Arabella (7 page)

To a young lady who had never been farther afield than to York—and that only when Papa had taken her and Sophia to be confirmed in the Minster—every new thing seen on the road was a matter for eager interest and exclamation. To those accustomed to the rapid mode of travel achieved by post-chaises, a journey in a somewhat ponderous carriage drawn by two horses, chosen more for their stamina than their speed, would have seemed slow beyond all bearing. To Arabella it was adventure, while to Miss Blackburn, inured by long custom to the horrors of the stage, it was unlooked-for comfort. Both ladies, therefore, soon settled down to enjoy themselves, thought the refreshments they were offered at the various halts excellent, found nothing to complain of in the beds at the posting-houses, and could not conceive of a more delightful way of undertaking a long journey. They were made very welcome at Arksey, where Aunt Emma received them with the greatest kindness, and the exclamation that Arabella was so like her dear Mama that she had nearly fainted away at the sight of her.

They spent two days at Arksey before taking the road again, and Arabella was quite sorry to leave the large, untidy house, so kind had Aunt Emma been, and so jolly all her cheerful cousins. But Timothy-coachman reported the horses to be quite fresh and ready for the road again, so there could be no lingering. They set forth once more, followed by the shouted good wishes and many handwavings of Aunt Emma’s family.

After all the fun and the hospitality at Arksey, it did seem to be a little tedious to be sitting all day in a carriage, and once or twice, when a post-chaise-and-four dashed by, or some sporting curricle, with a pair of quick-goers harnessed to it, was encountered, Arabella found herself wishing that the Squire’s carriage were not quite so large and unwieldy, and his horses less strengthy and rather more speedy beasts. It would have been pleasant, too, to have been able to have had a fresh pair poled-up when one of Uncle John’s cast a shoe, instead of having to wait in a stuffy inn parlour while it was reshod; and Arabella, eating her dinner in the coffee-room of some posting-house, could not quite forebear a look of envy when some smart chaise drove into the courtyard, with horses sweating, and ostlers running out with a fresh team for the impatient traveller. Nor could she help wishing, once she had watched the mail-coach sweep through a turnpike, that Uncle John had provided the groom not with a horse-pistol, for which there did not seem to be the slightest occasion, but with a yard of tin, that he might have blown up for the pike in that same lordly style.

The weather, which had been cold but bright in Yorkshire, worsened as they drove farther south. It was raining in Lincolnshire, and the landscape looked sodden. Not many people were to be seen on the road, and the prospect was so uninviting that Miss Blackburn said that it was a pity they had not had the forethought to provide themselves with a travelling chessboard, with which, in default of looking out of the windows, they might have whiled away the time. At Tuxford they were unlucky enough to find the New Castle Arms without a bed to spare, and were obliged to put up at a smaller and by far less genteel inn, where the sheets had been so ill-aired that Miss Blackburn not only lay and shivered in her bed all night, but arose in the morning with a sore throat, and. a tickling at the back of her nose which presaged a cold in the head. Arabella, who, for all her air of fragility, rarely succumbed to minor ailments, was not a penny the worse for the experience, but her north-country soul had been offended by the dust she had seen under her bed, and she was beginning to think that it would be a relief to reach her journey’s end. It was vexing to discover, just as she had packed Mama’s dressing-case, and was ready to leave the inn, that one of the traces needed repair, for it had been arranged that they should spend the following night at Grantham, which, the guide-book informed her, lay some twenty-nine or thirty miles on from Tuxford. She hoped very much that the coachman would not decide that his horses could go no farther than to Newark, but since he was something of a despot, and had no opinion of fast travelling, it seemed more than likely that he would. However, the trace was mended in fairly good time, and they reached Newark in time to eat a late luncheon. Here, while he baited his horses, the coachman fell out with one of the ostlers, who asked him whether it was the King’s state coach he had there; and this so much affronted him that he was quite as anxious as Arabella to reach Grantham that evening.

It was raining again when they left Newark, and the atmosphere was dank and chilly. Miss Blackburn wrapped herself up in a large shawl, and sniffed unhappily, as her cold gained on her. Even Arabella, who was largely impervious to climatic conditions, suffered a little from the many draughts that crept into the carriage, and wriggled numbed toes inside her half-boots of crimson jean.

