Джорджетт Хейер - The Nonesuch

“You will not join her at the infirmary!” said Tiffany. “I wish to go home, and it is your duty to stay with me, and if you don’t do what I want I’ll tell my aunt, and have you turned off!”

“Without a character!” nodded Miss Trent, tucking a hand in her arm, and firmly propelling her down the flagway. “And if I were to take you home, abandoning Miss Chartley, her mama would no doubt demand my instant dismissal too, so in either event I must be totally ruined. I am quite sick with apprehension! But if I were you, Tiffany, I would take care how I exposed myself!”

“How I exposed myself?” gasped Tiffany. “When it was that odious Patience Chartley, with her insinuating ways, behaving like a hoyden, just to make everyone think her a heroine—”

“Do, Tiffany, strive for a little conduct!” interrupted Miss Trent. “I am not going to bandy words with you in public, so you may as well keep your tongue.”

This, however, the outraged beauty was far too angry to do, delivering herself all the way to the King’s Arms of a tirade which was as comprehensive as it was absurd. Miss Trent refused to be goaded into retort, but she could willingly have slapped her spoilt charge. She did indeed point out to her that she was attracting the undesirable notice of such passers-by who were privileged to overhear scraps of her diatribe; but although Tiffany lowered her voice she continued to scold.

It might have been supposed that the violence of her emotions would have exhausted her by the time the King’s Arms was reached; but she was made of resilient fibre, and the recital of her wrongs and the condemnation of every one of her companions were merely the prelude to a storm which, as experience had taught Miss Trent, would involve her, when it broke, in embarrassment, startle everyone within earshot, and culminate in a fit of shattering hysterics. She knew it to be useless to reason with Tiffany; so when they reached the posting-house she almost dragged her into the parlour which Lindeth had hired for the day, and left her there, saying mendaciously that she was going to procure some hartshorn. Tiffany had already begun to cry in an ominously gusty way, but Miss Trent did not believe that she would work herself into hysterics if no one was present to be shocked or distressed by her passion. She was quite capable, of course, of doing something outrageous when she had lashed herself into one of these fits; but Miss Trent, after rapidly reviewing the circumstances, thought that the worst she could find to do in the middle of Leeds would be to order her aunt’s coachman to put the horses to, and to have herself driven back to Staples immediately. When John-Coachman refused to obey this order, as he certainly would, there would really be nothing left for her to do but to smash the china ornaments on the mantelpiece.

Miss Trent might regard the situation in this practical light; but she was much more worried than she had allowed Tiffany to suspect. Her first duty was undoubtedly to that intransigent damsel, and by no stretch of the imagination could this duty be thought to include taking her into the back-slums of the town; but when Mrs Chartley had permitted her daughter to join the expedition she had done so in the belief that she would be respectably chaperoned. Neither she nor Miss Trent, of course, could have foreseen the accident which had made this double chaperonage so difficult; but that she would think it extremely reprehensible of Miss Trent to leave Patience to the sole protection and escort of Lord Lindeth was beyond doubt, or (in Miss Trent’s own opinion) censure. Somehow the two conflicting duties must be reconciled. Try as she would, Miss Trent could hit upon no better solution to the problem than to enlist Sir Waldo’s support, just as Lindeth had suggested. If he could be induced to keep Tiffany amused until Patience’s protégé had been restored to his parents the unfortunate episode might yet end happily.

So it was not to procure hartshorn for Tiffany that Miss Trent hurriedly left the parlour, but to make all speed to the infirmary, whence she meant to send Lindeth off post-haste to find his cousin.

In the event. Sir Waldo entered the King’s Arms just as she was about to leave the house. Never had she been more thankful, nor more relieved! She exclaimed impulsively: “Oh, how glad I am to see you! Sir Waldo, you are the one person who may be able to help me in this fix, and I do beg that you will!”

“You may be sure that I will,” he replied, looking a little startled, but maintaining his calm. “What fix have you fallen into, and what must I do to extricate you from it?”

She gave a shaky laugh. “Oh, dear! I must seem to you to have flown into alt! I beg your pardon! It wasn’t precisely I who fell into a fix, but—”

“Just a moment!” he interrupted. “Do you know that there is blood on your dress?”

She cast a cursory glance down her own person. “Is there? Yes, I see—but it’s of no consequence!”

“Well, as you don’t appear to have sustained any injury, I’ll accept your word for that,” he said. “Whose blood is it?”

“I don’t know—I mean, I don’t know what his name is! A little boy—but I must tell you how it all happened!”

“Do!” he invited.

