Bath Tangle (11 page)

‘No conspiracy,’ the Major said, going to her, and helping her to take off her pelisse. ‘Did you find your very odd acquaintance – Mrs Floore, is it not? – at home? I should think she was very much obliged to you for your visit!’

‘I believe you are quite as high in the instep as Fanny, and disapprove of Mrs Floore as heartily!’ Serena exclaimed.

‘I own I cannot think her a proper friend for you,’ he admitted.

‘Stuff! I found her at home, and
I
was very much obliged to
her
for the welcome she was kind enough to give me. I must say, Fanny, I wish we were in London, just that we might see with our own eyes the Laleham-woman’s triumph!’

‘You don’t mean to say that she has made up a brilliant match for poor little Emily already?’ cried Fanny.

‘No, she hasn’t done
that
, but, if she’s to be believed, she might have her pick of a dozen eligible partis tomorrow, if she chose! Flying at higher game, I conclude! So does Mrs Floore.
She
still holds by her cross-eyed Duke! I am very sceptical about him, but there seems to be no doubt that the Rotherham ball has worked like a charm. I daresay it might help to open
some
doors, but what tactics the Laleham-woman employed to force open some others, and which of the Patronesses she outgeneralled into surrendering vouchers for Almack’s, I would give a fortune to know. One can’t but admire her!’

‘
Odious
woman!’ Fanny said. ‘I am sorry for Emily.’

‘Nonsense! She will be in high feather, enjoying a truly magnificent season.’

‘But who is this lady?’ asked the Major.

‘She is Mrs Floore’s daughter, not as engaging as her mama, but quite as redoubtable.’

‘She is a hateful, scheming creature!’ said Fanny, with unusual asperity. ‘Excuse me! – I must speak to Lybster! – Something I forgot to tell him he must do! No, no, pray don’t pull the bell, dearest!’

‘Good gracious, Fanny, what in the world?’ Serena stopped, for the door had closed softly behind Fanny.

‘Serena!’

She turned her head, struck by the urgent note in the Major’s voice. One look at his face was enough to explain Fanny’s surprising behaviour. She felt suddenly breathless, and absurdly shy.

He came towards her, and took her hands. ‘It was not conspiracy. I came to ask her, as one who is in some sort your guardian, if I might ask you to marry me.’

‘Oh, Hector, how could you be so foolish?’ she said, her voice catching on something between a laugh and a sob. ‘What has poor Fanny to say to anything? Did she tell you that you might? Must I ask her what I should reply?’

‘Not that! But I am aware now, as I never was seven years ago, of the gulf that lies between us!’

She pulled one of her hands away, and pressed her fingers against his mouth. ‘Don’t say such things! I
forbid
you! Don’t think yourself unworthy of me! If you only knew – But you don’t, my poor Hector, you don’t! It’s I who am unworthy! You’ve no notion how detestable I can be, how headstrong, how obstinate, how
shrewish
!’

He caught her into his arms, saying thickly: ‘Do not
you
say such things! My goddess, my queen!’

‘Oh, no, no, no!’

He raised his head, smiling a little crookedly down at her. ‘Do you dislike to hear yourself called so? There is nothing I would not do to please you, but you cannot help but be my goddess! You have been so these seven years!’

‘Only a goddess could dislike it! You see by that how wretchedly short of the mark I fall. I have a little honesty – enough to tell you
now
that you must not worship me.’

He only laughed, and kissed her again. She protested no more, too much a woman not to be deeply moved by such idolatry, and awed by the constancy which, though it might have been to a false image, could not be doubted.

It was not long before he was saying to her much of what he had previously said to Fanny, anxiously laying his circumstances before her, and dwelling so particularly on the disparity between them of rank and fortune, that she interrupted presently to say with mingled amusement and impatience: ‘My dearest Hector, I wish you will not talk such nonsense! Why do you set so much store by rank? You are a gentleman, and I hope I am a gentlewoman, and as for fortune, we shall do very well!’

His expression changed; he said: ‘I wish to God you had no fortune!’

It was not to be expected that she should understand such a point of view, nor did she. In her world, a poorly dowered girl was an object for compassion. Even a love-match must depend upon the marriage-settlements, and wealthy and besotted indeed must be the suitor who allied himself to a portionless damsel. She looked her astonishment, and repeated, in a blank voice: ‘Wish I had no fortune?’

