Bath Tangle

20

Serena, arriving in Beaufort Square at eleven o’clock on the following morning, mounted on her good-looking mare, and attended by her groom, was a little surprised not to see a livery horse waiting outside Mrs Floore’s house. Fully alive to the honour of being invited to ride with so noted a horsewoman, Emily had formed the practice, on these occasions, of ordering her hired hack to be brought round quite twenty minutes too soon, and of running out of the house, the instant she saw, from her lookout in the dining-room window, that neat figure rounding the corner of the square.

“You had better knock on the door, Fobbing,” Serena said, holding out her hand for his bridle.

He gave it to her, but before he had reached the front door, it opened, and Mr Goring stepped out. He came up to the mare, and, looking gravely into the beautiful face above him, said: “Lady Serena, Mrs Floore desires me to ask you if you will be so good as to come into the house for a moment.”

Her brows rose swiftly. “I will do so, certainly. Is anything amiss?”

“I am afraid—very much amiss,” he replied, in a heavy tone. He held up his hand. “May I assist you to—”

“No, I thank you.” One deft, practised movement, and her voluminous skirt was clear of the pommels. The next instant she was on the ground, and giving her bridle into Fobbing’s hand. She caught up her skirt, swinging it over her arm, and went with Mr Goring into the house. “Is Emily ill?” she asked.

“No, not ill. It will be better, I daresay, if you learn from Mrs Floore what has occurred. I myself arrived here only a short time ago, and—But I will take you up to Mrs Floore! I should warn you that you will find her in considerable distress, Lady Serena.”

“Good God, what can have happened?” she exclaimed, hurrying towards the stairs, her whip still in her hand.

He followed close on her booted heels, and on the first floor slid in front of her, to open the door into the drawing-room. Serena went in, with her free stride, but checked in astonished dismay at the spectacle that met her eyes. The redoubtable Mrs Floore, still attired in her dressing-gown, was lying back in a deep wing-chair, her housekeeper holding burnt feathers to her nose, and her maid kneeling before her and chafing her hands.

“My dear ma’am—! For heaven’s sake, what dreadful accident has befallen?” Serena demanded.

The housekeeper, shedding tears, sobbed: “It’s her poor heart, my lady! The shock gave her such palpitations as was like to have carried her off! Years ago, the doctor told me she should take care, and now see what’s come of it! Oh, my lady, what a serpent’s tooth she has nourished in her bosom!”

The maid, much moved, began to sob in sympathy. Mrs Floore, whose usually rubicund countenance Serena saw to have assumed an alarmingly grey tinge, opened her eyes, and said faintly: “Oh, my dear! What shall I do? Why didn’t she tell me? Oh, what a silly, blind fool I have been! I thought—What am I to do?”

Serena, casting her whip on to the table, and stripping off her elegant gauntlets, said, in her authoritative way: “You shall remain perfectly quiet, dear ma’am, until you are a little restored. Get up off the floor, woman, and fetch some hartshorn, or a cordial, to your mistress immediately! And take those feathers away, you idiot! Mr Goring, be so good as to help me move her on to the sofa!”

He was very willing, but a little doubtful, and said in a low voice: “I had better call up the butler: she is too heavy for you, ma’am!”

Serena, who had quickly arranged some cushions at the head of the sofa, merely replied briefly: “Take her shoulders, and do not talk nonsense!”

Once disposed at full length on the sofa, Mrs Floore moaned, but soon began to look less grey. She tried to speak, but Serena hushed her, saying: “Presently, ma’am!” When the maid came back, bearing a glass containing a dose of some cordial in her trembling hand, Serena took it from her, and, raising the sufferer’s head, obliged her to swallow it. In a very short space of time the colour began to come back into Mrs Floore’s cheeks, and her breathing became more regular. The housekeeper, bereft of her evil-smelling feathers, waved a vinaigrette about under her nose, and her maid, still much affected, fanned her with a copy of the Morning Post.

Serena moved away to the window, where Mr Goring was standing. “The less she tries to talk the better it will be for her,”she said, in an undertone. “Now, tell me, if you please, what has happened to overset her like this?”

“Emily—Miss Laleham, I should say—has left the house,” he responded, still in that heavy tone. He saw that she was staring at him with knit brows, and added: “She has run away, ma’am. Leaving behind her a letter for her grandmother.”

“Good heavens! Where is it?”