The carriage bowled along at a sedate pace for several miles, the tedium being enlivened only at the Balderton turnpike, where, recognizing a Johnny Raw in the coachman, the pike-keeper made a spirited attempt to extort a fee from him. But although Timothy-coachman might never have set foot beyond the boundaries of Yorkshire before, he was harder-headed than any of these soft southern folk whom he despised so profoundly, and he knew very well that the ticket bought at the last toll-gate opened all the pikes to him until the next, south of Grantham, was reached. After an exchange of personalities which made Miss Blackburn utter little moans of dismay, and Arabella—regrettably—giggle, he won a signal victory over the pike-keeper, and drove through with a triumphant flourish of his whip.

“Oh, dear, I am becoming so tired of this journey!” confided Arabella. “I could almost wish to be held up by a highwayman!”

“My dear Miss Tallant, pray do not
think
of such a thing!” shuddered her companion. “I only hope we may be spared any sort of accident!”

Neither lady’s wish was destined to be granted her. No such excitement as a hold-up awaited them, but a little way short of the Marston turnpike the perch of the carriage broke, and the body fell forward upon the box. The Squire’s travelling carriage had stood too long in his coach-house.

After the coachman had delivered himself of a long, self-exculpatory monologue, the groom was sent off to take counsel of the pike-keeper, half a mile down the road. When he returned, it was with the pleasing intelligence that no adequate assistance was to be hoped for in the next village: it must be sought in Grantham, five or six miles farther on, where a conveyance could no doubt be hired to fetch the ladies in while the perch was mended, or replaced. The coachman then suggested that his passengers, both of whom were standing by the roadside, should climb up into the carriage again to await deliverance, while the groom took one of the horses and rode on to Grantham. Miss Blackburn was meekly ready to follow this advice, but her charge thought poorly of it.

“What! Sit in that horrid, draughty carriage all that time? I won’t do it!” she declared.

“But we cannot continue to stand in the rain, dear Miss Tallant!” said Miss Blackburn.

“Of course we cannot! Either way I am persuaded you would catch your death! There must be a house hereabouts which would lend us shelter! What are those lights over there?”

They plainly shone from the windows of a residence set a little back from the road. The groom volunteered the information that he had noticed some lodge gates a few steps back.

“Good!” said Arabella briskly. “We will walk up to it, ma’am, and beg them to give us shelter for a little while.”

Miss Blackburn, a timorous soul, protested feebly. “They would think it so strange of us!”

“No, why should they?” returned Arabella, “Why, when a carriage had an accident outside
our
gates last year, Papa sent Harry out at once to offer shelter to the travellers! We cannot shiver for an hour or more in that horrid carriage, ma’am, with nothing to do! Besides, I am shockingly hungry, and I should think they would be bound to offer us refreshment, would not you? I am sure it is dinner-time, and past!”

“Oh, I do not think we should!” was all Miss Blackburn had to say, and it seemed so stupid to Arabella that she paid no heed to it, but desired the groom to escort them to the lodge gates before riding off to Grantham. This he did, and the ladies, dismissing him there, trod up the short drive to the house, one of them murmuring disjointed protests, the other perceiving no reason in the world why she should not claim a hospitality anyone in Yorkshire would have been eager to offer.

IV

it was at about this moment that that erratic young sprig of fashion, Lord Fleetwood, fixed his friend, and host, Mr. Beaumaris, with a laughing eye, and demanded in a rallying tone: “Well! You promise me a rare day with the hounds tomorrow—by the by, where do we meet?—but what—
what
,
Robert, do you offer me for my entertainment this evening?”

“My cook,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “is generally thought to be an artist in his own line. A Frenchman: I think you will like his way of dressing a Davenport chicken, while some trick he has of flavouring a Benton sauce—”

“What, did you send Alphonse down, then, from London?” interrupted Lord Fleetwood, momentarily diverted.

