by Anthea Bell
No one present was disposed to censure the manner of their ecstatic reunion. Conington and Charlotte were pretty closely entwined themselves, to the great easing of Charlotte’s mind, and the remaining members of the Lark Quartet were beaming expansively upon the two couples and uttering exclamations which were evidently expressive of surprise, delight and congratulation. It was left to Beale, standing in the doorway, to utter a reproving cough.
“Ahem! The Reverend Mr. Spalding!” announced the butler, before beating a rapid retreat from what was now a distinctly overcrowded room.
Since the large clerical gentleman who had advanced into the Yellow Parlour in Beale’s wake was a perfect stranger to all its occupants—who, besides, had their minds on matters quite other than the ordinary forms of social etiquette—they could none of them think of a word to say, but simply stared at him. Mr. Spalding, for his part, was peering round in search of a familiar face.
“Miss Radley?” he inquired. “Miss Radley? Dear me, I do not see Miss Radley here! I passed Sir Edmund Grafton in the street, or should I say, I was passed by Sir Edmund Grafton in the street, but he would not stay to give me the information I sought. Indeed, he did not appear to recognize me, but no doubt that was because he was not expecting to see me here so soon. Where, pray, is Miss Radley? I do not,” he added, as if aggrieved, “know anyone else here!” At this Lord Conington, a well-bred young man who was normally punctilious in observing social forms, withdrew his arm from Charlotte’s waist and said civilly, “Pray let me introduce you Mr.—Spalding? Miss Persephone Grafton, who is Sir Edmund’s ward; Miss Charlotte Royden, who is engaged to marry me—I am Conington, by the by; Mr. Robert Walter—er, Franz, Josef and Johann, whose surnames I am afraid I have not yet learnt myself in the course of our acquaintance, but no doubt Mr. Walter, their compatriot, can supply them. I don’t believe, as you say, that we have had the pleasure of meeting before, but you must be a friend of Lord Yoxford’s.”
Franz, Josef and Johann, their amiability unimpaired, continued to beam upon the company at large, while Robert and Persephone showed not the smallest inclination to move apart from one another, and thus drew the clergyman’s stern glance to themselves. He did not try to claim intimacy with Lord Yoxford, but turned to the matter immediately before him. “The latitude that young people will allow themselves these days is, I believe, remarkable!” he pronounced. “Is this, I ask in some surprise, Miss Grafton, is this behaviour suited to a young lady of your years, not to mention your birth and upbringing?”
These reproaches caused Mr. Walter to glower at the latest arrival and to ask his loved one, “Seffi, who is this person?” “I haven’t the remotest idea!” said Persephone, regarding Mr. Spalding with mild surprise, and remaining as close to her Robert as before. “I’ve never met him in my life!”
“Ah, perhaps not, Miss Grafton, but I, I fancy, have had the pleasure not precisely of meeting you, but of hearing you!” said Mr. Spalding, becoming playful and wagging a finger at her. “In Cheltenham, at the house of the late Lady Emberley, whose devotion to the maintenance of the highest moral standards still makes her sadly missed from our congregation—however, yes, it was while I was calling upon Miss Radley that I chanced to hear you executing a piece upon the pianoforte, and singing, and if I may say so, a very superior performance it was!”
“Yes, very likely,” said Persephone, never one to waste time on unnecessary displays of modesty, “but what in the world can that signify now?”
“I am come, as soon as my parish duties would permit,” Mr. Spalding told her, “in search of Miss Radley herself—of Miss Radley whom, as I have previously remarked, I do not at the moment see present.” He looked accusingly round at the company, as if supposing that one of them might be concealing Elinor from him.
“No, indeed you don’t,” remarked Conington, recalled to a sense of Elinor’s present supposed plight. “The fact is, Mr. Spalding, that Sir Edmund has gone off after her! That, you understand, accounts for his not having leisure to stop and talk to you, for we think it probable that she has been abducted by Mr. Grenville Royden, Miss Royden’s brother—or some agent of his—in error for Persephone.”