“Give it to her, Ned!” commanded Mrs Floore, struggling to sit up. “Drat you, Stoke, don’t keep pushing me back! Give me those smelling-salts, and go away, do! I don’t need you any more, nor you neither, Betsey, crying all over me! No, don’t you go, Ned! If there’s anything to be done, there’s no one else to do it for me, for I can’t go careering all over the country—not that it would do a mite of good if I could, for who’s to say where she’s gone to? Oh, Emma, why ever didn’t you tell your grandma?”

Mr Goring had picked up a sheet of paper from the table, and had in silence handed it to Serena.

Dearest Grandmama, it began, in Emma’s unformed writing, “I am so very sorry and I do not like to grieve you but I cannot bear it and I cannot marry Lord R. in spite of coronets, because he frightens me, and I did not tell you but he has written me a dreadful letter and is coming here and he and Mama will make me do just what they want, and indeed I cannot bear it, though I hate excessively to leave you without saying goodbye. Pray do not be angry with me, my dear, dearest Grandmama. Your loving Emma. PS. Pray, pray do not tell Mama or Lord R. where I have gone.

“You would certainly be in a puzzle to do so!” said Serena, reaching the postscript. “Of all the bird-witted little idiots—! My dear ma’am, I beg your pardon, but she deserves to be slapped for such folly! What the devil does she mean by writing such stuff? Rotherham write her a “dreadful letter”? What nonsense! If he has grown impatient, it is not to be wondered at, but to write of him as though he were an ogre is quite abominable!”

“But she is afraid of him, Lady Serena,” said Mr Goring.

“I ought to have known it was Sukey’s doing!” said Mrs Floore, in an agony of remorse. “Right at the start, didn’t I suspect it? Only then Emma wrote me such a letter, so happy it seemed to me, that I thought—Poor little lamb, if I’d only had the sense to tell her what I think of Sukey, which I never did, not thinking it seemly, she wouldn’t have been afraid to tell me! And now there’s Sukey coming here this very day, and how to face her I don’t know, for there’s no denying I haven’t taken proper care of Emma. Not that I care a fig for Sukey, and so I shall tell her! And as for this precious Marquis, let him dare show his face here! Let him dare, that’s all I ask! Scaring the dear little soul out of her senses, which nobody can tell me he hasn’t done, because I know better! And last night—Oh, Ned, I thought she was moped because she didn’t want Sukey to take her away from me, and all I did was to tell her to think about her bride-clothes, so I daresay she took it into her head I was as set on this nasty marriage as her ma! And now what am I to do? When I think of my little Emma, running off all alone, to hide herself heaven knows where—”

“You may be certain of one thing at least, ma’am!” interrupted Serena. “She has not run away alone!”

Mr Goring directed a steady look at her. “Is there an attachment between her and young Monksleigh, ma’am?”

She shrugged. “On her side, I should very much doubt it; on his, evidently! I shall be sorry for him if it ever comes to Rotherham’s ears that he persuaded Emily into this escapade! It is the most disgraceful thing to have done, and if he comes off with a whole skin he may think himself fortunate! Mrs Floore, pray don’t cry! The matter is not past mending, I assure you. I collect that Gerard came to Bath to see Emily, not to stay with friends: has he been to this house? Had you no suspicion of what was in the wind?”

“No, my dear, because Emma said he was the Marquis’s ward, which made it seem right to me, and besides which I thought he was such a twiddle-poop there wasn’t the least harm in letting him go with us to the Gala night, which I did.”

Serena smiled, but said: “Depend upon it, this dramatic flight was his notion, not Emily’s, ma’am! What is more, I would wager my pearls all this nonsense about Rotherham was put into her silly head by him! But let us not waste time in discussing that! What we have to do is to get her back. Mr Goring, I shall need your help!”

“I shall be happy to do everything in my power. Lady Serena, to restore Miss Laleham to Mrs Floore, but I will have no hand in forcing her into marriage with a man whom she fears,” he replied bluntly.

“Let me see anyone dare!” said Mrs Floore. “Only fetch her back to me, and trust me to send this Marquis to the rightabout, and Sukey too!”

There is no question of forcing her to marry Rotherham,”said Serena. “When she meets him again, I fancy she will discover that the extremely unamiable portrait she has painted of him is wide of the mark. Is it known when she left the house?”

“No, because no one saw her go, only she wasn’t gone before ten o’clock, that Betsey swears to, for she heard her moving about in her bedroom when she passed the door. And she ate a bite of bread and butter, and drank a cup of coffee, before she went, and Stoke says the tray was taken up to her at a quarter to ten, just as usual. For I don’t get up to breakfast myself, so Emma has hers in bed too.”

