by Anthea Bell
Here, she saw, there was alteration indeed! Despite his financial troubles, old Mr. Royden had at least made some effort to keep the place up: now, however, the signs of neglect were plain. Unpruned shrubs straggled beside the drive; the tall grass ought to have been mown from the lawns long ago. Here and there a fallen branch which no one had troubled to remove lay on the ground. The air of neglect was even more marked when the house itself came into sight. It had once been a very handsome building, but now it badly needed a coat of paint, most of the windows were shuttered, and some of the shutters hung askew on their hinges. The carriage sweep in front of the house was sprouting a fine crop of weeds. The only signs that there was anyone in the place at all were the unshuttered sash windows of the ground floor drawing room, the lower half of one of them pulled up to admit the evening air.
As the chaise drew up at the front door, Elinor felt a distinct qualm. The frieze-coated man opened the carriage door, jerked his head towards the porch of the house, and said unceremoniously, “In there, miss!” There was no help for it; the moment had come to step out of this stuffy and uncomfortable vehicle, although she found she rather shrank, now, from meeting Mr. Royden, and instinctively pulled up the hood of her pelisse again as if to delay the moment of confrontation. Which was perfectly ridiculous, she told herself, for after all, she was entirely in the right and had outwitted him: a pleasing thought, although somehow it did not make her feel any better.
The hall of the Manor was rather dark, so that Mr. Royden, standing just within the doorway, did not recognize her instantly. He had dismissed the post-boy and outrider, and sent the chaise wheeling off across the overgrown gravel towards the stables, before he turned to her, closing the door and guiding her into the drawing room as he said, “Well, now I must explain matters, my dear. I dare say you are feeling a little surprised.”
“Not much,” said Elinor, putting back her hood and looking very steadily at him. “Well, not at all, in fact! As soon as we began to come out of London, I had a strong notion that this was where we were bound!”
He had recoiled at the sight of her with an exclamation of surprise and (she thought) dismay. “You!” he said furiously. “I might have known you would meddle if you could!”
“Indeed you might,” she agreed.
“What the devil brings you here?”
“Your post-chaise, of course, and very uncomfortable it was! I did try to make them turn back—after all, I had only stepped out of the house to let you know your trouble was wasted—but I’m afraid there was no making them pay any heed, so you will be at the expense of sending me back.” She hoped she sounded more assured than she felt, for she found she did not at all like being alone with him behind that firmly closed door. And he had been drinking; she could smell it on his breath. Perhaps to give himself Dutch courage for the thing he had determined to do! When he put a hand on her arm in a positively savage grip, she uttered a small gasp as she tried, vainly, to shake it off again.
“You scheming, double-dealing...” Words seemed to fail him.
“Scheming is pretty good, coming from you, Grenville!” she said. “In fact, thanks are due to Charlotte for discovering Mr. Walter’s letter to Persephone and bringing it to me—Charlotte is very much distressed, poor girl.” She tried pulling away once more.
“Damn Charlotte!” he said, but he let go of her. She forced herself not to give him the pleasure of seeing her rub her arm where he had hurt it. He began pacing up and down. “Hell and the devil, now what’s to be done? If I post directly back to London—see the girl, persuade her to Dover with me in good earnest—yes, perhaps it may still serve.”
“Good heavens, Grenville,” said Elinor, astonished, “you can’t think that now Persephone has Mr. Walter’s letter, as she will have by this time, she would believe any more of your ridiculous tales for an instant?”
He stopped pacing, and stood leaning on the table in the middle of the room, thinking aloud. “Such a piece of luck that it came in my way—and to have you spoil all! Ah, but wait! Suppose I had had word from Walter after he wrote to her, and had thought it kinder to keep his letter from her? Or say his hopes had come to nothing, and he was in far worse case than he had ever told her of, and he now confided in me...”
“Grenville, I truly think you must be a little out of your mind,” said Elinor honestly. “You have let this scheme of yours obsess you until you can’t see facts when they are staring you in the face! I suppose you must have been brooding upon it for days before you plucked up the courage, if so it can be called, to put it into action,” she added, contempt in her voice.