‘Yes! I had rather by far you were penniless, than – I daresay – so rich that my own fortune must seem the veriest pittance beside yours!’

Laughter sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh, you goose! Do you fear to be taken for a fortune-hunter? Of all the crack-brained ideas to take into your head! No, indeed, Hector, this is being foolish beyond permission!’

‘I don’t know that I care so much for that – though it is what people will say! – but I must support my wife, not live upon
her
fortune! Serena, surely you must understand this!’

It seemed to her absurdly romantic, but she only said quizzingly: ‘Was this thought in your head seven years ago?’

‘Seven years ago,’ he replied gravely, ‘your father was alive, and you were not sole mistress of your fortune. If I thought about the matter at all – but you must remember that I was
then
no more than a green boy! – I imagine I must have supposed that Lord Spenborough, if he countenanced the match, would settle on you a sum comparable to my own means.’

‘Or have cut me off without a penny?’ she enquired, amused.

‘Or have done that,’ he agreed, perfectly seriously.

She perceived that he was in earnest, but she could not help saying, with a gurgle of laughter: ‘It is too bad that you cannot enact the rôle of Cophetua! I must always possess an independence, which cannot be wrested from me. But take heart! It is by no means certain that I shall ever have more than that. Are you prepared to take me with my wretched seven hundred pounds a year, my ridiculous fortune-hunter? I warn you, it may well be no more!’

‘Are you in earnest?’ he asked, his brow lightening. ‘Lady Spenborough said something about your fortune’s being oddly tied-up, but no more than that. Tell me!’

‘I will, but if you mean to take it as a piece of excellent good news we are likely to fall out!’ she warned him. ‘Nothing was ever more infamous! My dear but misguided papa left my fortune – all but what I have from my mother – to Rotherham, in trust for me, with the proviso that he was to allow me no more than the pin-money I had always been given, until I was married – with, mark you! his lordship’s consent and approval! In the event of my marrying without that august approval, I may, I suppose, kiss my fingers to my inheritance!’

He was staggered, and his first thoughts agreed exactly with her own. ‘
What?
You must win Rotherham’s consent? Good God, I never in my life heard of anything so iniquitous!’

‘Just so!’ said Serena, with immense cordiality. ‘I hope you will perceive that I was not to be blamed for flying into the worst passion of my career when
that
clause was read to me!’

‘I do not wonder at it! Rotherham, of all men alive! Pardon me, but the indelicacy of such a provision, the – But I must be silent on that head!’

‘Abominable, wasn’t it? I am heartily of your opinion!’

He sat for a moment or two, with his lips tightly compressed, but as other thoughts came into his mind, his face relaxed, and he presently exclaimed: ‘Then if he should refuse his consent, you will have no more than will serve for your gowns, and – and such fripperies!’

‘Very true but you need not say it as though you were glad of it!’

‘I am glad of it!’

‘Well, so am not I!’ retorted Serena tartly.

‘Serena, all I have is yours to do with as you please!’ he said imploringly.

She was touched, but a strong vein of common sense made her say: ‘I am very much obliged to you, but what if I should please to spend all you have upon my gowns and such fripperies? My dear, that is very fine talking, but it won’t do! Besides, the very thought of Ivo’s holding my pursestrings to the day of his death, or mine, is enough to send me into strong convulsions! He shall not do it! And now I come to think of it, I believe he will not be able to. He told me himself that if he withheld his consent unreasonably I might be able to break the Trust. Hector, if you do not instantly wipe from your face that disappointed look, you will have a taste of my temper, and so I warn you!’

He smiled, but said with quiet confidence: ‘Rotherham will never give his consent to your marrying
me
!’

‘We shall see!’

‘And nothing –
nothing!
would prevail upon me to seek it!’ said the Major, with suppressed violence.

‘Oh, you need not! That at least was not stipulated in Papa’s Will! I shall inform him myself of my betrothal – but that will not be until I am out of mourning, in the autumn.’

‘The autumn!’ He sounded dismayed, but recollected himself immediately, and said: ‘You are very right! My own feelings – But it would be quite improper for such an announcement to be made until you are out of black gloves!’

She stretched out her hand to lay it upon one of his. ‘Well, I think it would, Hector. In general, I set little store by the proprieties, but in such a case as this – oh, every feeling would be offended! In private we are engaged, but the world shall not know it until October.’

