Miss Massingham’s face fell. The notice that Sir Charles Wainfleet, wealthiest of baronets, had at last fulfilled the expectations of the impoverished Earl of Alford, by offering for the hand of the Lady Almeria Spalding, eldest daughter of this improvident peer, had appeared some weeks previously in the Gazette, and she recognized that Lady Almeria’s claims must take precedence of her niece’s.
It was at this point that Sir Charles shook off his air of detachment. ‘Almeria is going to Bath?’ he said.
‘Yes, is it not a happy chance? I was about to tell you of it when Louisa was announced.’
‘On the contrary!’ he returned. ‘It is unfortunate that I should not have been apprized of this circumstance earlier. It so happens that I have engagements in town which I must not break. It will not be in my power, ma’am, to remain in Bath above a couple of nights.’
‘You cannot mean to do such an uncivil thing as to leave Bath before Almeria arrives!’ cried his mother. ‘Good God, you would very likely meet her on the road!’
‘Were I to delay my departure until after her arrival,’ said Sir Charles glibly, ‘I dare say I should find it impossible to tear myself away. I could not reconcile it with my conscience to disoblige so old a friend as the General. I shall be happy, Miss Massingham, to afford your niece all the protection of which I am capable.’
It was impossible for Lady Wainfleet to say more. Miss Massingham was already overwhelming Sir Charles with her gratitude. She said that she could not thank him enough, and she was still thanking him when he escorted her out to her carriage. But when he strolled back to the drawing-room, Lady Wainfleet begged him to consider before deciding to leave Bath so soon. ‘Now that Almeria is to go there –’
‘That circumstance, Mama, did decide me,’ interrupted Sir Charles. ‘Within a few months I shall be obliged to spend the rest of my life in Almeria’s company. Allow me to enjoy what is left to me of my liberty!’
‘Charles!’ she faltered. ‘Oh, dear! if I had thought that you would dislike it so much I would never – Not that I have the least power to force you into a marriage you don’t like, only it has been an understood thing for so many years, and it is not as though you had ever a tendre for another eligible lady, and you are past thirty now, so that –’
‘Oh yes, yes, ma’am!’ he said impatiently. ‘It is high time that I settled down! I have no doubt that Almeria will do me great credit. We were clearly made for one another – but I shall not spend Christmas in Bath!’
2
Eight days later, having sustained an interview with two genteel spinsters in mittens and mob-caps, who were much flustered to find their parlour invaded by a large and disturbingly handsome gentleman, wearing a drab driving-coat with no fewer than sixteen shoulder-capes, Sir Charles made the acquaintance of his youthful charge. He beheld a demure schoolgirl, attired in a plain pelisse, and with a close bonnet almost entirely concealing her braided locks. She stood in meek silence while Miss Titterstone assured Sir Charles that dear Anne would be no trouble to him. Miss Maria, endorsing this statement, added, with rather odd anxiety, that she knew Anne would behave just as she ought. Both ladies seemed to derive consolation from the presence of Mrs Fitton, who all the while stood beaming fondly upon her nurseling.
Sir Charles, amused, wondered whether the good ladies suspected him of cherishing improper designs towards a chit of a schoolgirl in the most unbecoming hat and pelisse he had ever seen. Their evident uneasiness seemed to him absurd.
Farewells having been spoken, the travellers went out into the Square, where two vehicles stood waiting. One was a post-chaise and pair; the other a sporting curricle. Miss Massingham’s large grey eyes took due note of this equipage, but she made no remark. Only, as Sir Charles handed her up into the chaise, she said: ‘If you please, sir, would you be so very obliging as to permit me to stop for a few minutes at Madame Lucille’s, in Milsom Street?’
‘Certainly. I will direct your post-boy to drive there,’ he replied.
Upon arrival in Milsom Street, one glance at Madame Lucille’s establishment was enough to inform Sir Charles that Miss Massingham proposed to visit a mantua-maker. Assuring him that she would not keep him waiting for very long, she disappeared into the shop, followed by Mrs Fitton, whose smile, Sir Charles noticed, had given place to a look of decided anxiety.