“Come, this is much better!” said Serena. “I feared she might have left overnight, in which case we should have had something to do indeed. Mr Goring, have you met Gerard Monksleigh?”

“I met him at the theatre last night, ma’am.”

“Then you will be able to describe him,” said Serena briskly. “We may be sure of this: they are not lurking in Bath! I do Gerard the justice to think that he means to marry Emily—though how he imagines he may do so, when each of them is under age, is more than I can tell! It would be in keeping with all the rest if he is bearing her off to Gretna Green, but where he found the money for such a journey is again more than I can tell! He may, of course, be taking her to London, with some hopeful notion of procuring a special license there.”

“Oh, my dear, supposing he has it in his pocket already?” exclaimed Mrs Floore. “Supposing he went to Wells, or Bristol, and has married her? Oh, I don’t want her to go throwing herself away on that young fellow!”

“Don’t distress yourself, ma’am! He would find it difficult to induce anyone to believe he is of age.”

“Lady Serena is right, ma’am,” interpolated Mr Goring. “He would be required to bring proof of his age, for he looks a stripling. What do you wish me to do, Lady Serena?”

“To visit the posting-houses here, of course. I imagine you must know them well. Discover if Gerard hired a chaise, and where it was to take him. Did you ride here from Bristol? Is your horse in Bath?”

“I drove here, ma’am, in my curricle. If I should be able to discover the road they took, I can have the horses put to in a trice,” he replied. “I’ll set out immediately.”

“Ned Goring, I’ll go all the way to Land’s End for Emma, but I’ll do it decently!” declared Mrs Floore. “Don’t you think to hoist me into any nasty, open carriage! A chaise-and-four, that’s what you’ll hire!”

“My dear ma’am, you are going to remain quietly here,” said Serena. “It would be quite unfit for you to be rocked and jolted for heaven knows how many hours! Moreover, if this exploit is to be kept secret, it is most necessary that you should be here. If Rotherham is indeed on his way to Bath, he will have to be fobbed off, you know. Whatever be the issue between him and Emily, you cannot wish him to know how scandalously she is behaving—or Lady Laleham either, for that matter! You must tell them both that Emily has gone with a party on an expedition of pleasure. And as for your curricle, Mr Goring, leave it where it is! We shall catch our runaways very much more speedily if we ride, and we shan’t advertise to every pike-keeper, and every chance traveller, that we are racing in pursuit of someone. That is a thing we should do our best to avoid.”

He stared at her. “You do not mean to go, ma’am!”

“Of course I mean to go!” she replied impatiently. “How in the world do you think you could manage without me? You are quite unrelated to Emily; you cannot compel her to return with you! All that would happen, I dare swear, is that you and Gerard would be fighting it out, with the post-boys as seconds, and then there would be the devil to pay!”

He was too much surprised to hear such an expression on her lips to smile at the absurdity of the picture she conjured up. “But you will not ride,ma’am? You cannot have considered! They must be many miles ahead of us already! It would not do for you: you would be fatigued to death!”

“Mr Goring, have you ever hunted with the Cottesmore?” she demanded.

“No, ma’am, I have not, but—”

“Well, I have done so every year!” she said. “There is no country like it for long and fast runs. It is said to be the wildest and the roughest of the Shires, you know. So don’t waste solicitude on me, I beg of you! My mare was bred to stay, and she’s as fresh as she can stare. The only difficulty will be your mount.”

His sense of decorum, which was strong, was shocked by the thought of a lady’s setting out, quite unchaperoned, on a chase that might lead her many miles from Bath, but he attempted no further remonstrance. He was conscious of the same sensation which had more than once assailed Major Kirkby, of being swept along irresistibly by an impetuous, vigorous will, against which it was impossible to fight. It was plain to him that the Lady Serena was going to assume the control of the chase. He wondered whether she had considered the possibility of finding herself, at nightfall, out of reach of her home, unprovided with so much as a hairbrush, and escorted by a single gentleman, but he did not venture to put the question to her. He said instead: “I know where I may procure a good horse. Lady Serena.”

“Excellent! Then will you go now, and see what you can discover? Inform my groom, if you please, that my plans have been altered. I am going with Miss Laleham to join a picnic party, and since we do not set out immediately he must walk the mare a little, till I am ready for her.”

