“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!”
The wretched youth must have been deeper under the hatches than I guessed, thought Mr. Beaumaris, and still she dare not tell me the truth! Does she really mean to carry out this outrageous suggestion, or does she only think that she means it? A virtuous man would undoubtedly, at this juncture, disclose that there is not the smallest need for these measures. What very unamusing lives virtuous men must lead!
“You may think it odd of me, but I have always thought it would be so very romantic to elope!” pronounced Papa’s daughter defiantly.
Mr. Beaumaris, whose besetting sin was thought by many to be his exquisite enjoyment of the ridiculous, turned a deaf ear to the promptings of his better self, and replied instantly, “How right you are! I wonder I should not have thought of an elopement myself! The announcement of the engagement of two such notable figures as ourselves must provoke a degree of comment and congratulation which would not be at all to our taste!”
“Exactly so!” nodded Arabella, relieved to find that he saw the matter in so reasonable a light.
“Consider, too, the chagrin of such as Horace Epworth!” said Mr. Beaumaris, growing momently more enamoured of the scheme. “You would be driven to distraction by their ravings.”
“Well, I do think I might be,” said Arabella.
“There is not a doubt of it. Moreover, the formality of making application to your father for permission to address you is quite antiquated, and we shall do well to dispense with it. If some little feeling still exists in the minds of old-fashioned persons against marrying minors out of hand, it need not concern us, after all.”
“N-no,” agreed Arabella, rather doubtfully. “Do you think people will—will be very much shocked, sir?”
“No,” said Mr. Beaumaris, with perfect truth. “No one will be in the least shocked. When would you like to elope?”
“Would tomorrow be too soon?” asked Arabella anxiously.
Mr. Beaumaris might wish that his love would give him her confidence, but it would have been idle to have denied that he was hugely enjoying himself. Life with Arabella would contain few dull moments; and although her estimate of his morals was unflattering enough to have discomposed any man of sensibility it left his withers unwrung, since he was well-aware that her assumption of his readiness to behave in so improper a fashion sprang from an innocence which he found enchanting. He replied with great promptness: “Not a moment too soon! But for the recollection that there are one or two preparations which perhaps I should make I should have suggested that we should leave this building together at once.”
“No, that would be impossible,” said Arabella seriously. “In fact—I do not know very much about such things, but I cannot but feel that it will be excessively difficult for me to escape from Park Street without anyone’s knowing! For I must carry a valise with me, at least, besides my dressing-case, and how may it be contrived? Unless I crept out at dead of night, of course, but it would have to be very late indeed, for the porter always waits up for Lord Bridlington to come in. And I might fall asleep,” she added candidly.
“I have a constitutional dislike of eloping at dead of night,” said Mr. Beaumaris firmly. “Such exploits entail the use of rope-ladders, I am credibly informed, and the thought of being surprised perhaps by the Watch in the very act of throwing this up to your window I find singularly unnerving.”
“Nothing,” said Arabella, “would prevail upon me to climb down a rope-ladder! Besides, my bedroom is at the back of the house.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “you had better leave me to make the necessary arrangements.”
“Oh, yes!” responded Arabella gratefully. “I am sure you will know just how it should be contrived!”
This reflection upon his past career Mr. Beaumaris bore with an unmoved countenance. “Just so, Miss Tallant,” he said gravely. “Now, it occurs to me that, tomorrow being Wednesday, there will be a gala night at Vauxhall Gardens.”
“Yes, Lady Bridlington thought at one time of taking me to it,” agreed Arabella. “But then, you know, she recalled that it is the night of the party at Uxbridge House.”
“A very dull affair, I have no doubt. I shall invite Lady Bridlington—and Bridlington, I suppose—to do me the honour of joining my party at Vauxhall. You will naturally be included in this invitation, and at a convenient moment during the course of the evening, we shall slip away together to the street entrance, where my chaise will be awaiting us.”
Arabella considered this proposition, and discovered two objections to it. “Yes, but how very odd it would seem to Lady Bridlington if you were to go away in the middle of your own party!”
The reflection that Lady Bridlington might well deem this eccentricity the least odd feature of the affair Mr. Beaumaris kept to himself. He said: “Very true. A note shall be delivered to her after our departure.”
“Well, I suppose that would be better than nothing,” Arabella conceded. “Oh, will she ever forgive me for treating her so?” This involuntary exclamation seemed to escape her without her knowledge. She raised the second of her objections, “And in any event it will not answer, because I cannot take a valise to Vauxhall!”
“That you will also leave to me,” said Mr. Beaumaris.
“But you cannot call in Park Street to fetch it!” she pointed out.
“Certainly not.”
“And I will not elope without a change of clothes, or my hairbrushes, or my tooth-powder!” declared Arabella.
“Most improper,” agreed Mr. Beaumaris. “All these things shall be forthcoming.”
“You cannot buy such things for me!” gasped Arabella, shocked.
“I assure you I should enjoy doing it.”
She stared at him, and then exclaimed wretchedly: “How dreadful it all is! I never, never thought I should come to this! I daresay it seems the merest commonplace to you, but to me—But I see that it is of no use to cavil!”