He glowered at her. “I need money, urgently.”
“So I take it your intention was to compromise the poor child by forcing her to spend the night here with you—but do you really think that, knowing her unwilling, Sir Edmund would meekly have handed her over to you, along with her fortune? No, whatever had happened, I am sure he could have got around it somehow.” She meant what she said, her own confidence in Persephone’s guardian being unbounded.
He uttered an angry expletive, expressive of his opinion of Sir Edmund. “And what makes you so sure she’d have been unwilling?” he added, an ugly look in his eyes. “You were not so unwilling, once!”
“The more fool me, then!”
And that had been unwise; she knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He was more drunk than she had realized at first, and his fury and frustration showed in his face. “Oh, so that’s what you think, Miss Milk-and-Water? Well, one thing’s certain, you must remain here tonight, safely locked in, while I go back to London—but suppose I were to change your mind for you first? Yes, I do believe, dear Elinor, that I will do so!”
Really alarmed now, she ran towards that half-opened sash window, but he was between her and it in a moment. She tried the door, but it was locked, and as she tugged frantically at the handle she heard someone come into the hall with a gruff inquiry. She thought it was the voice of the frieze-coated outrider who had escorted her from London. In answer, Mr. Royden called through the door a command for the man to stay there and not budge, addressing him as Joe. So there would be no escaping that way! And she had to move away from the door in any case, for Grenville Royden was advancing upon her, saying in a quieter but more unpleasant voice than any she had yet heard from him, “Why, my dear, don’t say you are piqued because I prefer pretty Persephone to you? Perhaps you are! She has the fortune, to be sure, but you must have pleasant memories of the past—wouldn’t you care to revive them? I believe you would! Wasn’t this, perhaps, what you came for after all?”
“No!” she cried, revolted. Until this moment, she had not truly believed that her involuntary masquerade placed her in any physical danger, but now there could be no doubt of it! “Grenville, no!”
But the glint in his eyes, whether occasioned by drink or lust, was brighter, and she saw, to her alarm, that her resistance seemed to excite him. His next words confirmed it. “And if you are not willing, why, that will add spice,” he said softly.
She was unable to get away in any direction, backed into a corner, and he was smiling almost in her face. She uttered one more frightened, “Please, Grenville, don’t!” His eyes were so close to hers that she was half mesmerized by the look in them, and it was a second or so before she could grasp the fact that suddenly they were not so close any more. Nor was this due to the force of her own plea, or to any sudden access of remorse on Mr. Royden’s part, but to a firm hand which had plucked him back, none too gently, by the collar of his coat.
“Good evening, Mr. Royden,” said Sir Edmund, his voice dangerously mild.
He came through the window, Elinor thought thankfully—he came in through the window while Grenville and I were staring at one another!
“Oh, thank goodness!” she gasped, and finding suddenly that her legs would no longer support her, she sank into a heap on the floor.
Sir Edmund thrust Mr. Royden away from him so hard that that gentleman
staggered against the table, struck it involuntarily with his stomach, and remained lying half-winded across it. He was then beside Elinor in an instant.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded, helping her up. “Are you all right, Elinor?”
“No—I mean yes, I shall be quite all right—oh, I was never so glad to see anyone! But how came you here? I thought you were not in town—and Charlotte found a letter from Robert Walter to Persephone, and ... and ...”
“Hush,” said Sir Edmund gently, settling her in a chair. “I know all about that.” His eyes travelled to the form of Mr. Royden, spread-eagled over the table. “Didn’t it occur to you, Royden, that even if you had carried out your amiable plan with regard to my ward, you’d have had me to deal with?”
Mr. Royden, gasping for breath, was able only to say, sullenly, “She’d have been obliged to marry me—and I would have married her!”
