Chapter 15

The Nonesuch had gone, and Miss Trent’s only desire was to reach the refuge of her bedchamber before her overcharged emotions broke their bonds. Sobs, crowding in her chest, threatened to suffocate her; tears, spilling over her eyelids, had to be brushed hastily aside; she crossed the hall blindly, and as she groped for the baluster-rail, setting her foot upon the first stair, Tiffany came tripping down, her good humour restored by the news that Sir Waldo had come to visit her.

“Oh, were you coming to find me?” she said blithely. “Totton sent a message up, so you need not have put yourself to that trouble, Ancilla dearest! Is he in the Green Saloon? I have had such a capital notion! Now that Mr Calver has taught me to drive so well, I mean to try if I can’t coax Sir Waldo to let me drive his chestnuts! Only think what a triumph it would be! Mr Calver says no female has ever driven any of his horses!”

It was surprising how swiftly the habit of years could reassert itself. Miss Trent was sick with misery, but her spirit responded automatically to the demands made upon it. She had thought that any attempt to speak must result in a burst of tears, but she heard her own voice say, without a tremor: “He has gone. He came only to discover if we had yet had news of our travellers, and would not stay.”

“Would not stay!” Tiffany’s expression changed ludicrously. “When I particularly wished to see him!”

“I expect he would have done so had he known that,” said Ancilla pacifically.

“You must have known it! It is too bad of you! I believe you sent him away on purpose to spite me!” said Tiffany, pettishly, but without conviction. “Now what is there for me to do?”

Miss Trent pulled herself together. Wisely rejecting such ideas as first occurred to her, which embraced a little much-needed practice on the pianoforte, a sketching expedition, and an hour devoted to the study of the French tongue, she sought in vain for distractions likely to find favour with a damsel determined to pout at every suggestion made to her. Fortunately, an interruption came just in time to save her temper. A carriage drove up to the door, and presently disgorged Elizabeth Colebatch, who came in to beg that Tiffany would accompany her and her mama to Harrogate, where Lady Colebatch was going to consult her favourite practitioner. Elizabeth, still faithful in her allegiance, eagerly described to Tiffany a programme exactly calculated to appeal to her. Besides a survey of the several expensive shops which had sprung up in the town, it included a walk down the New Promenade, and a visit to Hargroves’ Library, which was the most fashionable lounge in either High or Low Harrogate, and necessitated an instant change of raiment for Tiffany, including the unearthing from a bandbox, where it reposed in a mountain of tissue-paper, of her very best hat. Since the season was in full swing, and all the inns and boarding-houses bursting with company, it was safe to assume that the progress through the town of two modish young ladies, one of whom was a striking redhead, and the other a dazzling brunette, would attract exactly the kind of notice most deprecated by Tiffany’s Aunt Burford; but as Miss Trent knew that Mrs Underhill would regard Lady Colebatch’s casual chaperonage as a guarantee of propriety she did not feel it incumbent on her to enter a protest. But she did feel it incumbent on her to not to be backward in attention to Lady Colebatch; so, much as she longed for solitude, she went out to beg her to come into the house while Tiffany arrayed herself in her finest feathers. Lady Colebatch declined this, but invited Miss Trent to step into the carriage instead, to indulge in a comfortable coze. Miss Trent bore her part in this with mechanical civility; but little though she relished it, it proved beneficial, in that by the time Elizabeth and Tiffany came out to take their places in the carriage her disordered nerves had grown steadier, and the impulse to sob her heart out had left her.

Her rejected suitor, though in no danger of succumbing to even the mildest fit of hysterics, would also have been glad to have been granted an interval of solitude; but hardly had he entered the book-room at Broom Hall than he was joined by his younger cousin, who came in, asking, as he shut the door: “Are you busy, Waldo? Because, if you’re not, there’s something I want to say to you. But not if it isn’t quite convenient!” he added hastily, perceiving the crease between Sir Waldo’s brows.

Mastering the impulse to tell Lord Lindeth that it was extremely inconvenient, Sir Waldo said: “No, I’m not busy. Come and sit down, and tell me all about it!”

The tone was encouraging, and even more so the faint smile in his eyes. It was reflected, a little shyly, in his lordship’s innocent orbs. He said simply, but with a rising colour: “I daresay you know—don’t you?”