“You will not take him with you?” he suggested tentatively.

“No, certainly not: he would be a confounded nuisance, for ever trying to persuade me to turn back! I had rather have your escort Mr Goring!” she replied, with the flash of a smile.

He stammered that he would be honoured to serve her, and went away to obey her various commands.

Mrs Floore, who had been sitting limply on the sofa, listening to this exchange, a gleam of hope in her eyes, but the lines on her face deeply carven all at once, said, with an effort: “I ought not to let you go, my lady. I know I ought not. Whatever will Lady Spenborough say to me?”

Serena laughed. “Why, nothing, ma’am! I am going to write to her, and Fobbing shall take the letter to her. I must tell her what has taken me away, I am afraid, but you may rest assured the story is safe with her. May I write at your desk?”

“Oh, yes, my lady!” Mrs Floore answered mechanically. She sat plucking restlessly at a fold of her dressing-gown, and suddenly demanded: “What did he do to her? Why did he scare her out of her senses? Why did he want to offer for her, if he didn’t love her?”

“Exactly!” said Serena dryly. “An unanswerable question, is it not? I believe the truth is, ma’am, that he is more in love with her than she can as yet understand. She is very young—quite childish, in fact!—and not, I think, of a passionate disposition. It is otherwise with him, and that, unless I much mistake the matter, is what alarmed her. What can she have known of love, after all? A few discreet flirtations, the homage of a boy like Gerard, protestations, compliments, respectful hand-kissings! She would not get such tepid stuff from Rotherham! No doubt her shrinking provoked him! I can believe that he let her see that he is not a man to be trifled with, but as for giving her cause to fly from him, in this outrageous fashion, stuff and nonsense! Of course he should have guessed that it would be necessary to handle her at first with the greatest gentleness! It is unfortunate that he did not, but we may suppose that he has learnt his lesson. He has been careful to keep away from her: another mistake, but from what she has told me I collect he has allowed himself to be ruled in this by Lady Laleham. He would have done better to have visited Emily long since. She would not then have built up this ridiculous picture of him! However, if he is indeed coming here, he will very soon set matters to rights. He has only to show her tenderness, and she will wonder how she came to be such a goose.”

“There’s a great deal in what you say, my dear,” agreed Mrs Floore. “But it’s as plain as a pikestaff she don’t love him!”

“She loves no one else,” Serena replied. “It is not unusual, ma’am, for a bride to start with no more than liking.”

“Well, it don’t appear she likes him either!” said Mrs Floore, reviving a little. “What’s more, my dear, those ways may do very well for tonnish people, but they don’t do for me! If Emma don’t love him, she shan’t marry him!”

Serena looked up from the letter she was writing. “It would not be well for her to cry off, ma’am, believe me!”

“You did so!” Mrs Floore pointed out.

“Yes, I did,” agreed Serena, dipping the pen in the standish again.

Mrs Floore digested this. “Sukey and her dratted ambition!” she said, suddenly and bitterly, “You needn’t tell me, my dear! I know the world! You could cry off, and no one to say more than that you were rid of a bad bargain; but if Emma did it, there’d be plenty to say that, if the truth was known, it was him, and not her, that really did the crying off!”

“I did not say it was well for me either, ma’am,” Serena replied quietly.

Mrs Floore heaved a large sigh. “I don’t know what to do for the best, and that’s a fact! If you’re right, my lady, and Emma finds she likes him after all, I wouldn’t want to spoil her chances, because there’s no doubt she has got a fancy to be a Marchioness. At the same time—Well, one thing is certain, and that’s that I’m not letting the Marquis into the house until I have Emma safe and sound here again! The servants shall tell him she’s gone off for a picnic, and very likely won’t be home till late—Oh, lor’, whatever’s to be done if you and Ned don’t find them today? If they go putting up at a posting-house for the night, it’ll be no use finding them at all!”

“If I know Gerard,” retorted Serena, “he will insist on driving through the night, ma’am! He will wish to put as much ground as possible between himself and Rotherham—and with good reason! But if Mr Goring can discover the road they took, I have no doubt we shall catch them long before nightfall.”

Mr Goring returned to Beaufort Square just before twelve o’clock, and came running up the stairs, with a look of triumph on his face. Serena said, as soon as he entered the drawing-room: “You have found out where they went! My compliments, Mr Goring! You have been very much quicker than I had dared to hope.”

