Bath Tangle

23

Admitted into Mrs Floore’s house, Rotherham had barely time to hand his hat to the butler before a door opened at the back of the hall, and Lady Laleham came out, dressed in all the elegance of figured silk and lace, and wreathed in smiles. “Ah, dear Lord Rotherham!” she pronounced. “I knew you might be depended upon to call again! Such a sad mischance that you should have found no one at home when you came this afternoon! But you must not blame us, you know, for you forgot to tell Emily which day you meant to arrive in Bath! I hope I see you well?”

“My health, I thank you, ma’am, is excellent. I cannot, however, say as much for my temper, which has been exasperated beyond anything which I am prepared to endure!” he replied, in his harshest voice.

She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, in a fleeting gesture of sympathy. “I know,” she said, considerably to his surprise. “Will you come into the morning-room? You will, I know, forgive my mother for not receiving you: she is elderly, and, alas, not capable of exertion!”

“The person I wish to see, Lady Laleham, is not your mother, but your daughter!”

“Exactly so!” she smiled, preceding him into the morning-room. “And here she is!”

He strode into the room, and paused, looking grimly at his prospective bride. She was standing beside a large wing-chair, one trembling hand resting on its back, her eyes huge in her white face, and her breathing uneven. She looked very young, very pretty, and very apprehensive, and she showed no disposition to come forward to greet her betrothed until her mother said, in a voice of honeyed reproof: “Emily dear!” After that, she advanced, and said: “How do you do?” putting out her hand.

“Effusive!” said Rotherham. “You must not behave as though I were your whole dependence and delight, you know!”

“She is a little tired,” explained Lady Laleham, “and she has been a very silly, naughty child, which she knows she must confess to you.”

His eyes went to her face, an arrested expression in them.

“L-Lady Serena said I n-need not t-tell, Mama!”

“We are very much indebted to Lady Serena, my love,” Lady Laleham returned smoothly, “but you will allow Mama to know best what you should do.” She met Rotherham’s fierce stare with perfect coolness, a faint smile on her painted lips. “The poor child is afraid that you will be very angry with her, Lord Rotherham, but I have assured her that where there is full confession there must always be forgiveness, particularly when it is accompanied by deep repentance.”

The wretched Emily, perceiving that her betrothed was looking like a thundercloud, began to feel faint. But Rotherham was not thinking about her. He was seeing the ground being cut from beneath his feet by a stratagem which he recognized, in a cold fury, to be masterly. And he could think of no way to prevent Emily from casting herself upon his mercy. Out it all came, in halting, shamefaced sentences from Emily, skilfully embroidered by her mother. She had thought he was very angry with her, when she had received his letter; he had stayed away from her for so long that she feared he no longer loved her; Gerard had told her such dreadful things that she had taken fright. But Lady Serena had come to the rescue just when she was wishing she had not done such a wicked thing; and Lady Serena had assured her that she had nothing to fear from Lord Rotherham. So she had come home and had been crying her eyes out ever since because she was so very, very sorry. Finally, would he forgive her, and believe that she would never do it again?

He became aware that she had finished speaking, and saw that her eyes were fixed on his face in a look of painful inquiry. He said abruptly: “Emily, do you love Gerard?”

“Oh, no!” she said, and there was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice.

No way of escape there. There was only one way out, and that was to play the outraged lover, and repudiate the engagement It could not be done. To push her into flinging that handsome diamond ring he had given her in his face was one thing; to push her into eloping with his ward, and then to round on her, was quite another. He wondered what pressure her mother had brought to bear to make her so anxious to marry him. She was no longer thinking of riches and position. If he could get rid of Lady Laleham, he might be able to reach an understanding with Emily—if she was capable of understanding anything, which she did not look to be.

“I think it would be as well if we talked this over alone,” he said.

Lady Laleham had no intention of allowing this. Unfortunately, Emily’s terror of him was greater than her dread of her mother, and she gave him no support, but shrank towards Lady Laleham.

