The Nonesuch

Chapter 13

Miss Trent drove home in a happy dream, no longer caring whether her meeting with the Nonesuch had been observed by Mrs Chartley, or not; and able to dismiss that lady’s earnest warning with a light heart. Mrs Chartley, she now believed, had misjudged Sir Waldo. So too, indeed, had she: probably they had each of them been prejudiced by their mutual dislike of the Corinthian set; almost certainly (and very strangely) they had been misled by commonsense. Neither she nor Mrs Chartley was of a romantic turn of mind; and she at least had learnt, early in life, the folly of indulging fantastic dreams which belonged only to the realm of fairytales. Nothing could be more fantastic than to suppose that the Nonesuch bore the least resemblance to the handsome nursery-prince whose wayward fancy had been fixed on Cinderella, so perhaps they were not so very much to be blamed for their doubts. Inexperienced though she knew herself to be in the art of dalliance, Miss Trent could no longer doubt: she could only wonder. Try as she would she could discover no reason why she should have been preferred to all the noble and lovely ladies hopeful of receiving an offer from the Nonesuch. It seemed so wildly improbable as to be unreal. But when she had tried in vain to place a different construction upon the things he had said to her, it flashed into her mind that nothing, after all, was so wildly improbable as her own headlong tumble into love with the epitome of all that she held in contempt; and that that was precisely what she had done there was no doubt whatsoever.

She returned to Staples treading on air. Even Mrs Underhill, not usually observant, was struck by the bloom in her cheeks, and the glow in her eyes, and declared that she had never seen her in such high beauty. “Never tell me he’s popped the question?” she exclaimed.

“No, no, ma’am!” Ancilla replied, blushing and laughing.

“Well, if he hasn’t done it now, I’ll be bound you know he means to, for what else is there to cast you into alt?” demanded Mrs Underhill reasonably.

“Am I in alt? I didn’t know it! Dear Mrs Underhill, pray—pray don’t ask me questions I cannot answer!”

Mrs Underhill very kindly refrained, but she could not help animadverting on the perversity of fate, which had decreed that she should be away from Staples just as she would have most wished to be at home. “For gentlemen are so unaccountable,” she said, “that he may need to be nudged on, and that I could have done!”

Miss Trent, albeit profoundly thankful that her employer would not be at hand to perform this office, recognized the kindly intention that had inspired her daunting speech, and thanked her with what gravity she could command, but told her that she would as lief receive no offer from a gentleman who required nudging.

“Yes, that’s all very well,” retorted Mrs Underhill, “and very easy for you to talk like that, when all you’ve got to say is yes, or no, as the case may be! As though it didn’t stand to reason that a gentleman that’s screwed himself up to the point, and very likely hasn’t had a wink of sleep all night for making up a pretty speech and learning it off by heart, needs a bit of encouragement, because he’s bound to feel bashful, on account of not wishing to make a figure of himself, which gentlemen, my dear, can’t abide!”

Miss Trent could not picture the Nonesuch overcome by bashfulness, but she kept this reflection to herself. She had no wish to prolong a discussion which she felt to be unbecoming, so after murmuring an agreement she directed Mrs Underhill’s thoughts into a different channel, by producing a list of all the things that must be attended to before that lady could leave Staples with a quiet mind. Fortunately the list was a long one, and included problems of great complexity, chief amongst which loomed the vexed question of the new winter curtains for the drawing-room. These were being made by an indigent widow, living in a village some miles distant from Staples: an arrangement which, owing partly to the dilatory disposition of the widow, and partly to the folly of the silk warehouse in sending silk for the linings which in no way matched the opulent brocade chosen by Mrs Underhill, had already been productive of considerable annoyance.

“If it isn’t one thing it’s another!” declared Mrs Underhill. “Faithfully did they promise to send me another pattern this week! And did they do it? Answer me that!”

