The Nonesuch (15 page)

These hazards successfully skirted, she steered her charges into a large and entrancing establishment, where both young ladies bought some gloves and some ribbons, and Tiffany several pairs of silk stockings, which aroused such envy in Miss Chartley’s gentle bosom that she determined to save twelve shillings from the sum reposing in her purse so that she could buy just one pair to wear at the Colebatches’ ball.

After this they visited the silk warehouse which enjoyed Mrs Chartley’s patronage; and while Tiffany, who soon lost interest in the choice of a satin to furnish a new underdress for Patience’s gauze ball-gown, wandered about, inspecting silks and velvets, with a dazed and slavishly admiring young shopman in attendance, Miss Trent placed her taste and experience at her young friend’s disposal. A very reasonably priced satin of a charming shade of pink having been discovered, there was only enough time left before the ladies’ assignation with Lord Lindeth for the purchase of Patience’s new dancing-sandals. This was soon accomplished, and although it took several minutes to dissuade Tiffany from investing in a pair of pale blue silk sandals, they returned to the King’s Arms before their host had begun to entertain any very serious fear that some accident must have overtaken them.

He was awaiting them in a private parlour, and it was evident from the array of cold meats, fruit, jellies, and creams on the table that he had taken great pains over their entertainment. Only one thing, in Miss Trent’s view, was wanting. For no persuasion would she have betrayed the smallest interest in the whereabouts of the Nonesuch; but when Tiffany, who had few reserves, demanded to know why he was not present, she felt, for once, no desire to censure this unbecoming pertness.

‘He’ll be here presently,’ Lindeth answered. ‘We won’t wait for him, however: he warned me not to – said I was to make his apologies, if he was detained. I daresay he is still interviewing bailiffs! From what I saw, that lawyer – what’s his name? – Smeeth! – had a score of ’em drawn up in line for his inspection!’

‘Oh!’ Tiffany said, pouting. ‘Dull work!’

‘Well –’ He hesitated, and then said: ‘Yes, of course it is – dull work for a lady, I mean.’

‘I should suppose it must be very difficult,’ said Patience thoughtfully. ‘In particular, if you mean to leave the bailiff in sole charge. One hears of such shocking instances of tyranny, and neglect – though my father says the fault too often lies at the landlord’s door.’

‘Yes, very true,’ he agreed. ‘Screws like old Joseph Calver, wringing every groat it will yield out of his land, and leasing his farms on short terms to thriftless get-pennies, because –’ He stopped, seeing the frown that creased Tiffany’s brow. ‘But I don’t know why we should be talking about such things, and boring Miss Wield!’

‘No, nor do I!’ she said, all demure mischief. ‘
Tell
me why?’

He laughed. ‘Not for the world! I’ll invite you to the table instead! I hope you are very hungry! Miss Trent, will you sit here, and may I carve you some chicken?’

‘Misuse of language, Lindeth:
hack
is the word!’ said Sir Waldo, entering the parlour at that moment. ‘How do you do, ma’am? Miss Chartley, your very obedient! Miss Wield, yours! I beg all your pardons: I’m late!’

‘Now, that puts me in mind of a remark someone once made to me,’ said Miss Trent, apparently chasing an elusive re-collection. ‘Something about becoming inured to unpunctuality… Who can have said that, I wonder? I have the wretchedest memory!’

‘Then you should not attempt quotation, ma’am!’ retorted Sir Waldo, a laugh in his eye. ‘“To the unpunctuality of your sex” was what I said.’

‘Oh, no, did he, ma’am?’ exclaimed Lindeth. ‘That’s famous.
Hoist with his own petard!
’

‘What does that mean, pray?’ asked Tiffany.

‘You must not ask me,’ responded Sir Waldo, with a reproving look. ‘Lindeth shouldn’t say such things in the presence of ladies.’

‘Oh, is it improper?’ she said innocently.

‘Most improper!’ he replied, his gravity unimpaired.

She saw that the others were laughing, and put up her chin, flushing slightly. But as Sir Waldo, taking his seat beside her at the table, asked her to tell him all about the morning’s shopping expedition, showing a gratifying interest in her purchases, she very soon mended her temper, and prattled to him throughout the meal in the greatest good humour.

A new reticule for Patience, and velvet ribbon to match the pink satin had still to be found. When they rose from the table, Sir Waldo excused himself, and went away to resume his inspection of bailiffs; but Lindeth, declaring that he had a very good eye for colour, begged to be allowed to escort the ladies. Since the Nonesuch had devoted himself to Tiffany’s entertainment at the table, Julian, wondering at this most unusual want of conduct in
his cousin, had done his best to keep both his other guests amused; and he had succeeded very well. But Miss Trent, ably seconding his efforts, was assailed by apprehension. The faint suspicion, which had crossed her mind once or twice before, that Miss Chartley was more powerfully attracted to Lindeth than she would have wished anyone to guess was strengthened. The Rector’s well-brought up daughter was behaving just as she ought, but the light in her soft eyes when she raised them to his lordship’s face was, thought Miss Trent, unmistakeably tender. Like Mrs Chartley, she could not help feeling that they would be very well-suited to one another; but while she knew, on the authority of chroniclers and poets, that it was by no means unusual for a gentleman to transfer his affections almost in the twinkling of an eye (witness the extraordinary revulsion of feeling experienced by young Mr Montague when he first clapped eyes on Miss Capulet!), she did not know whether the Nonesuch would look upon Patience with approbation. Miss Trent could not doubt that if he did not he would contrive to thrust a spoke into the wheel of a possible courtship. That realization, she thought, should have been enough to warn her that he was probably an unscrupulous man of whom she would do well to beware. The mischief was that while she was just able to admit this possibility in his absence she had only to meet his eyes across a room to become instantly convinced of his integrity.