At which moment the door opened, and a startling vision surged into the room. “I thought as much!” said Mrs Floore ominously. “And who gave you leave to entertain guests in my house, Sukey?” She retained her clutch on Mr Goring’s supporting arm, and added: “No, you stay here, Ned! There’s nothing that’s happened here this day you don’t know, and a true friend you’ve been, like your father would have been before you!”

Rotherham, with difficulty withdrawing his eyes from the magnificence before him, glanced at Lady Laleham. What he saw in her face afforded him considerable solace. Fury and chagrin were writ large in it, and beneath these emotions, unless he much mistook the matter, fear. So this was the mysterious grandmother about whom he had quizzed Emily on his first meeting with her! He bent his penetrating stare upon her again, as she settled herself in the chair of her choice, and directed Mr Goring to pull forward a footstool.

Mrs Floore was doing justice to the occasion in a staggering gown of lustring, with tobine stripes of a rich ruby, and a quantity of floss trimming. This splendid robe was draped over panniers, fashionable in her youth, and was worn over an underdress of satin. A medley of brooches adorned the low-cut corsage, and round her short neck she had clasped several strings of remarkably large pearls. A turban of ruby silk and tinsel was embellished with a cluster of ostrich plumes, and from the lobes of her ears hung two large rubies.

“That’s right,” nodded Mrs Floore, shifting the position of the stool a trifle with one red-heeled and buckled shoe. “Now let me take a look at this precious Marquis I’ve heard so much about!”

Lady Laleham, with an unconvincing smile pinned to her mouth, murmured to Rotherham: “Dear Mama is quite an eccentric!”

“I’m not an eccentric, and I’m not deaf!” said her dear Mama sharply. “I’m a plain woman that came of good merchant stock, which, though I may not have your fine-lady airs and graces, my dear, I’ve got more sense than to be ashamed of! And another thing I’ll tell you is that you’d do better to introduce this Marquis to me than to stand there biting your lips, and wondering what he must be thinking of your ma! He can think what he likes, and if Emma means to marry him—which, however, isn’t by any means a settled thing!—the sooner he gets used to her grandma the better it will be for him!”

“How do you do?” said Rotherham, slightly bowing, his tone indifferent, but his eyes keenly surveying this amazing old lady.

She gave him back stare for stare, taking him in from the heels of his boots to the crown of his black locks. “Good gracious, you’re a regular blackamoor!” she exclaimed. “Well, they say handsome is as handsome does, but from all I can make out, my lord, you haven’t done very handsome yet.”

“You must not mind Mama: she is so droll!” said Lady Laleham.

“It’ll be more to the point if I don’t mind him,” observed Mrs Floore, who was clearly in a belligerent mood. “You must excuse me staring at you, my lord, but I never did see such peculiar eyebrows! Now, I shouldn’t wonder at it, Emma, my pet, if half the time you thought he was scowling at you it was nothing but the way his eyebrows grow, which he can’t help, though, of course, it’s a pity.”

Rotherham kept his countenance set in its forbidding lines. At any other moment, he would have exerted himself to please Mrs Floore, for he was strongly attracted to her; but since her attitude appeared to be hostile he saw in her his one hope of salvation, and began to consider how best to annoy her.

“Dear Mama,—you know that Emily wished to see Lord Rotherham in private!” said Lady Laleham. “Don’t you think, perhaps—”

“No, I don’t,” replied Mrs Floore bluntly. “What’s more, it wasn’t Emma that wanted to be private with him, and if she had done, I don’t see much privacy for her with you standing over her, Sukey!”

“You forget, Mama, that I am her mother.”

“Well, and if I do, whose fault is that?” demanded Mrs Floore. “You act motherly, and maybe I won’t forget! From the look on poor little Emma’s face, you’ve been bullying her, the pair of you. That’s right, Ned, you give her a chair, and don’t you be afraid, my pet, because you haven’t any need to be!”

“None at all!” said Lady Laleham. “Lord Rotherham has been most forbearing, just as I knew he would be, and has not uttered one word of censure, has he, Emily?”

“No, Mama,” said Emily, in a small, scared voice.