“No, ma’am,” said Miss Trent obediently. “They sent you a civil letter, explaining why there must be a little delay. Would you perhaps wish me to write to the warehouse, desiring them to send the new pattern to Mrs Tawton, so that she may judge—”

“No, that I wouldn’t!” interrupted Mrs Underhill. “She judge? She wouldn’t know black from white, for a sillier creature I never met! And so slow that—Well, there! I knew how it would be when Mrs Chartley asked me if I’d put some work in her way, for I never yet employed anyone out of kindness but what it cost me more and was worse done than if I’d sent all the way to London to have it made for me! I’d liefer by far have dipped my hand in my pocket, and made her a present of the money, and so I would have done if Mrs Chartley hadn’t warned me not, for fear of hurting the silly woman’s pride. Which is another thing I don’t hold with. Don’t you ever, my dear, send out work to anyone that has claims to gentility, for if they don’t do it in their time instead of yours ten to one they’ll do it wrong, and very likely look as if you’d insulted ’em if you tell ’em it’s not been done to your satisfaction!”

“I won’t,” said Miss Trent. “If you think I may be trusted to judge, I’ll take the lining-silk to Mrs Tawton, and look at it beside the brocade. If the pattern is sent before your return, that is. Or would you prefer to let it stand until you can take it yourself?”

“No, that I wouldn’t!” said Mrs Underhill. “It’s this winter I want my new curtains, not next! Though I don’t like to be asking you to run my errands, which you might well take offence at!”

“I’m not so genteel, ma’am! So that is settled. Then there is the fruit to be given to—”

“Oh, my goodness, if that hasn’t put me in mind of old Matthew!” exclaimed Mrs Underhill. “Well, I’m sure it’s no wonder I should have forgot, with all the fuss and worry about Charlotte, and the packing, and such! He’s laid up with his rheumatism, and there’s a bottle of liniment, and a bit of flannel to be taken to his cottage, which I’ll have to find the time to do, because he’s a pensioner, and Mr Underhill was always very particular not to neglect any of them.”

“I shall be glad of a walk, and I’ll go tomorrow morning, as soon as I have seen you and Charlotte safely into the carriage,” promised Ancilla.

Since Mrs Underhill, who rarely spent a night away from Staples, was rapidly becoming distracted, this duty proved to be more arduous than might have been expected, and entailed much hurried unpacking to discover whether various indispensable comforts had been included in the numerous trunks and portmanteaux, as Mrs Underhill’s maid asserted they had; or whether they had been overlooked, as Mrs Underhill feared they must have been. However, after only one false start, because Charlotte found that she had forgotten her travelling chessboard, the travellers at last drove away, leaving behind them a somewhat breathless and exhausted household.

“Phew!” uttered Courtenay, restoring the handkerchief he had been waving to his pocket. “You’d think they were bound for the Antipodes!” He turned to his giggling cousin, and said, with all the air of a young gentleman virtuously mindful of his mother’s parting injunctions: “I’m riding over to Crawshays, and if you care to go with me you may. Only don’t keep me kicking my heels for ever while you rig yourself out!”

Having no other engagement, and apprehending that Miss Trent might bear her off to visit the aged Matthew, Tiffany accepted this handsome invitation, and ran into the house to put on her riding-dress. Relieved of responsibility for one morning at least, Miss Trent presently set forth with a basket over her arm, glad of the exercise after her close attendance on Charlotte, and only too happy to be alone with her thoughts.

It was on her way back to Staples that she was overtaken by Lindeth, driving the late Mr Calver’s gig. He pulled up beside her, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Good-morning, ma’am! You have missed such a capital sight! Do get up beside me, and let me drive you home!”

She smiled up at him. “Why, thank you, but I enjoy walking, you know! What sight have I missed?”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you—but you must let me—drive you! I think it’s going to rain, and you have no umbrella.”

“Very well,” she replied, taking the hand he stretched down to her, and mounting nimbly into the gig. “Though I think the clouds are too high for rain. Don’t keep me in suspense another moment! What did I miss?”

“Arthur Mickleby, trying to catch the thong of his whip over his head!” he said, still laughing. “I missed it too, but if you’d seen him—! What must he do but practise the trick half-a-mile back on this lane, just where the trees overhang the road! What a cawker!”