“Well, I have an inkling!” admitted Sir Waldo.

“I thought very likely you had guessed. But I wanted to tell you—and to ask your advice!”

“Ask my advice?” Sir Waldo’s brows rose. “Good God, Julian, if you want my advice on whether or not you should offer for Miss Chartley, I can only say that until my advice or my opinion are matters of complete indifference to you—”

“Oh, not that!”interrupted Julian impatiently. “I should hope I knew my own mind without your advice, or anyone’s! As for your opinion—” He paused, considering, and then said, with a disarmingly apologetic smile: “Well, I do care for that, but—but not very much!”

“Very right and proper!” approved Sir Waldo.

“Now you’re roasting me! I wish you won’t: this is serious,Waldo!”

“I’m not roasting you. Why do you need my advice?”

“Well ...” Julian clasped his hands between his knees, and frowningly regarded them. “The thing is ... Waldo, when we first came here I daresay you may have guessed—well, I told you, didn’t I?—that I was pretty well bowled out by Tiffany Wield.” He glanced up, crookedly smiling. “You’ll say I made a cake of myself, and I suppose I did.”

“Not such a cake that you offered for her hand.”

Julian looked at him, suddenly surprised. “Do you know, Waldo, I never thought of marriage?” he said naively. “I hadn’t considered it before, but now you’ve mentioned it I don’t think that I ever thought of it until I met Miss Chartley. In fact, I never thought about the future at all. But since I’ve come to know Patience, naturally, I’ve done so, because I wish to spend the rest of my life with her. And, what’s more, I’m going to!” he stated, his jaw hardening.

“My blessing on the alliance: she will make you an excellent wife! But wherein do you need my advice? Or are you merely trying to wheedle me into breaking the news to your mama?”

“No, of course not! I shall tell her myself. Though it would be helpful if you supported me,”he added, after a reflective moment.

“I will.”

Julian smiled gratefully at him. “Yes. I know: you are such a right one, Waldo!”

“Spare my blushes! And my advice?”

“Well, that’s the only thing that has me in a worry!” disclosed his lordship. “I want to come to the point, and although the Chartleys have been as kind and affable as they could be—not hinting me away, or anything of that nature!—I can’t but wonder whether it may not be too soon to ask the Rector for permission to propose to Patience! I mean, if he thought I was a regular squire of dames, because I dangled after Miss Wield, he’d be bound to send me packing—and then it would be all holiday with me!”

“I hardly think that he will judge you quite as harshly as that,” replied Sir Waldo, with admirable gravity. “After all, you are not entangled with Tiffany, are you?”

“Oh, no!” Julian assured him. “Nothing of that sort! In fact, she brushed me off after what happened in Leeds, so I don’t think I need feel myself in any way bound to her, do you?” He chuckled. “Laurie cut me out! I was never more glad of anything! Well, it just shows you, doesn’t it? Only think of being grateful to Laurie! Lord! But tell me, Waldo! What should I do?”

Sir Waldo, whose private opinion was that the Rector must be living in the hourly expectation of receiving a declaration from Lord Lindeth, had no hesitation in answering this appeal. He recommended his anxious young cousin to make known his intentions at the earliest opportunity, very handsomely offering, at the same time, to reassure the Rector, if he should be misled into believing that his daughter’s suitor was a hardened roué. Julian grinned appreciatively at this; and for the following half-hour bored Sir Waldo very much by expatiating at length on Miss Chartley’s numerous virtues.

He departed at last, but his place was taken within ten minutes by Laurence, who came in, and stood irresolutely on the threshold, eyeing his cousin in some doubt.

Sir Waldo had sat down at the desk. There were several papers spread on it, but he did not seem to be at work on them. His hands were clasped on top of the pile, and his eyes were frowning at the wall in front of him. His expression was unusually grim, and it did not lighten when he turned his head to look at Laurence. Rather, it hardened. “Well?”

If his demeanour had not warned Laurence already that he had chosen an inauspicious moment to seek him out, the uncompromising tone in which this one word was uttered must have done so. Laurence was still holding the door, and he backed himself out of the room, saying hurriedly, as he drew the door to upon himself: “Oh, nothing! I only—Beg pardon! Didn’t know you was busy! Some other time!”