“Would you, indeed? Very good of you, I am sure,” said Sir Edmund, who had had much to occupy his mind as he made his way from London to Essex (having come to precisely the same conclusions about the chaise’s destination as were worked out a little later by Lord Conington and Mr. Walter). His phaeton and four could go a good deal faster than a post-chaise, and at the speed with which he was travelling it took some skill to manage the horses along narrow lanes, but Sir Edmund was an excellent whip, and was not so busy with his team that he had no time for some extremely agitating reflections, mostly revolving around that brief verbal message left by Elinor for Charlotte to deliver to Persephone.
He therefore now said grimly to Mr. Royden, who had managed to get up, and stood glaring at him, “Let’s have no more absurd bluster about anyone’s being obliged to marry you! Indeed, let me inform you instead that if there’s any woman to whom you are in honour bound to make an offer of marriage, it is Miss Radley. ” Here Elinor sat up suddenly in the chair where Sir Edmund had placed her, but he was still speaking. “And if, as it appears, she wishes it—God knows why, but I’m damned if she shan’t have whatever she wants—then one thing I mean to do here is ensure that you make her that offer!”
“Oh, indeed?” said Mr. Royden, very unpleasantly. “A woman I’ve had already, and could have again, I dare say, if she weren’t so coy that—”
But he got no further. Elinor’s indignant gasp coincided with the satisfying sound of Sir Edmund’s fist planting a very nicely timed blow on Mr. Royden’s chin. It knocked the recipient back against the drawing room door, where he clung to the handle in order to remain on his feet.
Meanwhile Elinor, leaping up, was running forward to catch Sir Edmund’s arm, crying out, “No, no, you quite mistake the matter! It is the very last thing on earth that I want! What could make you think so?”
He had been watching the other man and rubbing his knuckles, but at this he turned to face her. “You don’t wish it?” he said, puzzled. “But, good God, Elinor, you told me—you said you knew that a lasting passion, once formed—” And he, in his turn, was cut short. It had been a mistake, Elinor realized, for him to turn his back on the door. Mr. Royden must have had the key about him, and had seized his chance to turn it and summon Joe and another man into the room from the hall, where they had evidently been waiting. They were both armed with stout cudgels. Elinor’s cry to Sir Edmund to take care was just too late. Her acquaintance of the caped frieze coat had come up behind him, and Sir Edmund, taken completely by surprise, was felled to the ground, where he collapsed unconscious.
19
He came back to his senses, head aching vilely, to hear a soft but distraught voice close to his ear, saying repeatedly, “Wake up, Edmund, oh, do, do wake up!” A hand was stroking his face, apparently in an attempt to rouse him, for the voice continued, rather desperately, “Oh, dearest Edmund, you must be all right, or I can’t bear it!”
Pleasant listening, he thought hazily, placing the source of these remarks. But when, in Miss Radley’s agitation, the stroking changed to a rhythmical slapping, Sir Edmund decided it would be best to apprise her that she had succeeded in her purpose of bringing him round. Struggling unsuccessfully to sit up, he got his eyes open and said, with an effort, “I shall do! Only a crack on the head. Damn the fellow—I never even saw him coming!”
Gingerly, he felt his head, winced, and closed his eyes again, at which Elinor uttered a soft cry, and he re-opened them to find her face solicitously close to his. “Rather more important,” he added, in a stronger voice, “what was that you were saying?”
Miss Radley was instantly covered with confusion. “Oh, please—it doesn’t signify! I didn’t mean—that is, I didn’t know you had come round. At all events,” she finished, none too coherently, “it’s of no consequence!”
Pulling his scattered thoughts together with commendable rapidity, and finding that the throbbing in his temples was mercifully receding, Sir Edmund at last managed to haul himself into a sitting position, saying, “There you are very much mistaken!” He gathered both her hands in his and looked hard into her grey eyes, which were still bright with unshed tears; this, though a gratifying circumstance, was not a state of affairs he wished to see prolonged. “It is of the greatest consequence! At least, it is to me! I love you, you see,” he added, very careful, this time, to make himself clear beyond possibility of misapprehension. “And I thought, when you spoke to me so feelingly about the enduring strength of a lasting passion, it was Royden you meant—not that I then knew his identity—and I stood no chance.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” she cried. “How could you think so? But I couldn’t tell you it was you for whom I had formed a lasting passion!”