Time passed. Sir Charles drew out his watch, and frowned. Speenhamland, where rooms for the night had been bespoken, was fully fifty-five miles distant, and the start of the journey had already been delayed by the chattiness of the Misses Titterstone. The horses were on the fret. Sir Charles walked them to the top of the street, and back again. When he had repeated this exercise some half a dozen times, there was a sparkle in his eye which made his groom thankful that it was the young lady and not himself who was keeping Sir Charles waiting.
At the end of another twenty minutes there erupted from the shop a vision in whom Sir Charles with difficulty recognized Miss Anne Massingham. Not only was she now arrayed in a crimson velvet pelisse, but she had set upon her head an all-too dashing hat, whose huge, upstanding poke-front was lined with gathered silk, and whose high crown was embellished with a plume of curled ostrich feathers. This confection was secured by broad satin ribbons, tied in a jaunty bow under one ear; and it displayed to advantage Miss Massingham’s dark curls, now released from bondage, and rioting frivolously. A tippet and muff completed this modish toilet; and she carried, with its forepaws drooping over the muff, a curly-tailed puppy of mixed parentage. This circumstance did not immediately strike Sir Charles, for his gaze was riveted to that preposterous hat.
‘Good God!’ he ejaculated. ‘My good child, you are not, I trust, proposing to travel to London in that bonnet?’
‘Yes, I am,’ asserted Miss Massingham. ‘It is the high kick of fashion!’
‘It is quite unsuited to a journey, and still more so to your years,’ said Sir Charles crushingly.
‘Fiddle!’ said Miss Massingham. ‘I am not a schoolgirl now, and if it had not been for Grandpapa’s illness I should have ceased to be one a year ago! I am nineteen, you know, and I have been saving all my money for months to buy just such a hat as this! You could not be so unkind as to forbid me to wear it!’
Sir Charles looked down into the pleading, upturned face; Sir Charles’s groom stared woodenly ahead. ‘What,’ demanded Sir Charles, turning upon the unhappy Mrs Fitton, ‘possessed you to let your mistress buy such a hat?’
‘Oh, don’t scold poor Fitton!’ begged Miss Massingham. ‘Indeed, she implored me not to!’
Sir Charles found himself quite unable to withstand the look of entreaty in those big eyes. A whimper from the creature in Miss Massingham’s arms provided him with a diversion. ‘How did you come by that animal?’ he asked sternly.
‘Is he not the dearest little dog? He came running into the shop, and Madame Lucille told me that her pug has had six puppies just like him! She let me buy this one very cheaply, because she is very desirous of disposing of them all.’
‘I imagine she might be,’ said Sir Charles, viewing the pup with disfavour. ‘However, it is no concern of mine, and we have wasted too much time already. If we are to reach Speenhamland in time for dinner we must make haste.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Miss Massingham blithely. ‘And may I ride with you in your curricle, Sir Charles?’ She read prohibition in his eye, and added coaxingly: ‘Just for a little way, may I? For your groom, you know, may easily go with Fitton in the chaise.’
Again Sir Charles found it impossible to withstand the entreaty in those eyes. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If you think you won’t be cold, you may jump up beside me.’
3
By the time the curricle had reached Bath Easton, Miss Massingham had begged Sir Charles to call her Nan, because, she said, everyone did so; and Sir Charles had reprimanded her for saying that her friends in Quee
n’s Square had greatly envied her her good fortune in being escorted to London by one who was well-known to be a buck of the first head.
‘A what?’ said Sir Charles.
‘Well, it is what Priscilla Gretton’s brother said, when she rallied him on the way he tied his neckcloth,’ explained Nan. ‘He said it was just how you tie yours, and that you were a buck of the first head.’
‘I am obliged to Mr Gretton for his approval,’ said Sir Charles, ‘and I dare say that when he has learnt to refrain alike from trying to copy my way with a neckcloth and from teaching cant phrases to schoolgirls he may do tolerably well.’