He lifted the hand to his lips. ‘You are the only judge: I shall be ruled entirely by your wishes, my queen!’

The engaged couple, neither of whom wasted a moment’s thought on what must be the inevitable conclusions arrived at by the interested, admitted only two persons into the secret. One was Fanny, and the other Mrs Kirkby. The Major could not be happy until he had made Serena known to his mother; and since she was reluctant to appear in any way neglectful, it was not long before she was climbing the hill to Lansdown Crescent, escorted by her handsome cavalier.

Had the expedition been left to the Major’s management, Serena would have been carried in a sedan-chair, his rooted conviction that no female was capable of exertion making it quite shocking to him to think of her undertaking so strenuous a walk. But Serena had other ideas. ‘What, stuff myself into a chair in such bright May weather? Not for the world!’ she declared.

‘Your carriage, then? My mother goes out so seldom that she has not thought it worth while to keep hers in Bath, or I would –’

‘My dear Hector,’ she interrupted him, ‘you cannot in all seriousness suppose that I would have my own or your mother’s horses put to merely to struggle up that steep hill!’

‘No, which is why I suggested you should hire a chair. I am afraid you will be tired.’

‘On the contrary, I shall enjoy the walk. I feel in Bath as though I were hobbled. Only tell me the exact direction of Mrs Kirkby’s house, and I will engage to present myself punctually, and in no need of hartshorn to revive me!’

He smiled, but said: ‘I shall fetch you, of course.’

‘Well, that will be very agreeable, but I beg you won’t put yourself to the trouble if your reason is that you fear for my safety in this excessively respectable town!’

‘Not your
safety
, precisely, but I know that you won’t take your maid, and I own I cannot like you to go out alone.’

‘You would be surprised if you guessed how very well able I am to take care of myself. I was done with young ladyhood some years ago. What is more, my dear, times have changed a trifle since you lived in England before. In London, I might gratify you by taking my maid with me – though it is much more likely that I should prefer to go in my carriage, and alone! – but in Bath it is quite unnecessary.’

‘Nevertheless I hope you will allow me to be your escort.’

‘Indeed, I shall be glad of your company,’ she responded, not choosing to argue the point further, and trusting that time would dull the edge of a solicitude she found a little oppressive.

Certainly the pace she set when they walked up to Lansdown Crescent did not encourage him to suppose that she was less healthy than she looked. She had never lost the rather mannish stride she had acquired in youth, when, to the disapproval of most of her relations, she had been reared more as a boy than as a girl, and she could never shorten it to suit Fanny’s demure steps. A walk with Fanny was to Serena a form of dawdling, which she detested; it was a real pleasure to her to be pacing along beside a man again. She would not take the Major’s arm, but went up the hill at a swinging rate, and exclaimed, when she was obliged to hold her hat on against the wind: ‘Ah, this is famous! One can breathe up here! I wished we might have found a house in Camden Place, or the Royal Crescent, but there were none to be hired that Lybster thought eligible.’

‘I myself prefer the heights,’ he admitted, ‘but there’s no doubt Laura Place is a more convenient situation.’

‘Oh, yes! And Fanny would not have liked the hill,’ she agreed cheerfully. A few minutes later she was making the acquaintance of her future mother-in-law.

Mrs Kirkby, a valetudinarian of retiring habits, and a timid disposition, was quite overpowered by her visitor. She had been flustered at the outset by the intelligence that her only remaining son was betrothed to a lady of title whose various exploits were known even to her. An inveterate reader of the social columns in the journals, she could have told the Major how many parties the Lady Serena had graced with her presence, what was the colour of her dashing phaeton, how many times she had been seen in Hyde Park, mounted on her long-tailed gray, what she had worn at various Drawing-rooms, in whose company she had visited the paddock at Doncaster, and a great many other items of similar interest. Nor was she ignorant of the Lady Serena’s predilection for waltzing, and quadrilles; while as for the Lady Serena’s previous engagement, so scandalously terminated within so short a distance from the wedding-day, she had marvelled at it, and shaken her head at it, and moralized over it to all her acquaintance. It had therefore come as a severe shock to her to learn that her son was proposing to ally himself to a lady demonstrably unsuited to a quiet Kentish manor and she had not been able to forbear asking him, in a quavering voice: ‘Oh, Hector, but is she not very
fast
?’

