The Frost Fair (30 page)

But the more she thought about it, the sounder the match seemed. Arthur was, at bottom, a perfectly sensible man. His income was substantial and his character firm. And Trixie was probably attracted to him for the very reason that she resisted her brother—he would look after her and protect her. The difference would be, of course, that when she really wanted her own way, she would be able to twist poor Arthur round her little finger.

She smiled gleefully. What a marvelous solution to the problem! Even Geoffrey would have to agree that it was a wonderful match. And even though she hadn't suspected that the romance was brewing, the match
had
come to pass under her own roof, and she intended to take full credit for it. Now Geoffrey did have cause to be grateful to her!

Unless he found Trixie at the fair, snatched her away and dragged her home. Good Lord, that mustn't happen! She turned to Mortimer, grasped his hand and pulled him abruptly to a sitting position. “Mortimer, are you feeling well enough to get up?”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right at this moment.”

He touched his jaw gingerly. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Because, you see, I want you to take me to the fair.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Geoffrey climbed out of his carriage at the north end of Blackfriar's Bridge and gave his tiger instructions to stable the horses for two hours. He then turned and took a place among the numbers of people who lined the bridge from one end to the other to watch the scene below. It was an oddly colorfully sight that in some strange way moved him. The Frost Fair seemed to him a rather inelegant but eloquent testimony to man's ingenuity. Nature had provided, with little warning, this temporarily habitable surface, and Man had promptly climbed upon it and put it to use.

Below him, a roadway had been marked out leading down the center of the river all the way to London Bridge. Rough tents had been erected all along this Grand Mall on the ice, made of light materials that could be easily and cheaply assembled and just as easily dismantled when the thaw came. Business was booming. Thousands of people thronged the road, stopping at the booths to eat, drink, dance and play. He could read some of the gaudy signs that identified the rickety structures: HORN'S TAVERN BOOTH; LOTTERY; SKITTLE ALLEY; OYSTERS HERE; THOMAS THAMES, PRINTING.

Men, women and children in all manner of dress and condition cavorted together in apparent harmony, sending up a din that seemed to tinkle with merriment in the icy air. Trumpets blared, and various stringed and horned instruments mixed with the human voices, the music evidently providing encouragement for many enterprising, irrepressible couples to dance. The sounds, the color, the movement were joyously festive, as if the merrymakers were telling a cruel Father Frost that the human spirit would not be crushed.

Two men in rough clothing, with ragged mufflers tied round their heads to protect their ears, jostled for a place beside Geoffrey on the balustrade. “Wut do ye think, guv?” asked one cheerfully. “When the tide rises, do the 'ole bloomin' ice shelf rise wi' it? Or did it freeze at the 'igh point?”

“I tell ye, Jeddie, it
couldn't
freeze at the 'igh point,” the other argued, “'cause then at
low
tide, there'd be a
space
underneath, wouldn't there? Do ye think the ice would 'old all that weight if there wuz nuthin' but space underneath?”

“But the ice's pretty thick, ain't it? Wut do ye think, guv?”

Geoffrey smiled in appreciation of the complexity and logic of the problem they'd put to him in such simple terms. “It's a very good question,” he said, “but I have no idea of the answer. I'm not a man of science, you see.”

They discussed the question at length, but Geoffrey eventually excused himself, saying that he wanted to walk on the ice but that if he listened to them much longer he'd be too terrified to venture out.

Down below, milling about among the crowds, he found the noise more deafening and less pleasant. But the smells were delicious now. There at his right, someone had built a fire and was roasting a lamb whole. He walked up to watch.

“Ye can 'ave a slice fer a shillin', guv. It's right tasty.”

“No, thank you,” Geoffrey said.

“Then it'll be sixpence fer watchin',” the meatseller insisted. “Watchin' ain't fer free.”

Geoffrey grinned, shrugged and threw the fellow a coin before walking on. To his left was a baker's booth, and the smell of gingerbread tantalized his nose. A woman walked by shouting “Brandy balls … hot! Brandy balls!”