The tell-tale muscle at the corner of Mr. Beaumaris’s mouth quivered, and was sternly repressed. “Well, perhaps not precisely commonplace,” he said. “It so happens that I have not previously eloped with anyone. However, to a man of ordinary ingenuity the affair should not prove impossible to achieve creditably, I trust. I perceive Mrs. Penkridge, who is hoping to catch either your eye or mine. We shall permit her to do so, and while she asks you to say if you do not think Nolleken’s bust over there most like, I shall go in search of Lady Bridlington, and engage her to bring you to Vauxhall tomorrow evening.”
“Oh, pray do not! I dislike Mrs. Penkridge excessively!” she whispered.
“Yes, an odious woman, but impossible to avoid,” he returned.
Seeing him rise to his feet, Mrs. Penkridge
bore down upon him, her acidulated smile on her lips. Mr. Beaumaris greeted her with his smooth civility, stayed for perhaps a minute, and then, to Arabella’s indignation, made his bow, and went off in the direction of the next room.
Either Lady Bridlington proved hard to find, or he must have fallen a victim to her garrulity, Arabella thought, for it seemed a very long time before she set eyes on him again. When he did reappear, Lady Bridlington was walking beside him, wreathed in smiles. Arabella made her excuses to Mrs. Penkridge, and went across to her godmother, who greeted her with the cheerful intelligence that Mr. Beaumaris had formed the most delightful scheme for an evening at Vauxhall. “I did not scruple to accept, my love, for I knew you would like it of all things!” she said.
“Yes,” said Arabella, feeling that she was now committed to an irrevocable and reprehensible course which she would no doubt regret her life long. “I mean, oh, yes! how very agreeable!”
XVI
Upon leaving Somerset House, Mr. Beaumaris got into a hackney, and drove to the Red Lion Inn. What he learned at that hostelry threw abundant light on to Arabella’s conduct. Since he had his own reasons for believing Arabella’s heart to have been won long since, he was not in the least wounded by the discovery that she proposed to marry him as a means of rescuing her brother from debt, but, on the contrary, considerably amused. Having paid Bertram’s bill at the inn, and received his watch back from the landlord, he returned to his own house in yet another hackney.
The same delight in the ridiculous which had made him wear a dandelion in his button-hole for three consecutive days for no better purpose than to enjoy the discomfiture of his misguided friends and copyists made him deeply appreciative of the situation in which he now found himself; and he beguiled the tedium of the drive to Mount Street in wondering when it would cross his absurd love’s mind that the disclosure, following hard upon the wedding-ceremony, that she required a large sum of money from him without a moment’s loss of time, might be productive of a little awkwardness. He could not resist picturing the scene, and was still laughing softly when he reached his house, a circumstance which considerably surprised his butler.
“Send round to the stables for my tilbury, will you, Brough?” he said. “And desire Painswick—oh, you’re there, are you?” he added, as his valet descended the stairs. “I want to hear no more about missing shirts, on which excessively boring subject I can see from your expression you are prepared to discourse at length, but you may tell me this! Where is the letter I gave into your hands to be delivered at the Red Lion, to a Mr. Anstey, and why did you not tell me that it had not been so delivered?”
“You may perhaps recall, sir,” said Painswick reproachfully, “that I mentioned to you while you sat at breakfast that there was a matter which I deemed it my duty to bring to your notice. Upon which, sir, you said, Not now.”
“Did I? I had no idea you could be so easily silenced. Where is the letter?”
“I placed it, sir, on the bottom of the pile that was awaiting you on the table here,” replied Painswick, tacitly disclaiming further responsibility.
“In that case it is in the library. Thank you: that is all.”
Ulysses, who had been lying stretched out in the library, enjoying the sleep of the replete, awoke at Mr. Beaumaris’s entrance, yawned, got up, shook himself, sneezed several times, stretched, and indicated by his cocked ears and wagging tail that he was now ready for any adventure.
“I am glad to see you restored to your usual self,” said Mr. Beaumaris, running through the mass of his neglected correspondence, and picking up his own letter to Bertram. “You know, you should not have dissuaded me from going out again that evening! Just look what has come of it! And yet I don’t know. I would not have missed this morning’s interview for a thousand pounds! I suppose you think that I am behaving very badly? I am, of course, but do me the justice to own that she deserves it for being such an adorable little fool!”
Ulysses wagged his tail. He was not only willing to do Mr. Beaumaris justice, but presently indicated his readiness to accompany him on whatever expedition he had in mind.
“It would be useless to suggest, I suppose, that you are occupying Clayton’s seat?” said Mr. Beaumaris, mounting into his tilbury.
Clayton, grinning, expressed himself as being agreeable to taking the little dog on his knee, but Mr. Beaumaris shook his head.
“No, I fear he would not like it. I shan’t need you,” he said, and drove off, remarking to his alert companion: “We are now faced with the wearing task of tracing down that foolish young man’s inarticulate friend, Felix Scunthorpe. I wonder whether, in the general medley, there is any bloodhound strain in you?”