“It was just a piece of good luck,” he said, colouring. “I might as well have gone to half a dozen houses before hitting upon the right one. As it chanced, I got certain news at the second one I visited. There seems to be no doubt that it was Monksleigh who hired a post-chaise early this morning, and ordered it to be in Queen’s Square at ten o’clock. A yellow-bodied chaise, drawn by a single pair of horses.”

“Well, I must say!” exclaimed Mrs Floore indignantly. “If he had to make off with poor little Emma, he might have done it stylishly! One pair of horses only! I call it downright shabby!”

“I fancy Master Gerard is none too plump in the pocket, ma’am,” said Serena, amused.

“Then he’s got no business to elope with my granddaughter!” said Mrs Floore.

“Very true! Where are they off to, Mr Goring?”

“The chaise was booked to Wolverhampton, ma’am, which makes it seem as though your guess was correct.”

“Wolverhampton?” demanded Mrs Floore. “Why, that’s where all the locks and keys come from! Very good they are, too, but what maggot’s got into the boy’s head to take Emma there? It’s all of a piece! Whoever heard of going to a manufacturing town for a wedding-trip?”

“No, no, ma’am, I don’t think you need fear that!” Serena said, laughing. “It’s as I told you: Gerard is husbanding his resources! Depend upon it, they mean to go on by stagecoach, or perhaps mail, to the Border. Never mind!” she added soothingly, seeing signs of gathering wrath in Mrs Floore’s countenance. “They are not going to reach Wolverhampton, or any place near it, ma’am.”

Mr Goring, who had spread open a map upon the table, said: “I bought this, for although I know the country hereabouts pretty well, if we are obliged to ride much beyond Gloucester I might find myself at a loss.”

“Very well done of you!” Serena approved, going to his side, and leaning one hand on the table, while she studied the map. “They will have taken the Bristol pike-road, though it’s longer. We came into Bath from Milverley by way of Nailsworth, but the road is very bad: brings the horses down to a walk in places. How far is it to Bristol?”

“Twelve and a half miles. They should have reached it in an hour. Bristol to Gloucester is about thirty-four miles: a good pike-road. They must change horses ten miles out of Bristol, at the Ship Inn, or go on to Falfield, fifteen miles out.”

“They won’t do that, travelling with one pair.”

“No. The next change, then, will be at the Cambridge Inn, here, about a mile short of the Church End turnpike, and ten miles from Gloucester. If we knew when they set out from Bath—!”

“We have a fair notion. Gerard ordered the chaise to be in Queen’s Square at ten, and at ten Emily was still in her bedroom—which one can’t but feel is precisely what would happen in such an absurd adventure as this. When did you know that she was missing, ma’am?”

Mrs Floore shook her head helplessly, but Mr Goring, thinking the matter over, said: “I arrived here about a quarter of an hour before you rode up, Lady Serena, and it had been known then for several minutes, I think.”

“Then, we may take it that they started between ten or fifteen minutes after ten, and half past ten. My dear sir, we are only an hour and a half behind them! What I wish to do is to overtake them before they reach Gloucester. We can’t but run true on the line up to that point, but once in Gloucester we might be obliged to make several casts. We will take the Nailsworth road as far as Badminton, and then ride cross-country to Dursley—a nice point, that!—and join the Bristol-Gloucester Road here!”

He nodded. “Ay, the road comes out at the Cambridge Inn.”

“Where the scent should be hot!” she said, her eyes dancing. “Come, let’s be off!”

“I am ready, but—it will be a twenty-five mile ride. Lady Serena! Do you think—”

“Oh, the mare will do it!” she said cheerfully, pulling on her gauntlets. “All we have to do now is to get rid of Fobbing! The worst of a groom who ran beside one on one’s first pony is that he can’t be ordered off without explanation. I’ll tell him our picnic party doesn’t assemble until half past twelve, but that I want my letter carried to Lady Spenborough at once, in case she should be uneasy. Mrs Floore, you will have Emma under your wing again before nightfall, I promise you! Pray don’t tease yourself any more!”

Mr Goring opened the door, and held it for her, but before he followed her out of the room, he looked at Mrs Floore and said: “I’ll do my best to bring her back, ma’am, but—don’t let them push her into marriage with Lord Rotherham!”

“You may depend upon it I won’t!” said Mrs Floore grimly.

“She isn’t old enough to marry anyone yet!” he said, and hesitated, as though he would have said more. Then he seemed to think better of it, bade Mrs Floore a curt goodbye, and departed in Serena’s wake.