She began to laugh too. “Oh, no! Did it get caught up?”

“I should rather think it did! By the time I came along he was in such a rage, cursing the tree, and the whip, and that nappy gray of his, that I couldn’t have helped laughing if it had been to save my life! Every time he got hold of the butt, and tried to twitch the thong free, the gray took fright, and started forward, so of course Mickleby was obliged to let the whip go while he got the hard-mouthed brute quiet again. So there he was, backing under the tree with the whip swinging like a pendulum, and knocking his hat off!”

Miss Trent, much enjoying this story, said: “To think I should have missed it! Did he succeed in freeing it?”

“Oh, lord, no! It’s still there—but I’ll lay you odds it won’t be for long! Mickleby’s gone off home: to fetch a ladder, I think! Before anyone comes along and sees the whip dangling, and starts making enquiries! I would, too. He was ready to murder me, but there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Poor Arthur! I expect you were perfectly odious!”

“Not a bit of it! I picked up his hat for him! Of course, the whole thing was Waldo’s fault: Mickleby must have seen him catch his thong over his head. I tell Waldo that if he stays here much longer he’ll get to be so puffed up that there’ll be no bearing it! Mickleby, and the rest of them, copy every single thing he does, you know. If he took to wearing his coat inside out they’d do the same!”

“Yes, I think they would,” she agreed. “Fortunately, he never does anything extravagant! Indeed, he has exerted a very beneficial influence over his devout worshippers—and has won great popularity amongst their parents in consequence!”

He grinned. “I know he has. He is the most complete hand! But he won’t be popular with ’em when they find that he only wanted Broom Hall for his wretched brats!”

“Wretched brats?” repeated Miss Trent, in a queer tone.

“Well, that’s what my cousin George calls ’em!” chuckled his lordship. “He don’t approve of them at all! He’s a very good fellow, but a trifle too full of starch and propriety. Always in the established mode, is George! He told Waldo that to be housing the brats in a respectable neighbourhood is carrying his eccentricity too far. I must say, I wouldn’t dare do it myself. Well, even the Rector was pretty taken aback when Waldo broached it to him, and I fancy he’s in a bit of a quake over what people like Mrs Mickleby will say to him when they learn that he was in Waldo’s confidence!” He became aware suddenly that Miss Trent was curiously silent, and stopped short in the middle of his cheerful rattle, and glanced round to find that her eyes were fixed on his face. There was a blank look in them, which made him say uneasily: “Waldo told you about his children, didn’t he, ma’am?”

She looked away, saying stonily: “No. He hasn’t mentioned them.”

“Oh, lord!” exclaimed Lindeth, in the liveliest dismay. “I had a notion that—Now I am in the suds! For God’s sake, ma’am, don’t betray me! I don’t want one of Waldo’s trimmings!”

He spoke half-laughingly; she forced her lips into a faint smile, and replied: “You may be easy on that head, sir. I shall certainly not speak of it.”

“He warned me he didn’t want it talked of,” said Lindeth remorsefully. “He never does himself, you know, except, of course—But I’m not going to say another word!” An alarming thought suddenly assailed him; he said apprehensively: “You aren’t scandalized, are you, ma’am? I mean, I know all the old tabbies will nab the rust at having brats of that sort planted at Broom Hall, but you don’t hold up your nose at what you don’t think quite the thing!After all, most men wouldn’t care a straw what became of the poor little devils, much less squander a fortune on housing them, and feeding them, and educating them! You may say that he’s so full of juice that it can’t signify to him, but—”

Miss Trent, feeling herself to be on the verge of strong hysterics, interrupted him. “My dear Lord Lindeth, I assure you that you have not the smallest need to say more! I collect that you and Sir Waldo will soon be leaving Yorkshire?”

He hesitated, before saying: “Yes—that is, I am not perfectly sure! I must go home, of course, but—I hope to be in Yorkshire again as soon as—well, soon!”

“Next month, for the York Races,” she agreed. “I daresay you have frequently attended them. This will be the first time I have had that opportunity. Mrs Underhill has the intention of getting up an agreeable party for the event, you know.”