‘She is an angel!’ he had replied radiantly.

Mrs Kirkby did not think that Serena looked like an angel. Angels, in her view, were ethereal creatures, and there was nothing at all ethereal about Serena. She was a tall and beautiful young woman of fashion, the picture of vigorous health, and so full of vitality that half an hour in her company left the invalid a prey to headache, palpitations, and nervous spasms. It was not, as Mrs Kirkby faintly assured her elderly companion, that she was loud-voiced, for her voice was particularly musical. It was not that she was talkative, or assertive, or fidgety, for she was none of these things. In fact, Mrs Kirkby had been unable to detect faults; what had prostrated her were the Lady Serena’s virtues. ‘Anyone can see,’ she said, between sniffs at her vinaigrette, ‘that she has never moved in any but the first circles! Her manners have that well-bred ease that
shows
she has been used to act as hostess to every sort of person, from Royalty, I daresay, to commoners! Nothing could have been more perfect than her bearing towards me, and what I have ever done to deserve to have such a daughter-in-law thrust upon me I’m sure I don’t know!’

Happily, the Major was far too dazzled by his goddess’s brilliant good-looks to notice any lack of enthusiasm in his mother’s demeanour. It seemed to him that Serena brought light into a sunless room, and it never occurred to him that anyone could find it too strong. So great was his certainty that no one could set eyes on Serena without being captivated, and so complete was his absorption, that he accepted at face value all his mother’s acquiescent answers to the eager questions he later put to her. Had she ever seen such striking beauty? No, indeed, she had not. So much countenance, such a complexion! Yes, indeed! Those eyes, too! he had known she could not choose but to be fascinated by them. So changeable, and expressive, and the curve of the lids above them giving them that smiling look! Very true: most remarkable! She must have been pleased, he dared swear, with the perfection of her manners, so easy, so polished, and yet so unaffected! Exactly so! And the grace of her every movement! Oh, yes! most graceful! He did not know how it was, for she never tried to dominate her company, but when she came into a room, her personality seemed to fill it: had his mother been conscious of it? Most conscious of it! Would she think him fanciful if he told her that it seemed to him as though those glorious eyes had some power of witchcraft? He thought they cast a spell over any one on whom they rested! Yes, indeed! Mrs Kirkby (in a failing voice) thought so too.

So the Major was able to tell Serena, in all good faith, that his mother was in transports over her; and such was his infatuation that he would have found nothing to cavil at in Mrs Kirkby’s subsequent assertion, to the sympathetic Miss Murthly, that the Lady Serena had bewitched her son.

In his saner moments, slight doubts of his mother’s approval of all Serena’s actions did cross the Major’s mind; and, without being precisely aware of it, he was glad that the seclusion in which she lived made it unlikely that certain freaks would come to her ears. Although herself of respectable lineage, she had never moved in the highest circle of society, and possibly might not appreciate that the code of conduct obtaining there was less strict than any to which she had been accustomed. Great ladies permitted themselves more licence than was the rule amongst the lesser gentry. Their manners were more free; they expressed themselves in language shocking to the old-fashioned; secure in birth and rank, they cared little for appearances, and were far less concerned with the proprieties than were more obscure persons. When he had first encountered Serena, the Major had been struck by the marked difference which existed between her relations with the elders of her family, and those that were the rule in his own family. That she should have lived on terms of unceremonious equality with an indulgent father was not perhaps surprising; but the extremely frank style of her conversations with her formidable aunt had never ceased to astonish him. There was no lack of ceremony about the Lady Theresa Eaglesham, but while, on the one hand, she had not hesitated to censure conduct which she considered unbecoming in her niece, on the other, she had not scrupled to gossip with her, as with a contemporary. Young Hector Kirkby, seven years earlier, had been quite unable to picture any of his aunts informing his sister that Lady M… was big with child, and the wits laying bets on the probable paternity of the unborn infant. Major Hector Kirkby, no longer a green boy, devoutly trusted that Serena would never, in the future, regale these prim spinsters with extracts from Lady Theresa’s singularly unrestricted letters. He even refrained from repeating to his mother a very good story Lady Theresa had sent her niece about the Royal Wedding. ‘
Rumour has it
,’ wrote Lady Theresa, ‘
that the ceremony went off well, except for an
entrave
at the end, when the P. Charlotte was kept waiting for half an hour in the carriage, while Leopold hunted high and low for his greatcoat, which no one could find. The P. Regent
, très benin
until then, hearing the cause of the delay, burst out with “D… his greatcoat!” It is now believed, by the by, that he is
not
dropsical…
’

No: decidedly that was not a story for Mrs Kirkby, quite as inveterate an admirer of Royalty as Fanny.