“What!” exclaimed Robert Walter and Samuel Spalding, as one man, and Mr. Spalding would have said a great deal more too had not Conington added swiftly, “And I think I had better at least try to explain the whole to you, Walter.”
This he manfully proceeded to do, aided by occasional contributions from Persephone and nods of confirmation from the afflicted Charlotte. Mr. Spalding, although the explanation was not directed at him, had sat down and was listening open-mouthed, now and then exclaiming, “Scandalous!” or “Shocking!” while Mr. Walter himself made certain interruptions, turning at one point to stare indignantly at his beloved and demand, “You thought this of me, Seffi? That I—I should run up debts and then fail to satisfy my creditors?”
He was so obviously outraged at the notion that Persephone, wilting under his fierce gaze, said meekly, “A—a great many gentlemen of the beau monde think nothing of it, you see, Robert, but truly I am sorry. If I had only stopped to think, of course I should have known you would do such a thing.”
At the end of Conington’s careful recital, Mr. Spalding, in whom a considerable head of steam had been building up as he listened (though it turned out that he had not been quite able to follow the whole story), was at last able to get his word in. “Disgraceful! Elinor—ah, poor unhappy creature! I had thought, a brand saved from the burning! But I suppose one might have feared the worst. Well! I was never so shocked in my life! Perhaps, however, she may yet be saved from herself. Frailty, thy name is woman!”
“Are you talking about my cousin Elinor?” asked Persephone, a dangerous gleam in her eye, while Conington said patiently, “Sir, I am afraid you have mistaken my meaning.”
“No, no. For I must inform you,” said Mr. Spalding, weightily, “that I am acquainted with Miss Radley’s history.”
“Then I beg you will keep it to yourself,” said Conington, quite sharply for so amiably behaved a young man, and Mr. Spalding, a little daunted, fell silent long enough for Mr. Walter to put in, “Yes, what is to be done for Miss Radley? Can we be sure Sir Edmund will find her? Should we call in the officers of the law?”
At this, Charlotte uttered a small distressful cry, and Conington said quickly, “Not, I think, unless there’s nothing else for it. I hope we may be able to hush this up without going to such lengths.”
“Oh yes!” said Persephone. “Poor Charlotte—and poor Elinor too, and it is not their fault, not in the least, that Mr. Royden is so horrid after all. And when my cousin Edmund catches up, I dare say it will turn out well enough.”
“Not Dover, Lord Conington!” said Robert Walter suddenly. “I have been thinking. Not Dover! I mean, I do not suppose he intended to convey Persephone there. For though he could not know the day I should return to London, it was always possible we might have met on the road. Indeed, with the good crossing I had, we almost certainly would have met—and though I might not have spared a second glance for a hired post-chaise, suppose Persephone had caught sight of me, baiting at an inn, for instance? That would have ruined all. No, since I suppose he did not really mean to take her out of the country, there could be no advantage in his going to Dover.”
“You are right,” said Conington, impressed by this reasoning. “We should have thought of that before. Where, then, would he take her?”
Charlotte, summoning up her courage, said diffidently, “I should suppose to Royden Manor, dearest. You see, the house is almost shut up now, with only our old housekeeper living there, and it is quite isolated, so I can think of nowhere more suitable for—for what we think Grenville had in mind!”
This earned her an approving glance and another comforting embrace from Conington. “Well thought of, Charlotte! Depend upon it, Walter, she’s right,” he said. “And there is Sir Edmund, more likely than not gone off on a wild goose chase! Well,” he added
briskly, “I see nothing for it but to go after them ourselves, do you, sir?”
“Just what I was about to suggest, my lord!” said Mr. Walter promptly, and the two young men regarded one another with considerable approbation for a moment, before Robert Walter turned to his musical colleagues and spoke to them in German. “There, that is settled,” he told Conington. “They will also come. I suppose you know the way to this place, my lord?”
Conington looked a little doubtful at the addition of so many persons to the party, and even more so when Persephone said very firmly, “And I will come too.” “My dear Miss Grafton, you cannot!”