“It’s to be hoped he hasn’t!” said Mrs Floore, her eyes snapping. That’s not to say he won’t hear a word of censure from me—in fact, a good many words! Yes, it’s all very well to be high in the instep, my lord, and to look at me as though I was a spider, and very likely you’re thinking I’m just a vulgar old woman, but what I say is that if anyone’s to blame for what’s happened it’s you!”

“I’ve no objection to vulgarity,” replied Rotherham. “What, however, I do not tolerate is interference. That had better be understood immediately.”

Mrs Floore seemed to swell. “Ho! So when I tell you I won’t have my granddaughter made miserable, that’s interference, is it?”

“If Emily is made miserable by me, the remedy is in her own hands.”

“Mama, pray be quiet!” cried Lady Laleham. “Such nonsense! As though she has not every reason to be the happiest girl alive!”

“You may toad-eat his lordship as much as you like, Sukey, but don’t you run away with the idea you can tell me to be quiet, or you and me will fall out, which would not suit your book! Ever since Emma got herself engaged to this Marquis, she’s looked downright seedy, and she’s been no more her merry self—”

“My dear Mama, I have told you a score of times that London, and all the gaieties she enjoyed, were too much for her!”

“Then there is no need for you to feel any further anxiety about her health,” said Rotherham. “We are not going to live in London.”

This pronouncement, uttered as it was in a curt, matter-of-fact voice, surprised Emily into uplifting her voice: “Not going to live in London?” she repeated.

“No.”

“Dear child, Lord Rotherham means that you will mostly be at Delford, or at Claycross!” interposed Lady Laleham. “Naturally, you will be in London for a few months during the spring!”

“I mean nothing of the sort,” said Rotherham, without heat, but with finality. “I am closing Rotherham House.”

“Closing Rotherham House?” exclaimed Lady Laleham, as though she could not believe her ears. “But—but why?”

He shrugged. “I dislike living in town, and abominate ton parties.”

Emily’s eyes darkened in dismay. “N-no parties at all?” she asked.

He glanced down at her. “We shall entertain at Delford, of course.”

“Oh, no!” she said involuntarily. “I—I couldn’t!” She flushed, and added pleadingly: “I would rather live in London! At least, some part of the year! Delford is so very big, and—and—I don’t like it!”

“I am afraid, since it is my home, you will have to overcome your dislike of it.”

“Of course she will!” said Lady Laleham. “But surely you cannot mean to keep her there throughout the year!”

“Why not?”

“I’ll soon tell you why not!” interrupted Mrs Floore, who had been listening in gathering wrath. “If Delford is the place where poor little Emma had to walk half a mile from her bedroom to the dining-room, it isn’t the kind of house that’ll suit her at all! Besides, from what she tells me, it’s stuck right out in the country, and she’s had enough of that kind of thing at Cherrifield Place! What’s she going to do with herself all day long?”

“She will find plenty to do, I imagine. She will have first to learn what is expected of Lady Rotherham, which is likely to keep her pretty fully occupied for some months. She will hunt, of course—”

“Hunt?” cried Emily. “Oh, no, please! I never do so!”

“You will,” he said.

“J-jump over those dreadful fences you showed me?” Emily said, horror in her voice. “I couldn’t!”

“We shall see!”

“Well, if ever I heard anything to equal it!” gasped Mrs Floore. “First, she’s to learn a lot of lessons, and next she’s to be made to break her neck!”

“Oh, she won’t break her neck!” said Rotherham. “A few tumbles won’t hurt her! I shall have some fairly easy jumps put up, and school her over them.”

“No!” almost shrieked Emily. “I won’t, I won’t!”

“No more you shall, lovey!” hotly declared Mrs Floore.

“It will be as well, Emily, if you realize that when you are Lady Rotherham I shall expect obedience from you. I warn you, it will not do if you say “I won’t” to me.”

Mr Goring, who had been seated rather in the background, got up, and said in his level tone: “We’ve heard a great deal of what you expect, and what you like, my lord, but we haven’t yet heard you ask Miss Laleham what she would like!”