Nor did the Major inform his parent that her future daughter-in-law, riding out of Bath in his company before breakfast, dispensed with a chaperon on these expeditions. Mrs Kirkby would have been profoundly shocked, and he was himself doubtful of the propriety of it. But Serena laughed at him, accusing him of being frightened of all the quizzy people in Bath, and he stifled his qualms. It was a delight to be alone with her, an agony to be powerless to check her intrepidity. She would brook no hand upon her bridle: he had learnt that, when, in actual fact, he had caught it above the bit, instinctively, when her mare had reared. The white fury in her face had startled him; her eyes were daggers, and the virago-note sounded in her voice when she shot at him, from between clenched teeth: ‘Take your hand from my rein!’ The dangerous moment passed; his hand had dropped; she got the mare under control, and said quite gently: ‘You must never do so again, Hector. Yes, yes, I understand, but when I cannot manage my horses I will sell them, and take to tatting instead!’

He thought her often reckless in the fences she would ride at; all she said, when he expostulated, was: ‘Don’t be afraid! I never overface my horses. The last time I did so I was twelve, and Papa laid his hunting-crop across my shoulders: an effective cure!’

He said ruefully: ‘Can’t you tell me some other way I might be able to check your mad career?’

‘Alas, none!’ she laughed.

He had nightmarish visions of seeing her lying with a broken neck beside some rasper; and, to make it worse, Fanny said to him, with a trustful smile: ‘It is so comfortable to know you are with Serena, when she rides out, Major Kirkby! I know she is a splendid horsewoman, but I can never be easy when she has only Fobbing with her, because she is what the hunting people call a
bruising
rider, and for all Fobbing has been her groom since she was a little girl she never will mind him!’

‘I wish to God I might induce her to mind
me
!’ he ejaculated. ‘But she will not, Lady Spenborough, and when I begged her to consider what must be
my
position if she should take a bad toss when in my care, she would do nothing but laugh, and advise me to ride off the instant I saw her fall, and swear I was never with her!’

‘Oh, dear!’ she sighed. She saw that he was really worried, and added soothingly: ‘Never mind! I daresay we are both of us too anxious. Lord Spenborough, you know, was used to tell me there was no need for me to tease myself over her.
He
never did so! If he thought she had been reckless, he sometimes swore at her, but I don’t think he was ever really
alarmed
!’

‘That, ma’am, I could not do!’

‘Oh, no! I know you never would! Though I daresay she would not be in the least offended if you did,’ said Fanny reflectively.

The bright May weather was making Serena increasingly impatient of the quiet life she was obliged to lead. At this time, in any other year, she would have been in the thick of the London season, cramming a dozen engagements into a single day. She did not wish herself in London, and would have recoiled from the thought of breakfasts and balls, but Bath provided no outlet for her overflowing energy. Fanny was content to visit the Pump Room each weekday and the Laura Chapel each Sunday, and found a stroll along the fashionable promenades exercise enough for her constitution; Serena could scarcely endure the unvarying pattern of her days, and felt herself caged in so small a town. She said that Bath was stifling in warm weather, sent to Milverley for her phaeton, and commanded the Major to escort her on a tour of the livery stables of Bath, in search of a pair of job horses fit for her to drive.

He was very willing, fully sympathizing with her desire to escape from the confinement of the town, and realizing that to be driven in a barouche by Fanny’s staid coachman could only bore her. He thought that the phaeton would provide both ladies with an agreeable and unexceptionable amusement. That was before he saw it. But the vehicle which arrived in Bath was not the safe and comfortable phaeton he had expected to see. Serena had omitted to mention the fact that hers was a high-perch phaeton; and when he set eyes on it, and saw the frail body hung directly over the front axle, its bottom fully five feet from the ground, he gave an exclamation of dismay. ‘Serena! You don’t mean to drive yourself in
that
?’