‘I can see that it is an expression I should not have used,’ said Nan knowledgeably. ‘Must I not call you a Nonpareil either, sir?’
He laughed. ‘If you wish! But why should you talk about me at all? Tell me about yourself!’
She was doubtful whether so limited a subject could interest him, but since she was of a confiding nature it was not long before she was chatting happily to him. When the horses were changed, there was very little about Miss Massingham that he did not know; and since he found her curious mixture of innocence and worldly wisdom something quite out of the common way he was not sorry that she spurned a suggestion that she should continue the journey in the chaise. She was not, she said, at all chilly; she had been wondering, on the contrary, whether she might perhaps be allowed to take the ribbons.
‘Certainly not!’ said Sir Charles.
‘You are such a famous whip yourself, sir, that you could very easily teach me to drive,’ argued Miss Massingham, in persuasive accents.
‘No doubt I could, but I shall not. I dislike being driven.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Massingham, damped. ‘I don’t mean to tease you, only it would be such a thing to boast of!’
He could not help laughing. ‘Absurd brat! Well – for half an hour, then, but no longer!’
‘Thank you!’ said Miss Massingham, her air of gentle melancholy vanishing.
When she was at last induced to give the reins back to her instructor, the Beckhampton Inn had been passed, and the chaise had long been out of sight. Sir Charles put his pair along at a spanking pace, and would no doubt have overtaken the chaise had his companion not announced suddenly that she was hungry. A glance at his watch showed him that it was past one o’clock. He said ruefully: ‘I should have stopped to give you a nuncheon rather than have let you take the ribbons.’
‘We could stop now, could we not, sir?’ said Miss Massingham hopefully.
‘If we do it must only be for a few minutes,’ he warned her.
She agreed readily to this; and as they were approaching Marlborough he drove to the Castle Inn, and commanded the waiter to bring some cold meat and fruit as speedily as possible. Miss Massingham and her puppy, whom she had christened Duke, in doubtful compliment to his Grace of Wellington, both made hearty meals, after which Miss Massingham, while Sir Charles settled the reckoning, took her pet for a run on the end of a blind-cord, which she abstracted from the coffee-room, and for which Sir Charles was called upon to pay. She said that she would walk along the broad village street, and that he might pick her up in the curricle. Ten minutes later he ran her to earth outside a bird-fancier’s shop, the centre of a small crowd of partisans and critics. Upon demand, he learned that Miss Massingham, discovering a number of songbirds cooped inside small wicker-cages, which were piled up outside the shop, had not only released the wretched prisoners, but had hotly harangued the fancier on the cruelty of his trade. It cost Sir Charles a sum grossly in excess of the birds’ worth, and the exercise of his prestige as an obvious member of the Quality, to extricate his charge from this imbroglio, and she was not in the least grateful to him for having done it. She censured his conduct in having given the man money instead of knocking him down. ‘Which I am persuaded you might have done, because Priscilla’s brother told us that you are a Pink of the Fancy,’ she said severely.
‘I shall be obliged to you,’ said Sir Charles, with asperity, ‘if you will refrain from repeating the extremely improper remarks made to you by Priscilla’s cub of a brother!’
‘Now you are vexed with me!’ said Nan.
‘Yes, for your conduct is disgraceful!’ said Sir Charles sternly.
‘I did not mean to do what you would not like,’ said Miss Massingham, in a small voice.
Sir Charles preserved an unbending silence for several minutes. It was then borne in upon him that Nan, having apparently lost her handkerchief, was wiping away large teardrops with a gloved finger. The result was not happy. Sir Charles, pulling up, produced his own handkerchief, took Nan’s chin in one hand, and with the other removed the disfiguring smudges. ‘There! Don’t cry, my child! Come, smile at me!’
She managed to obey this behest. He knew an impulse to kiss the face he had upturned, but he repressed it, released her chin, and drove on. By the time Froxfield was reached, he had succeeded in diverting her mind, and the rest of the way to Speenhamland might have been accomplished without incident had not Duke, who had been sleeping off his meal, awakened, and signified, in no uncertain manner, his wish to leave the curricle.