“Alphonse?” repeated Mr. Beaumaris, his finely chiselled brows lifting a little. “Oh, no! this is another. I don’t think I know his name. But I like his way with fish.”

Lord Fleetwood burst out laughing. “I expect if you discovered a cook with a way of serving game which you liked, you would send him off to that shooting-box of yours, and pay him a king’s ransom, only to kick his heels for three parts of the year!”

“I expect I should,” agreed Mr. Beaumaris imperturbably.

“
But
,”
said his lordship severely, “I am not to be put off with a cook! I came here in the expectation of finding fair Paphians, let me tell you, and all manner of shocking orgies—wine out of skulls, y’know, and—”

“The lamentable influence of Lord Byron upon society!” interpolated Mr. Beaumaris, with a faint, contemptuous smile.

“What? Oh, that poet-fellow that set up such a dust! Myself, I thought him devillish underbred, but of course it don’t do to say so. But that’s it! Where, Robert, are the fair Paphians?”

“If I had any Paphians in keeping here, you don’t imagine, do you, Charles, that I would run the risk of being cut-out by a man of
your
address?” retorted Mr. Beaumaris.

Lord Fleetwood grinned at him, but replied: “None of your gammon to me! It would take ten times my address to cut-out a—a—dash it, a Midas like you!”

“If my memory does not err, all that Midas touched turned to gold,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “I think you mean Croesus.”

“No, I don’t! Never heard of the fellow!”

“Well, most of the things I touch have a disheartening way of turning to dross,” said Mr. Beaumaris, lightly, but with a note of bitter self-mockery in his languid voice.

This was going a little too deep for his friend. “Humdudgeon, Robert! You can’t bamboozle me! If there are to be no Paphians—”

“I can’t conceive why you should have supposed there would be,” interrupted his host.

“Well, I didn’t, but I can tell you this, my boy!—that’s the latest
on-dit!
”

“Good God! Why?”

“Lord, how should I know? Daresay it’s because you won’t throw your glove at any of the beauties who have been setting their caps at you any time these five years. What’s more, your
chères-amies
are always such devilish high-flyers, dear boy, it puts notions into the heads of all the old tabbies! Think of the Faraglini!”

‘“I had rather not. The most rapacious female of my acquaintance.”

“But what a face! what a figure!”

“And what a temper!”

“What became of her?” asked his lordship. “I haven’t laid eyes on her since she left your protection.”

“I think she went to Paris. Why? Had you a fancy to succeed me?”

“No, by Jove, I couldn’t have stood the nonsense!” said his lordship frankly. “She’d have had me rolled-up within a month! What did you have to give for those match-grays she used to drive all over town?”

“I can’t remember.”

“To tell you the truth,” confided Lord Fleetwood, “I shouldn’t have thought it worth it myself—though I’m not denying she was a curst fine woman!”

“It wasn’t.”

Lord Fleetwood regarded him, half-curious, half-amused. Is anything worth while to you, Robert?” he asked quizzically,

“Yes, my horses!” retorted Mr. Beaumaris. “And, talking of horses, Charles, what the devil possessed you to buy one of Lichfield’s breakdowns?”

“That bay? Now, there’s a horse that fairly took my fancy!” said his lordship, his simple countenance lighting up with enthusiasm. “What a piece of blood and bone! No, really, Robert—!”

“If ever I find myself with a thoroughly unsound animal in my stables,” said Mr. Beaumaris ruthlessly, “I shall offer him to you in the happy certainty that he will take your fancy!”

Lord Fleetwood was still protesting with indignation and vehemence when the butler entered the room to inform his master, rather apologetically, that a carriage had broken down outside his gates, and the two ladies it bore were desirous of sheltering for a short time under his roof.

Mr. Beaumaris’s cool gray eyes betrayed no emotion, but his mouth seemed for an instant to harden. He said calmly: “Certainly. There should be a fire in the saloon. Tell Mrs. Mersey to wait upon the ladies there.”

The butler bowed, and would have withdrawn, but Lord Fleetwood checked him, exclaiming: “No, no, too shabby by half, Robert! I won’t be fobbed off so! What do they look like, Brough? Old? Young? Pretty?”