The crowd pressed in on him and milled around him in such numbers that he began to lose hope of discovering his sister in the crush. There were all sorts in the crowd—dandies with elegant ladies on their arms, lightskirts, beggars, a few uniformed soldiers, sporting men, working men, and women with youngsters in their arms or hanging onto their skirts. Over to his left, an enterprising person had set up a swing on which laughing ladies could ride up in the air and dangle their legs over the people below for ten pence for two minutes.

He walked along enjoying the sight of the barber-in-the-ice, the bookseller-on-the-ice and the tavern-on-the-ice. It was wonderful how city tradesmen whose businesses had probably been sluggish had simply packed up their wares or the tools of their trades and brought them to where people had gathered. It bouyed up one's spirit to see their enterprise. They'd managed to pull out a few days of prosperity from the misfortune of the cold.

Too soon he realized that more than an hour had passed since he'd dismissed his tiger, and still he'd had no glimpse of a familiar face in all the throng. He would have to turn back before long. But not before he paid a visit to the Printing booth.

The sign THOMAS THAMES, PRINTING had intrigued him from his first glimpse of it. Had a printer really dragged his press upon the ice? Apparently he had, for Geoffrey had noticed a number of people carrying slips of paper bearing their names printed in large letters, with the words PRINTED ON THE ICE THIS NINTH DAY OF JANUARY, 1814 engraved below. The fellow calling himself by the temporary but appropriate name “Thomas Thames” was probably taking a great risk by hauling the press out here, but it was likely that his earnings in the few days of the fair's existence would be more than he'd see for the rest of the year.

Geoffrey's surmises proved to be true, for the Printing booth was one of the busiest of all, with a line of potential customers waiting patiently for their turn to see their names printed on paper to take home with them as substantial evidence that they'd been present at this noteworthy event. He was just about to take a peep inside, curious to see the size of the press that was noisily working away, when someone familiar emerged from the booth.

“Dr.
Fraser
! And
Isabel
!” he shouted.

“Michty me, it's Geoffrey!” the doctor chortled.

“Geoffrey!” Isabel squealed in delight. “Isn't this wonderful? What are you doing here? This has been the most amazing day. First I came upon
this
great gowk, and now
you
!”

“I don't understand,” Geoffrey said, puzzled. “Do you mean that Fraser was not with you at the
start
of this expedition?”

“Oh, dear, no.” Isabel's eyes twinkled with excitement. “When we started out this morning, I thought Donald was sulking all alone in Yorkshire.”

“Aye,” the doctor nodded and glared down at the little lady clinging to his arm, “this pernickity woman ran off days ago.”

“Ran off? Isabel, I don't believe it of you!” Geoffrey chided.

“Well, it's all ended well,” Isabel said, beaming. “I can't wait to tell Meg that my mulish husband has hired himself an
assistant
… and all for my sake!”

“But, Geoffrey, lad, ye'll no ha'e a mind fer this chatterin'. Tell us what brings
you
here.”

“I'm looking for my sister. Wasn't she supposed to be with you, Isabel?”

“Yes, she was … and
is
. She and Arthur are right there behind you, in the printer's booth. I wonder what's taking them so long.”

Geoffrey turned round just in time to see Trixie and Arthur emerge from the tent. Trixie was absorbed in studying the newly printed paper in her hand, but Arthur caught sight of Geoffrey at once and stopped short. “I say,” he muttered in an undervoice, “isn't that your brother?”

Trixie looked up, gasped and turned quite pale. A wave of guilt (for her elopement had begun to seem, in the past few days, more and more foolish) swept over her. Geoffrey was probably furious with her, and the fact that she was ready at last to agree with him did not make it easier to face him. She wanted very much to flee.

But Arthur was holding her firmly by the arm. “Don't be frightened, my love,” he muttered. “He won't dare to scold you … not while I'm here.”

Geoffrey, however, didn't look very forbidding. He was smiling at his sister with surprising warmth. “Don't look like a frightened little rabbit, Trix,” he said heartily. “I've looked for you for too long not to feel anything but relief at seeing you at last.”

