings.

Leaving his valet to repair the damage to his wardrobe, and his faithful admirer to sleep off the effects of a Gargantuan meal, Mr. Beaumaris left the house, and walked to Park Street. Here he was met by the intelligence that my lord, my lady, and Miss Tallant had gone out in the barouche to the British Museum, where Lord Elgin’s much disputed marbles were now being exhibited, in a wooden shed built for their accommodation. Mr. Beaumaris thanked the butler for this information, called up a passing hackney, and directed the jarvey to drive him to Great Russell Street.

He found Miss Tallant, her disinterested gaze fixed upon a sculptured slab from the Temple of Nike Apteros, enduring a lecture from Lord Bridlington, quite in his element. It was Lady Bridlington who first perceived his tall, graceful figure advancing across the saloon, for since she had naturally seen the collection of antiquities when it was on view at Lord Elgin’s residence in Park Lane, and again when it was removed to Burlington House, she felt herself to be under no obligation to look at it a third time, and was more profitably engaged in keeping a weather eye cocked for any of her acquaintances who might have elected to visit the British Museum that morning. Upon perceiving Mr. Beaumaris, she exclaimed in accents of delight: “Mr. Beaumaris! What a lucky chance, to be sure! How do you do? How came you not to be at the Kirkmichael’s Venetian Breakfast yesterday? Such a charming party! I am persuaded you must have enjoyed it! Six hundred guests—only fancy!”

“Amongst so many, ma’am, I am flattered to know that you remarked my absence,” responded Mr. Beaumaris, shaking hands. “I have been out of town for some days, and only returned this morning. Miss Tallant! ’Servant, Bridlington!”

Arabella, who had started violently upon hearing his name uttered, and quickly turned her head, took his hand in a clasp which seemed to him slightly convulsive, and raised a pair of strained, enquiring eyes to his face. He smiled reassuringly down into them, and bent a courteous ear to Lady Bridlington, who was making haste to assure him that she had come to the Museum merely to show the Grecian treasures to Arabella, who had not been privileged to see them on their
first
showing. Lord Bridlington, not averse from any aggrandizement to his audience, began in his consequential way to expound his views on the probable artistic value of the fragments, a recreation which would no doubt have occupied him for a considerable period of time had Mr. Beaumaris not cut him short by saying, in his most languid way: “The pronouncements of West, and of Sir Thomas Lawrence, must, I imagine, have established the aesthetic worth of these antiquities. As to the
propriety
of their acquisition, we may, each one of us, hold to our own opinion.”

“Mr. Beaumaris, do you care to visit Somerset House with us?” interrupted Lady Bridlington. “I do not know how it comes about that we were not there upon Opening Day, but such a rush of engagements have we been swept up in—that I am sure it is a wonder we have time to turn round! Arabella, my love, I daresay you are quite tired of staring at all these sadly damaged bits of frieze, or whatever it may be called—not but what I declare I could feast my eyes on it for ever!—and will be glad to look at pictures for a change!”

Arabella assented to it, throwing so beseeching a look at Mr. Beaumaris that he was induced to accept a seat in the barouche.

During the drive to the Strand, Lady Bridlington was too much occupied in catching the eyes of chance acquaintances, and drawing their attention to the distinguished occupant of one of the back seats by bowing and waving to them, to have much time for conversation. Arabella sat with her eyes downcast, and her hand fidgeting with the ribands tied round the handle of her sunshade; and Mr. Beaumaris was content to watch her, taking due note of her pallor, and the dark shadows beneath her eyes. It was left to Lord Bridlington to entertain the company, which he did very willingly, prosing uninterruptedly until the carriage turned into the courtyard of Somerset House.

Once inside the building, Lady Bridlington, whose ambitions had for some time been centered on promoting a match between Arabella and the Nonpareil, seized the first opportunity that offered of drawing Frederick away from the interesting pair. She stated her fervent desire to see the latest example of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s art, and dragged him away from a minute inspection of the President’s latest enormous canvas to search for this fashionable masterpiece.

“In what way can I serve you, Miss Tallant?” said Mr. Beaumaris quietly.

“You—you had my letter?” faltered Arabella, glancing fleetingly up into his face.

“This morning. I went instantly to Park Street, and, apprehending that the matter was of some urgency, followed you to Bloomsbury.”

“How kind—how
very
kind you are!” uttered Arabella, in accents which could scarcely have been more mournful had she discovered him to have been a monster of cruelty.

“What is it, Miss Tallant?”

Bearing all the appearance of one rapt in admiration of the canvas before her, she said: “I daresay you may have forgot all about it, sir, but—but you told me once—that is, you were so obliging as to say—that if my sentiments underwent a change—”

Mr. Beaumaris mercifully intervened to put an end to her embarrassment. “I have certainly not forgotten it,” he said. “I perceive Lady Charnwood to be approaching, so let us move on! Am I to understand, ma’am, that your sentiments
have
undergone a change?”

Miss Tallant, obediently walking on to stare at one of the new Associates’
Probationary Pictures
(described in her catalogue as “An Old Man soliciting a Mother for Her Daughter who was shewn unwilling to consent to so disproportionate a match”) said baldly: “Yes.”

“My surroundings,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “make it impossible for me to do more than assure you that you have made me the happiest man in England, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” said Arabella, in a stifled tone. “I shall try to be a—to be a comfortable wife, sir!”

Mr. Beaumaris’s lips twitched, but he replied with perfect gravity: “For my part, I shall try to be an unexceptionable husband, ma’am!”

“Oh, yes, I am
sure
you will be!” said Arabella naively. “If only—”

“If only—?” prompted Mr. Beaumaris, as she broke off.

“Nothing!” she said hastily. “Oh, dear, there is Mr. Epworth!”

“A common bow in passing will be enough to damp his pretensions,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “If that does not suffice, I will look at him through my glass.”

This made her give an involuntary gurgle of laughter, but an instant later she was serious again, and evidently struggling to find the words with which to express herself.

“What very awkward places we do choose in which to propose to one another!” remarked Mr. Beaumaris, guiding her gently towards a red-plush couch. “Let us hope that if we sit down, and appear to be engrossed in conversation no one will have the bad manners to interrupt us!”

“I do not know what you must think of me!” said Arabella.

“I expect I had better not tell you until we find ourselves in a more retired situation,” he replied. “You always blush so delightfully when I pay you compliments that it might attract attention to ourselves.”

She hesitated, and then turned resolutely towards him, tightly gripping her sunshade, and saying: “Mr. Beaumaris, you do
indeed
wish to marry me?”

“Miss Tallant, I do
indeed
wish to marry you!” he asserted.

“And—and you are so wealthy that my—my fortune can mean nothing to you?”

“Nothing at all, Miss Tallant.”

She drew an audible breath. “Then—will you marry me at once?” she asked.

Now, what the devil’s the meaning of this? thought Mr. Beaumaris, startled. Can that damned young cub have been getting up to more mischief since I left town?

“At once?” he repeated, voice and countenance quite impassive.

“Yes!” said Arabella desperately. “You must know that I have the greatest dislike of—of all
formality
,
and—and the nonsense that always accompanies the announcement of an engagement! I—I should wish to be married very quietly—in fact, in the strictest secrecy—and before anyone has guessed—that I have accepted your very obliging offer!”