“I wish you had!”
“And how could I suppose that you entertained any such sentiments for me? I mean, you have been positively avoiding me, and you went away from London, and oh, I have missed you so much!” said Miss Radley foolishly, shedding tears of pure happiness.
“I went away because I thought that if I couldn’t have you, it would be better not to come near you at all,” said Sir Edmund, taking her into his arms. “Only the thing was too strong for me, damn it, so back I came—and just at the right moment, one might say, except that I do not appear to have acquitted myself very creditably in the business! Where are we, by the by?”
“Oh, along the corridor from the hall, in a little room which they used as a store chamber when I was governess here,” Elinor told him. “The men Grenville has with him—it was one of them who hit you, you know—well, they put us both in here and locked the door, and I rather fancy, from what I heard them and Grenville say, he has driven off to London. I suppose he either has fresh horses here, or will get them in the village, and I only hope,” she said, quite vindictively, “that he may drive them into the village pond, which would not be at all surprising, for he is decidedly drunk, and seems to have some mad notion that if you and I are kept out of the way he may still wheedle himself somehow into Persephone’s good graces and run off with her, under pretence of standing friend to her and Robert Walter. But that he will not do! I fancy we may rely upon Charlotte to put a stop to any such thing—Charlotte has behaved very well indeed, poor girl.”
“No need to rely on Charlotte,” said Sir Edmund. “By the time I left Upper Brook Street, she had the support not only of Conington, but of young Mr. Walter himself. Not to speak of Franz, Josef and Johann!”
“You mean Robert Walter is back already? Oh, I am so glad!”
“Back, and extremely eager for serious conversation with me! But once I had discovered what must have happened to you, I had no time or inclination to stop and listen to him!”
“Then his errand in Germany must have prospered!” exclaimed Elinor. “And so I suppose he feels he can approach you, as Persephone’s guardian. For he is very correct and punctilious in such matters, you know. Oh, Edmund, do you think—supposing his family should be at least respectable, and after all, we know that he is a person of education—do you think such a marriage might after all be possible?” she ventured to suggest.
<
br /> “Just at the moment,” said Sir Edmund, re-possessing himself of her hands, “I am not half as much interested in Persephone’s marriage as my own! Elinor, I can’t aspire to the interminable eloquence of your suitor Mr. Spalding, but now that we have cleared up our misunderstanding, and we find we are not indifferent to one another, will you marry me?”
“Need you ask?” was all she could say before being enveloped in a crushing and very satisfactory embrace, and kissed so hard that for some moments she would have been unable to utter another word anyway, even had she wished to.
“Delightful as all this is,” said Sir Edmund presently, “I can’t but think we might be more comfortable elsewhere. Put it down to decrepitude and advanced old age if you will, but I fancy that if I’m obliged to spend the night here, only for the sake of Royden’s disordered fancies, I shall awake with rheumatics as well as a sore head! I believe we should put our minds to the question of making our way out of this room. It strikes me as a damnably chilly, uncomfortable sort of place.”
This was true: the room was small and bare, and in spite of the warmth of the summer evening, the flags of the stone floor seemed dank. But an inspection showed nothing that seemed to offer a likely way of escape; the door was locked, of course, and the one window too small and high up to allow egress.
“Do you know how many people Royden has here?” asked Sir Edmund.
“Yes, fortunately I do!” said Elinor. “Because while he was having us put in here, he was—well, gloating, in the most stupidly melodramatic way! And he made quite a point of telling me that there were only those two men, and the housekeeper, who is deaf as a post—indeed, she was very hard of hearing even when I knew her eight years ago—so that I could not expect anyone to come to our aid, however hard I shouted.”