With those reassuring words, he opened his arms, and she threw herself into his embrace like a lost child who'd found its mother. “Oh, Geoffrey,” she murmured tearfully, “I am
so
glad to see you!”

Then everybody began to speak at once, trying to tell him all the exciting news which had transpired since Trixie's arrival in London. It was all a jumble in Geoffrey's ears, but he did grasp enough of their chatter to discover that, although she'd freed herself from her entanglement with Lazenby, she had already become involved with someone else. With, of all people, Meg's Arthur Steele.

As the five of them walked along with the milling crowds, Geoffrey studied Steele carefully. He remembered the man quite well from their earlier encounter, but at that time, believing Steele was romantically connected with Meg, Geoffrey had viewed him with eyes of extravagant jealousy. Now, however, the man gave a very different impression. He was older than any of Trixie's previous flirts and seemed a great deal more substantial. And he was not particularly handsome, a fact which Geoffrey found very encouraging. If Trixie cared for the fellow, at least it was not for so superficial a reason as appearance. He would reserve judgment for a while, of course, but there was every reason to hope that Trixie had made a good choice at last.

Asking the others to excuse them for a few minutes, Geoffrey took his sister's arm and walked ahead of the rest of the party. “Steele seems a solid sort, Trix,” Geoffrey said bluntly, “but I can't feel comfortable about the suddenness with which you flit from one love to the next. Are you sure you're not making another hasty decision?”

“Perhaps I am,” she answered thoughtfully, taking his arm in companionable intimacy. It was the first time she and Geoffrey had embarked on a discussion of her affairs which was amicable rather than argumentative. It gave the girl a very pleasant feeling. “I know I've been acquainted with him for only a short time. But it seems as if I've known him forever. We are so
comfortable
together, and he has a way of making me feel merry all the time. Do
you
think I'm being hasty?”

“Well, you've known him less than a fortnight. That certainly seems hasty to me. How long did it take from the time you met until he offered for you—one hour?”

She giggled. “He made the offer
today
! It was the
sweetest
thing. Arthur had bought me a pie from a pieman, and it was hot and very syrupy, and when I'd taken a bite of it, some of the syrup seeped out and dropped upon Mortimer's boot. Oh, did I forget to tell you Mortimer was with us? Well, he was, and when the syrup dripped on his boot, he was furious with me! You'd have thought I'd stained his
breeches
—which would have been very much worse, of course, and one couldn't have blamed him
then
if he'd carried on and sulked like a baby—but it was only his boot, and anyone could see that the syrup could be wiped away without a bit of trouble. But Mortimer grumbled and complained and said that I'd ruined his shine and kept on and
on
about it until I was on the edge of tears. Well, Arthur took me aside and tried to comfort me and asked how I could wish to marry such a foppish jackstraw. And I said I didn't know, and that I'd probably made a terrible mistake, as my brother had been warning me for ever and ever, but that a girl has to marry
somebody
. And he said, then why not marry
me
, and he explained that he'd been completely taken with me from the first night when I'd arrived at Meg's, and then I said that I'd been taken with
him
, too, and … well … he kissed me and here we are!”

Geoffrey shook his head, both amused and appalled.
Are all the important decisions of one's life
, he wondered inwardly,
determined by such trivial turns?
But aloud he only laughed and said, “That is undoubtedly one of the great love stories of our time.”

They walked on for a while in friendly silence. “But tell me, my dear,” he asked after a time, “how did Lazenby react when you informed him of your change of heart?”

Trixie halted in surprise. “How did you know I had told him?”

“Well, you see, I … er … ran into him earlier this afternoon. He informed me that you were no longer betrothed. He seemed rather unaffected by your blow, I thought.”

“Yes, that's the most amazing thing. I hope you won't repeat this to anyone else, Geoffrey, for it is quite a comedown for me, I can tell you. There I was, in a tizzy of fear about telling him, but Arthur, you know, insisted that I must do it at once, and so I did. But Mortimer … well, he seemed
glad
that I cried off. Isn't it astounding?”