“She’ll learn to like what I like—if she’s wise! I did not choose a bride out of the schoolroom, sir, to have her setting up her will against mine!”

Mr Goring’s jaw was becoming momentarily more aggressive. “It seems to me. Lord Rotherham, that what you want is a slave, not a wife!”

Mrs Floore, unable to contain herself another instant, said forcefully: “And he’s not getting a slave in my Emma! Why, the man’s a downright monster! A fine husband you caught for Emma, Sukey! I wonder you aren’t ashamed to look me in the face! If I didn’t say to Lady Serena that it wouldn’t matter to you if a man was cross-eyed, and had one foot in the grave! Not so long as he was a Duke, which is all you care for! And this Choctaw Indian here isn’t even a Duke!”

There was the faintest tremor at the corners of Rotherham’s mouth, but it went unnoticed. Lady Laleham said: “I cannot believe that Lord Rotherham means all he says! I am sure he means to make Emily very happy!”

“Certainly,” said Rotherham, bored. “She has only to adapt herself to my wishes, and I see no reason why she should not be perfectly happy.”

Suddenly Emily sprang up, and fled to her grandmother’s chair. “I can’t, I can’t! I don’t care if I am ruined! I can’t! Oh, Grandmama, don’t let Mama make me!”

“Emily!” There was a red spot on each of Lady Laleham’s cheeks. “How dare you say such a thing? As though I should dream—”

“You keep your distance, Sukey!” commanded Mrs Floore.

Mr Goring, stepping up to Rotherham, his chin now well out-thrust, said: “Perhaps your lordship will do me the favour of stepping outside for a few minutes!”

“No, you fool!” said Rotherham, very softly.

“Emily, think what you are doing!” Lady Laleham was saying urgently. “You’ll never get a husband, if you play the jilt! Particularly after your folly today! The whole world will think it was you who were jilted! You’ll have to stay at home, for I shan’t take you to town again, and you’ll end your days an old maid—”

“You’re wrong, ma’am!” said Mr Goring. “There’s time and to spare before she need think of being married, but you needn’t fear she won’t get another offer, because I can tell you that she will!”

“You can lay your life she will!” said Mrs Floore. “Now, don’t you cry, my pretty, because your ma isn’t going to make you do anything!”

“What shall I do?” sobbed Emily. “I don’t w-want to go home in d-disgrace, and I don’t w-want to have n-no reputation!”

“Emma, would you like to stay with your old grandma? Now, think, lovey! It ain’t very lively, living here, and nothing but the Assemblies, and the Sydney Gardens, and if it’s the ton parties you want, I can’t give them to you, because if I was to take you to London I couldn’t chaperon you, my pet, because there’s no getting round it, I’m not a fine lady, and I never will be! Myself, I think you’d be a deal happier if you was to forget all these Marquises and things, but it’s for you to say.”

“Live with you always?” Emily cried, lifting a flushed, tear-stained face from Mrs Floore’s lap. “Oh, Grandmama!”

“Bless you, my precious!” said Mrs Floore, giving her a smacking kiss.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” demanded Lady Laleham. “I’ll have you know Emily is my daughter, Mama!”

“And I’ll have you know, Sukey, that if I have one more word out of you, you can pay your own bills from now on, and so can Sir Walter!”

There was a pregnant silence. Mrs Floore patted Emily’s shoulder. “You dry your eyes, love, and give the Marquis back his ring!”

“When you see your sisters all married before you, I hope you will remember this day, Emily!” said Lady Laleham. “For my part, I wash my hands of you!”

“And a very good thing too,” commented Mrs Floore. “Go on, love! The sooner we’re rid of this Marquis of yours the sooner we can have our dinner, which I’m sure we all need!”

The door shut with a slam behind Lady Laleham. Emily shyly held out the ring to Rotherham. “If you please—I beg your pardon, but—we should not suit!”

“Thank you,” he said, taking the ring. “You have no need to beg my pardon: I will beg yours instead. The truth is that we both made a mistake. I wish you extremely happy, and I feel sure you will be—but Mr Goring is quite right: there’s plenty of time before you need think of marriage. As for your reputation, and your sisters, and all the rest of that nonsense, you needn’t regard it!” He glanced at the ring in his hand, and said: “I think you had better keep this—but wear it on another finger!”