As concisely as she could, she put him in possession of the facts, making no attempt to conceal from him that it was not the accident which had thrown her into disorder, but Tiffany’s obstructive behaviour. “I know it must seem incredible that she should fly into one of her rages at such a moment,” she said earnestly, “but you know what she is!”

“Of course I do! It is exactly what I should have expected of her. How could it be otherwise when the role of heroine in this stirring drama was snatched from her, and she found herself a mere spectator? Where is she now?”

“Upstairs, in the parlour where we ate luncheon. That was the reason, of course, and I don’t know what enraged her the more: your cousin paying no heed to her, or that absurd Mr Baldock saying he didn’t see what cause she had to faint! Yes, it’s all very well for you to laugh, sir! I own, I should think it very funny myself if it didn’t concern me so nearly. Do you see now what a fix I’m in? I can neither leave Tiffany alone here for heaven only knows how long, nor can I abandon Miss Chartley! I never was more distracted! But your cousin said that you were the man to help us in this situation, and, although it surprised me a little that he should say so, I perceived immediately that he was perfectly right! Sir Waldo, will you be so very obliging as to stay with Tiffany—divert her, you know!—while I go with Patience to wherever the boy lives?”

“I don’t think that was quite what Lindeth meant,” he said dryly, “but certainly I’ll take charge of Tiffany. Shall I find her indulging in a fit of hysterics?”

“No, for I came away before she had time to throw herself into one. There’s no sense in having hysterics, you know, if one is quite by oneself.”

He smiled, but said: “It’s to be hoped that she doesn’t have them for my edification, for I should be quite at a loss to know what to do!”

“She won’t,” said Miss Trent confidently. “Just flatter her—as you very well do know how to do!”

“I think that the best service I can render you will be to drive her back to Staples,” he said. “You need not then be anxious on her account—I hope!”

The worried crease was smoothed from her brow. She said gratefully: “No, indeed! You know I shouldn’t be! And there can be no objection—in an open carriage, and with your groom behind!”

“Yes, those circumstances will compel me to restrain any inclination I may feel to make violent love to her, won’t they?” he agreed affably.

She laughed. “Yes—if that was what I had meant to say, which it was not! I know very well you don’t feel any such inclination!”

“I imagine you might! Now, I have just one thing to say before we part, ma’am! From what you have told me, this urchin hails from the slums: either in the eastern part of the town, where the dyeing-houses and most of the manufactories are situated, or on the south bank of the river.”

“I am afraid so. You are going to say that I shouldn’t permit Miss Chartley to go into such districts. I know it, but I don’t think I can prevent her.”

“No, I am not going to say that. But you must promise me you won’t leave the carriage, Miss Trent! So far as I am aware there is no epidemic disease rife there at the moment, but most of the dwellings are little better than hovels, and there is a degree of squalor which makes it excessively imprudent for you—or Miss Chartley, of course—to enter them.”

She looked wonderingly at him. “I have never been in the poorer part of the town. Have you, then?”

“Yes, I have, and you may believe that I know what I am saying. Have I your word?”

“Of course: I would not for the world expose Miss Chartley to the least risk!”

“Good girl!” he said, smiling at her. “Tell Julian I’ve left you in his charge—and that I’ve removed the worst of your embarrassments!”

He held out his hand, and, when she put hers into it, raised it to his lips, and lightly kissed her fingers.

Tiffany did not greet Sir Waldo with hysterics; but he found her weeping in an angry, uncontrolled way which warned him that a more ticklish task lay before him than he had foreseen. Like a child suffering from over-excitement, she was as miserable as she was cross, and with the slightest encouragement she would have cast herself upon Sir Waldo’s chest, and sobbed out her woes into his shoulder. With considerable skill he managed to prevent this without adding to her sense of ill-usage, but he soon saw that it was useless—indeed, perilous—to attempt to bring her to reason. The story she poured out to him bore little resemblance to the unembroidered account furnished earlier by Miss Trent. Tiffany never consciously deviated from the truth, but since she saw everything only as it affected herself the truth was apt to become somewhat distorted. Anyone unacquainted with the facts would have supposed from her version of the accident that Patience, having first, and with incredible selfishness, dragged her companions all over the town in search of her own needs, had next set her cap at Lindeth in a way that would have been diverting had it not been so unbecoming; and finally, in her determination to attract attention to herself, had created a ridiculous scene by dashing into the road to perform a spectacular and quite unnecessary rescue. For her part, Tiffany was persuaded that the nasty boy had been in no danger at all, but Patience, of course, had put on all the airs of a heroine, quite deluding Lindeth, as well as Mr Baldock, who was a very low, vulgar person, with the most disgusting manners of anyone Tiffany had ever met.