He followed this lead readily enough; and the rest of the short drive was beguiled with innocuous chattery, in which his lordship bore decidedly the major part. He would have turned in at the gates of Staples, but Miss Trent would not permit it, saying that if he would set her down at the lodge she would enjoy the walk up the avenue to the house. Her command over both her voice and her countenance was such as to banish from his mind any lingering fear that his indiscreet tongue might have wreaked more mischief than had ever been in his head; and he drove off with a cheerful wave of his beaver.

She walked up the avenue, keeping to the carriageway by instinct rather than by sight, her eyes looking blindly ahead; and the empty basket weighing heavily on her arm. Her thoughts were chaotic; before she could attempt to marshal them into even the semblance of order some period of quiet and solitude would be necessary to enable her to recover from the shock of Lindeth’s artless disclosure.

Mercifully, it was granted to her. When she entered the house, it was wrapped in an unusual silence. Tiffany and Courtenay had not returned from their ride; and the servants, all sweeping and dusting finished, were in their own quarters. No one observed her return, and no one disturbed her when she reached the refuge of her bedchamber. She untied the strings of her bonnet, and mechanically smoothed them, before restoring the bonnet to the shelf in her wardrobe. As she turned away she became aware of the trembling of her limbs, and sat down limply, resting her elbows on the dressing-table before her, and sinking her head between her hands. She had not known that shock could affect one in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of a feverish illness she had suffered years before.

It was long before she could compel her brain to consider rather than to remember. It might be useless to recall everything the Nonesuch had said to her, everything he had done, but there was no helping it. So many of his words had assumed a new significance! He had had a certain proposition to lay before her; and every intention of making a clean breast of the matter to her; he had known that he would fall under the displeasure of his neighbours, but had fancied that her voice would not swell the chorus of disapproval, because she had too liberal a mind.She wondered, in the detachment of despair, what she could have said or done to imbue him,and Lindeth too, with so false an estimate of her character.

The first impulse of her mind had been to reject as incredible the disclosure that Sir Waldo was a hardened libertine; and even when she grew calmer, and was able to think rather than to feel, there still persisted in her brain, beyond reason, the conviction that it could not be true. Had anyone but Lindeth told her that Sir Waldo had fathered nameless children she would not have lent the tale a moment’s belief. But Lindeth would never slander his cousin, and what he said could not be scornfully dismissed. She had been amazed that he should speak so lightly of the matter, for she could not doubt that he was himself a young man of principle. Then she thought of what Mrs Chartley had said to her, and realized what strong support her warning gave to Lindeth’s words. It was rather dreadful to know that so strict and upright a woman could condone what she had called “adventures”. She knew the truth, but she plainly thought little the worse of Sir Waldo. She had uttered her warning not to prevent a marriage, but in the fear that no offer of marriage would be made. She might, like Mrs Mickleby, be scandalized by the arrival in the neighbourhood of Sir Waldo’s bastards, but she did not consider them a bar to his marriage with a young woman who was far removed from the wantons with whom he had enjoyed his adventures.This attitude of mind would have seemed as incredible to Ancilla as all the rest if she had come to Staples straight from her home, where loose conduct was regarded with abhorrence; but Ancilla had spent some months in London, and she had learnt that in fashionable circles promiscuous conduct was regarded by many with amusement, not with horror. The most surprising people talked openly of the latest crim. cons.,and still more surprising were the several haughty ladies of high position who were known to have foisted other men’s children on to their husbands. Provided one was discreet in that exclusive world, one might take as many lovers as one chose, and still maintain an accepted respectability. The only unforgivable crime was to cause a scandal. As for the gentlemen, few people thought the worse of them for rakishness. Even Lady Trent, quite as virtuous as Mrs Chartley, could survey, critically, but without disgust, some Drury Lane vestal well-known to be the latest mistress of a gentleman whom she would entertain in her house that very evening with the greatest cordiality.

But Miss Trent had not been reared in this accommodating morality. She was as much revolted by a libertine as by a prostitute, and she would as soon have contemplated becoming such a man’s mistress as his wife.