“Oh, thank you!” gasped Emily naively.

He turned from her, to confront Mrs Floore, who had heaved herself up out of her chair, and was eyeing him with sharp suspicion. He grinned at her. “Don’t worry, ma’am! All that you would like to say to me, and a great deal more, has already been hurled at my head, and I fancy there is more to come. I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, and I trust that—next year, perhaps—I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you, and Emily, of course, at Rotherham House! By the way, don’t send a notice to the papers! I shall be sending one that will obviate the necessity, and will convince the world that I have treated Emily abominably—which, I own, I have!”

“So that’s it, is it?” said Mrs Floore. “Of all the impudence! Well, I’m sorry for her, that’s all! And I hope with all my heart that she’ll lead you such a dance as will put you in your place once and for all!”

“She will do her best. Pay me a visit when you come to town, Goring, and we’ll put the gloves on. You shall tell me, too, how you enjoyed taking care of Lady Serena: you had my sympathy!”

A brief bow, and he was gone. Half an hour later, he was being admitted to the house in Laura Place by Fanny’s footman. He found the butler in the drawing-room, engaged in lighting the candles in the wall-sconces. “Masterly, Lybster!” he said. “Go and tell the Lady Serena that although you did not let me in I am nevertheless here, and should like to see her immediately!”

“Her ladyship, my lord,” said Lybster, with an apologetic cough, “informed me that if your lordship should happen to cross the threshold, she would partake of dinner in her bedchamber.”

“Did she, by God? Go and tell her ladyship that if she does not come down to me, I shall go up to her!”

“Yes, my lord—if your lordship insists!” said Lybster, and departed.

He did not return, but within five minutes Serena swept into the room, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes far too fierce to suit the dove-grey gown she was wearing. “How—dare—you send me insolent messages by my own servants?” she demanded.

“I thought that would fetch you down,” he remarked, walking forward.

“Yes, and you will be shortly extremely sorry that it did! If you think, Ivo—”

This speech ended abruptly. Not only was she roughly jerked into Rotherham’s arms, but her mouth was crushed under his. For a moment or two, she strained every muscle to break free, and then, quite suddenly, the fight went out of her, and she seemed to melt into his embrace. It tightened ruthlessly, and only relaxed sufficiently to allow her to get her breath when Rotherham at last raised his head, and looked down into her eyes.

“Well, you beautiful, bad-tempered thorn in my flesh! Well? Have you done scolding yet?”

She lay against his arm, her head flung back on his shoulder, her eyes glinting at him under their curved lids. “Detestable creature! Mannerless, conscienceless, overbearing, selfish, arrogant—oh, how much I dislike you!” she sighed. “And how much you dislike me! I’d as lief be mauled by a tiger! You’re mad, too. Never were you more thankful to be rid of anything than of me! Own it! All these years—!”

“Never!” he assented fervently. “I swore then that never again would I put it in your power to drive me to the brink of insanity with your obstinate, headstrong, willful, intolerable conduct! But it’s no use, Serena! don’t you know that? I thought I had torn you out of my heart—I thought you were nothing to me but an old friend’s daughter—until—What made you do it, Serena? What crazy folly made you do it?”

The smile vanished from her eyes. “O God, I don’t know! I meant it, Ivo! When I saw him again—oh, I felt I was a girl—a nineteen-year-old! Perhaps it was because I was so lonely, perhaps because he still loved me so much, thought me a goddess, flattered me—oh, Ivo, worshipped me as you never did, I’ll swear!”

“No, I don’t worship you,” he said, mocking her. “I know you for what you are, you enchanting termagant! And what you are I can’t exist without! I saw him worshipping you, poor devil, and shutting his eyes to your imperfections! I pitied him, but I held him in contempt as well, because what is most admirable in you he liked least! I’ll open no gates for you, my girl! you’ll take any fence I take, and we’ll clear it neck and neck!” He felt the response in the quiver that ran through her, and laughed, and kissed her again. “You may set the country alight, if you choose, but ride rough-shod over me you will not, if we fight from cockcrow to sundown!”