“Oh yes, I can! In fact you will need me!” she said triumphantly. “For suppose you cannot drive out to Essex and back to London tonight? Then you will require another female to—to lend Elinor countenance.”
“You know, you may be right,” said Conington thoughtfully. “To avoid the least breath of scandal ... yes, that is a consideration.”
“Perhaps I ought to come as well?” Charlotte heroically offered.
“No, no, there can be no occasion for that,” he assured her.
“No,” agreed Persephone, who was obviously, if rather reprehensibly, beginning to enjoy this adventure now that she was reunited with her Robert. “It would only distress you, Charlotte. But I’ll tell you what: you must stay and try to make my cousin Isabella understand what has happened, for I think we should be off at once, and not lose any more time.”
“A carriage,” said Mr. Walter. “We must procure a carriage.”
“The best thing,” continued Persephone, falling into a practical, not to say a managing mood, “will be to take Cousin George’s britzka. That is quite a large carriage, and he will not mind, in fact I dare say he won’t even know it is gone from the coachhouse, but the grooms will not object, Lord Conington, if you and I both say we have his permission. Now, let me see—the britzka will easily take four inside and two up behind in the dickey—oh, but there are six of us already, and then there will be Elinor on the way home...”
“We’ll take my curricle as well,” said Conington. “I have it outside; I’ll send my groom home, and someone else may come up beside me. Then, if either carriage should lose a wheel or suffer some other accident, we shall not be quite at a standstill.”
“Yes, very good!” Robert approved.
“I, too, am coming!” unexpectedly announced Mr. Spalding, who had been sitting silent for a remarkably long time. “I shall come to lend countenance to this extraordinary venture—for extraordinary I may say it is! But I perceive it would be useless to attempt to turn you from your purpose.”
“I should just say so!” remarked Persephone indignantly. “Don’t you care what happens to Elinor? I thought you said you were a friend of hers.”
“I do not know when I have seen the like of it!” pursued Mr. Spalding, taking no notice of this. “I do not know when anyone has seen the like! Peers of the realm conspiring to circumvent the due processes of the law! Females engaging in very shocking activities, and not, as they ought to be, censured, but positively countenanced by other females! Persons conversing in foreign tongues, so that one does not know what they may be saying!” This with a suspicious glance at Franz, Josef and Johann. “Well, I see that, so far as Miss Radley’s good name is concerned, I have come just in the very nick of time, as one might say!”
“No, one might not!” snapped Persephone, who had taken Mr. Spalding in great dislike. “And anyway, you haven’t! My cousin Edmund came in the very nick of time—at least, I dare say he thought so, although we hadn’t worked it all out properly then. Robert came in the very nick of time! But as for you, I still do not know what you are doing here. Oh, Robert—Lord Conington—let us go and see about getting horses put to the britzka immediately! Good, here is Cousin Isabella!” she exclaimed, as that lady, utterly bemused, appeared in the doorway of the Yellow Parlour handsomely dressed for dinner and looked around her. “Cousin Isabella, we may take the britzka, may we not, and you will tell Cousin George that we have borrowed it, and we are taking Lord Conington’s curricle too, for we have to rescue poor Elinor, and it is urgent, and here is Charlotte, who will tell you all about it!’
And with that she, Conington, and the four musicians were gone from the room, Mr. Spalding lumbering in their wake.
“Good gracious me!” said Isabella, faintly. “Charlotte, who was that clergyman? I am sure I do not know him! And what is Persephone taking about? Rescue Elinor? Where is Elinor? But, my dear child, you look worn to a thread! What in the world is going on?”
18
For about the first mile in the post-chaise, Miss Radley’s overpowering sensation was one of sheer anti-climax. On turning the corner of the street, she had immediately seen the vehicle with its two postilions. One of the men was standing by the head of a saddle-horse, no doubt to travel as an outrider, and did not wear the usual livery of a post-boy, but had a caped frieze coat on. Seeing her advance purposefully towards him, this fellow had stepped forward with the words, “For Dover, ma’am?” and in answer to her nod, had held open the carriage door and then closed it behind her, whereupon the chaise instantly set off at a spanking trot. She had not even been forced in, but had stepped up into the carriage of her own free will! All the cutting things she had been rehearsing in her mind to say to Grenville Royden froze on her lips, as she perceived that she was the only occupant of the vehicle. She felt remarkably foolish, to say the least of it, but was soon almost ready to laugh at herself.