He drew blank at Mr. Scunthorpe’s lodging, but on being informed that Mr. Scunthorpe had mentioned that he was going to Boodle’s, drove at once to St. James’s Street, and was so fortunate as to catch sight of his quarry, walking up the flagway: He reined in, and called imperatively: “Scunthorpe!”
Mr. Scunthorpe had naturally perceived who was driving a spanking chestnut between the shafts of the tilbury, but as he had no expectation of being recognized by the Nonpareil this summons surprised him very much. He was even a little doubtful, and said cautiously: “Me, sir?”
“Yes, you. Where is young Tallant?” He saw an expression of great wariness descend upon Mr. Scunthorpe’s face, and added impatiently: “Come, don’t be more of a fool than you can help! You don’t suppose I am going to hand him over to the tipstaffs, do you?”
“Well, he’s at the Cock,” disclosed Mr. Scunthorpe reluctantly. “That is to say,” he corrected himself, suddenly recalling his friend’s incognito, “he is, if you mean Mr. Anstey.”
“Have you any brothers?” demanded Mr. Beaumaris.
“No,” said Mr. Scunthorpe, blinking at him. “Only child.”
“You relieve my mind. Offer my congratulations to your parents!”
Mr. Scunthorpe thought this over, with knit brow, but could make nothing of it. He put Mr. Beaumaris right on one point “Only one parent,” he said. “Father died three months after I was born.”
“Very understandable,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “I am astonished that he lingered on for so long. Where is this Cock you speak of?”
“Thing is—not sure I ought to tell you!” said Mr. Scunthorpe.
“Take my word for it, you will be doing your misguided friend an extremely ill-turn if you don’t tell me!”
“Well, it’s at the corner of Duck Lane, Tothill Fields,” confided Mr. Scunthorpe, capitulating.
“Good God!” said Mr. Beaumaris, and drove off.
The Cock inn, however, though a small, squat building, proved to be more respectable than its situation had led Mr. Beaumaris to suppose. Duck Lane might abound in filth of every description, left to rot in the road, but the Cock seemed to be moderately clean, and well-kept. It even boasted an ostler, who emerged from the stable to gape at the tilbury. When he understood that the swell handling the ribbons had not merely stopped to enquire the way, but really did desire him to take charge of his horse and carriage, a vision of enormous largesse danced before his eyes, and he hastened to assure this noble client that he was ready to bestow his undivided attention on the equipage.
Mr. Beaumaris then descended from the tilbury, and walked into the tap of the inn, where his appearance caused a waterman, a jarvey off duty, two bricklayer’s labourers, a scavenger, and the landlord to break off their conversation in mid-sentence to stare at him.
“Good-morning!” said Mr. Beaumaris. “You have a Mr. Anstey putting up here, I think?”
The landlord, recovering from his surprise, came forward, bowing several times. “Yes, your honour! Oh, yes, indeed, your honour!—Chase that cur out of here, Joe!—If your honour will—”
“Do nothing of the sort, Joe!” interrupted Mr. Beaumaris.
“Is he yours, sir?” gasped the landlord.
“Certainly he is mine. A rare specimen: his family tree would surprise you! I
s Mr. Anstey in?”
“He’ll be up in his room, sir. Keeps hisself to hisself, in a manner of speaking. If your honour would care to step into the parlour, I’ll run up and fetch him down before the cat can lick her ear.”
“No, take me up to him,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “Ulysses, do stop hunting for rats! We have no time to waste on sport this morning! Come to heel!”
Ulysses, who had found a promising hole in one corner of the tap, and was snuffing at it in a manner calculated to keep its occupant cowering inside it for the next twenty-four hours at least, regretfully obeyed this command, and followed Mr. Beaumaris up a steep, narrow stairway. The landlord scratched on one of the three doors at the top of this stair, a voice bade him come in, and Mr. Beaumaris, nodding dismissal to his guide, walked in, shut the door behind him, and said cheerfully: “How do you do? I hope you don’t object to my dog?”
Bertram, who had been sitting at a small table, trying for the hundredth time to hit upon some method of solving his difficulties, jerked up his head, and sprang to his feet, as white as his shirt. “Sir!” he uttered, grasping the back of his chair with one shaking hand.
Ulysses, misliking his tone, growled at him, but was called to order. “How many more times am I to speak to you about your total lack of polish, Ulysses?” said Mr. Beaumaris severely. “Never try to pick a quarrel with a man under his own roof! Lie down at once!” He drew off his gloves, and tossed them on to the bed. “What a very tiresome young man you are!” he told Bertram amiably.
Bertram, his face now as red as a beetroot, said in a choked voice: “I was coming to your house on Thursday, as you bade me!”
“I’m sure you were. But if you hadn’t been so foolish as to leave the Red Lion so—er—hurriedly, there would not have been the slightest need for this rustication of yours. You would not have worried yourself half-way to Bedlam, and I should not have been obliged to bring Ulysses to a locality you can see he does not care for.”
Arabella Page 27