4
Pulling up beside a spinney, Sir Charles set down his passengers, adjuring Miss Massingham not to allow her disreputable pet to stray. Unfortunately, she had neglected to tie the cord round his neck again, and no sooner did he find himself on the ground than he dashed into the spinney, yapping joyfully. She ran after him, and was soon lost to sight. Sir Charles was left to study the sky, which was developing a leaden look which he did not like. When a quarter of an hour had passed, he alighted, patience at an end, led his horses into the spinney, tied the reins round a sapling, and strode off in search of the truants.
For several moments there was no response to his irate shouts, but suddenly he was checked by a hail. It came from quite near at hand, but it was disturbingly faint. Alarmed, he followed the direction of the cry, rounded a thicket, and came upon Miss Massingham, trying to raise herself from the ground. Beside her sat Duke, with his tongue lolling out.
‘Now what have you done?’ said Sir Charles, exasperated. Then he saw that Miss Massingham’s face was paper-white, and he went quickly up to her, and dropped on to one knee, saying in quite another voice: ‘My child! Are you hurt?’
Miss Massingham, leaning thankfully against his supporting arm, said: ‘I am so very sorry, sir! I didn’t perceive the rabbit-hole, and I tripped, and I think I must have d-done something to my ankle, because when I tried to stand up it hurt me so much that I f-fainted. Indeed, I did not mean to be troublesome again!’
‘No, of course you did not!’ he said soothingly. ‘Put your arm round my neck! I am going to carry you to the curricle, and then we’ll see what can be done.’
But although, when he had set her gently in her place, one glance at her ankle was enough to inform him that the first thing to be done was to remove her boot, a second glance, at her face, equally certainly informed him that to subject her to this added pain would cause her to faint again. He untethered the horses, and led them back on to the road, telling Nan curtly that he was going to drive her to Hungerford.
‘Duke!’ she uttered imploringly.
Sir Charles looked round impatiently, found Duke at his feet, and, grasping him by the scruff of his neck, handed him up to his mistress.
The short distance that separated them from Hungerford was covered in record time. Miss Massingham endured the anguish of the journey with a fortitude that touched her protector, even contriving to utter a small, gallant jest. Sir Charles, lifting her down, and carrying her into the Bear Inn, said: ‘There, my poor child! You will soon be easier, I promise! You are a good, brave girl!’
He then bore her in to the empty coffee-room, laid her on a settle, and, while the waiter hurried to summon the landlady, removed the boot from a fast-swelling foot. As
he had feared, Nan fainted. By the time she had recovered from this swoon, she had been established in a private parlour. She came round to find herself lying on a sofa, with a stout woman holding burnt feathers under her nose, and two chambermaids applying wet cloths to her ankle.
‘Ah!’ said Sir Charles bracingly. ‘That’s better! Come now, my child!’
Miss Massingham then felt herself raised, was commanded to open her mouth, and underwent the unpleasant experience of having a measure of neat brandy tilted down her throat. She choked, and burst into tears.
‘There, there!’ said Sir Charles, patting her in a comforting way. ‘Don’t cry! You will soon feel very much more the thing!’
Miss Massingham, a resilient girl, began to revive. The visit of the local surgeon, fetched by one of the ostlers after prolonged search, tried her endurance high, but as he pronounced that, although she had badly sprained her ankle, she had broken no bones, she soon took a more hopeful view of her situation, and was even able to think that she might very well be driven on to Speenhamland.
But this was now impossible. Not only was she in no state to be conveyed thirteen miles in an open curricle, but the short winter’s day had ended, and the snow had begun to fall. Sir Charles was obliged to disclose to his charge that she must remain at the Bear until the following morning.
‘To own the truth,’ confided Nan, ‘I am excessively glad of it. I am a great deal better, I assure you, but I would as lief not drive any farther for a little while.’