“Ivo, Ivo!” she whispered, turning her face into his shoulder. She seemed to struggle with herself, and looked up at last, to say: “I cannot—I must not! It is too base—and oh, what would Papa say to me for behaving ungentlemanly! Ivo, I have been Hector’s dream!”

“It’s a dream he has awakened from, believe me!” he said dryly. “Lord, Serena, the clever fool that you are! Stop mouthing fustian to me, or I’ll shake some sense into you! Haven’t you seen what has been going on under your nose? Your calflove doesn’t want to be your husband! He is hoping to God he may become your father-in-law!”

She stared at him with knit brows; then she began to laugh. He kissed her again, heard a slight sound, and looked over her head towards the door. Major Kirkby, quietly entering the room, was standing with one hand on the door, watching them.

“I don’t beg your pardon, Kirkby,” Rotherham said. “I am reclaiming my own property.”

Serena pulled herself out of his arms, and went towards the Major, her hands held out: “Hector, forgive me! I have used you so shamefully: I think I must be the most fickle wretch alive!”

He took her hands and kissed them. “Not as fickle as I! Nor such a crass fool! My dear, I wish you happy with all my heart! You are a grander creature than any I ever dreamed of.”

She smiled. “Only I am not your dear. And you are the kindest and best of men, but not my love!”

He was still holding her hands, rather flushed, a rueful look in his eye. “There is something—I don’t know how to tell you! I must appear worse than a fool!”

“I’ve told her already,” interposed Rotherham. “I see no need to wish you happy: you will both be extremely happy!” He held out his hand, and gripped the Major’s, saying, with his derisive smile: “Do you own at last that I was right, when I told Spenborough seven years ago that you and Serena would never suit? When I met you again, in this house, I came prepared to dislike you profoundly: I ended the evening most sincerely pitying you! You are too good a man for such a termagant, Kirkby!”

“How like you—how very like you!” Serena said. Her eyes went to the door. “Fanny! Oh, foolish Fanny, why didn’t you tell me to take my claws out of Hector weeks ago? My dear, you were made for one another!”

“Oh, Serena, I feel a traitress!” Fanny said, her eyes brimming over.

“No, why should you? I’m afraid you will be shocked, my dear, but I am going to marry the odious Marquis after all!”

“Hector said it would be so,” Fanny said, sighing. “I do so much hope that you will be happy, dearest!”

“You don’t depend upon it, however, Lady Spenborough?”

She blushed rosily. “Oh, no, no! I mean, yes! Only it has always seemed to me that you held one another in positive aversion!”

“Acute of you!”

She had never known how to take his abrupt, incomprehensible remarks, and was always flurried by them. She said quickly: “I am so very glad you have made up your differences! My lord would have been so happy!” She saw Serena’s face quiver, and added at once: “Only, how very awkward it will be for you! How shall you advertise it? For you will be dreadfully roasted, you know, if you, announce your engagement for the second time!”

Serena turned laughing eyes towards Rotherham. “Fanny is perfectly right! Shall we say that the engagement between the Marquis of Rotherham and the Lady Serena Carlow has been resumed?”

“No, intolerable! I will never be engaged to you again, Serena! The advertisement which I propose to send to the Gazette will state that the marriage between the Marquis of Rotherham and the Lady Serena Carlow took place, privately, at Bath.”

Her eyes lit, but she said: “Ivo, how can I? It is not yet a year—”

“No, it is not a year, but even your Aunt Theresa will not think it improper if I add to the notice the information that we are spending our honeymoon abroad, and do not expect to be in England again until November. There will be no wedding festivities, and no bride visits. What we may choose to do while touring the Continent will offend no one.” He stretched out his hand imperatively, and she laid hers in it. His fingers closed on hers. “We will do better this time, Serena.”

“Yes,” she said, holding tightly to his hand. “We will do better, Ivo!”