After a while, however, indignation took over. Mr. Royden, so far as she recollected, had written that he would have a post-chaise ready; he had not said in so many words that he would be in it himself. The object of his absence, she presumed, was to avoid the necessity of answering awkward questions from Persephone. For it soon became clear to Elinor that they were not taking any road that could possibly lead in the direction of Dover, and while Persephone might have been rather longer in realizing this, it was bound to have occurred to her sooner or later. Puzzling it all out, Elinor eventually came to the same conclusions as did the company gathered in the Yellow Parlour at Yoxford House, a little later: since there could be no advantage to Grenville in actually conveying Persephone to the coast, she fancied that the chaise’s most likely destination was Royden Manor.
She had not the faintest desire to revisit that house, and thought she had better make haste to apprise the post-boys of their mistake, inform them that there would be no passenger with them after all, and induce them to return her to Upper Brook Street before they drove away with the empty chaise.
But this proved rather difficult. She knocked upon the sides and roof of the vehicle, to no avail. The windows appeared to be jammed, perhaps purposely, so that the glass could not be let down. She fancied that the doors might also be secured, and in any event she had no wish to risk life and limb by jumping from a fast-moving carriage. Very likely the postilions had been told to pay no heed to any sounds from within the chaise! It was very vexatious, but she would have to wait until they stopped to change horses.
They did this some ten miles from the beginning of their journey. By now they were well out of London. Elinor had been right: neither door would open from the inside, but when she began knocking on the glass again to attract notice, the frieze-coated man appeared at the window as if he had been expecting some such thing, undid the door just a crack, and said hoarsely, “Best cut that out, miss! You keep mum, and no ‘arm’ll come to ye!”
He then closed the door again, and leaned against it the whole time that the ostlers at the posting-house were changing the horses. A new post-boy came with the new team, but the frieze-coated man, no doubt one of Grenville’s servants, was evidently going to accompany the chaise all the way.
She had no alternative but to settle back on the lumpy squabs of the carriage, which was not a hired yellow bounder but certainly no more comfortable than one of those notorious boneshakers, and wait until she reached the journey’s end.
For the Manor, as she recollected, was less than thirty miles from London, and while the Green Dragon inn in the nearby village was also a posting-house, they would hardly be stopping there within a mile or so of the Manor—if she was correct in supposing that to be their destination.
Sure enough, as they proceeded on the next stage of their journey, the road began to look familiar to her. She had been correct: they had now left the main turnpike, and were wending their way past cornfields and pastures, along the narrower and rutted roads of the countryside. How it brought back memories! Memories of her first arrival at the Manor eight years ago, so eager to take up her post—such a change, she was sure it would be, from the monotonous life she had lived with her aunts. She was more than willing to like her employers and her little charges, and remembered wondering, with happy anticipation, what she would find at her journey’s end. Well, this time she had a very good notion! And at least, she reflected, she would have a chance to say those cutting things to Mr. Royden after all. Or would it be wise to do so? Presumably he would be much put out to find that the wrong lady had been carried off. For the first time, remembering that she had been told the house was now shut up, with only the deaf and aged Mrs. Beasley in residence, Elinor began to feel a little trepidation.
They were coming to the village now, passing the first row of thatched cottages, where she had been used to bring Mary and Charlotte to visit their old nurse. She saw the comfortable, well-maintained buildings of the inn, the Green Dragon breathing its emerald and vermilion fire on the newly painted sign that swung in the gentle breeze this fine evening. And there was the village green, with the duckpond. It was not long before she recognized the urns crowning the Manor gateposts as the chaise turned in between them, driving into the strong rays of the declining sun.