He found an opportunity to exchange a few words with her before he left the King’s Arms, asking abruptly: ‘Shall I see you at the Colebatches’ ball?’

‘Yes. I have been invited to go, and my kind mistress says I may – or, rather, insists that I must!’

‘
En chaperon?
’

‘No, she goes herself, so I am to enjoy a holiday.’

‘Then I shan’t cry off from it.’

He did not wait for an answer, but with a smile, and a brief handshake, took his departure.

The next hour was spent very agreeably by the rest of the party in various shops, where not only was a reticule found, and the satin exactly matched, but where Tiffany bought a pair of filigree earrings, and Miss Trent a spray of artificial flowers to wear with her only ball-dress. Lindeth’s presence added a good deal of gaiety to the expedition. He took a keen interest in the various purchases, but as he knew very little about feminine fashions he made some wonderful blunders, which rapidly induced a mood of hilarity in his companions. He also discovered a pastrycook’s shop advertizing ice-creams; and as the ladies were all feeling hot, and a trifle weary, he experienced no difficulty in persuading them to enter it. Tiffany, puffing off her knowledge, said that it was just like Gunter’s: an inaccurate statement, but one which showed her to be in her best humour. Miss Trent thought that she had seldom spent a more pleasant day in her company.

After disposing of several lemon-flavoured ices, they left the pastrycook’s, and began to retrace their steps to the King’s Arms. The street was a busy one, and there was no room to walk four abreast, so the two girls went ahead, amicably discussing the latest modes, and Lindeth civilly offered his arm to Miss Trent. A picture hanging in the window of a print-shop caught his eye; he recognized the subject, which was the Dripping Well, and at once drew Miss Trent’s attention to it. It was while they were studying it that the harmony of the day was suddenly and rudely shattered. Some kind of a stir was taking place further up the street; there were shouts of: ‘Stop thief!’ and as they looked quickly round a ragged urchin came into view, darting towards them with an apple clutched in his hand, and an expression of hunted terror in his starting eyes. He was dodging between the passers-by, and had almost reached Patience and Tiffany when a middle-aged citizen thrust his walking-cane between his legs to arrest his progress. A crashing fall was the inevitable result: the child, swerving to avoid the over-zealous citizen, pitched forward, not on the flagway but on to the cobbled street. A cry of protest had burst from Patience; parcels, parasol, and purse were flung away; and under Miss Trent’s horrified eyes she sprang into the road, snatching the urchin almost from under the hooves of a high-stepping chestnut harnessed to a tilbury, which was being driven at a spanking pace along the street. For a dreadful moment it seemed as if she must be trampled upon; then the chestnut reared up, snorting, and was miraculously swung to one side; and the driver of the tilbury, a natty young gentleman clad in raiment which, almost as clearly as his handling of the reins, proclaimed him to be a top-sawyer, added his voice to the general hubbub in a furious expletive. The next instant Lindeth had brushed past Miss Trent, racing forward to the rescue, and unceremoniously pushing Tiffany out of the way as he bent over Patience.

‘Good God, Miss Chartley – ! Are you hurt?’

She had dragged rather than lifted the urchin out of danger, and was on her knees, supporting him in her arms, and gazing down in horror at his face, down which blood was streaming from a gash on the forehead, but she glanced up, saying: ‘Oh, no, no! But this poor little boy – ! Something to stop the bleeding – a handkerchief –
anything!
– Oh, pray,
one
of you – !’

‘Here, take mine!’ Lindeth said, thrusting it into her hand. ‘Poor little devil! Knocked himself out!’ He looked up at the driver of the tilbury, and said curtly: ‘I’m sorry, sir, and
must thank you for acting so promptly. I trust your horse has suffered no injury.’

By this time the natty gentleman had realized that the female kneeling beside the gutter was a young and very pretty girl of obviously gentle birth. Blushing hotly, he stammered: ‘No, no, not the least in the world! Beg you’ll accept my apologies, ma’am! Agitation of the moment – forgot myself! By Jove, though! You might have been killed! Bravest thing I ever saw in my life! By Jove, it was!’

She looked up briefly, to say: ‘Oh, no! I am so much obliged to you! I don’t wonder you were angry – but, you see, I
had
to do it!’

Miss Trent, who had succeeded in pushing her way through the fast-gathering crowd, bent over her, asking anxiously: ‘How badly is he hurt, my dear?’

‘I don’t know. His head struck the cobbles. I must take him to the hospital.’

‘Yes, for I fear this cut must be stitched,’ said Miss Trent, folding her own handkerchief into a neat pad, and pressing it over the wound. ‘Do you hold his head so that I can tie Lord Lindeth’s handkerchief round it!’

At this point, a fresh voice intruded upon them. The owner of the stolen apple, a stout and breathless shopkeeper, had arrived on the scene, and was loudly announcing his intention of summoning a constable to take the young varmint in charge. He was in a blustering rage, and somewhat roughly told Patience that the gaol was the place for hedge-birds, not the hospital. She said imploringly: ‘Pray don’t give him up to the constable! It was very wrong of him to steal from you, but you see what a little boy he is, and how wretched! And he’s badly hurt, too.’

‘Not he!’ retorted the shopkeeper. ‘Serve him right if he’d broke his neck! It’s a shame and a scandal the way him and his like hang about waiting for the chance to prig something! I’ll have this young thief made an example of, by God I will!’

‘Here, you rascal, that’s no way to speak to a lady!’ exclaimed the gentleman in the tilbury indignantly. ‘What’s more I’ll go bail the brat ain’t half as big a thief as you are!
I
know you shopkeepers! All the same: selling farthing-dips for a bull’s eye apiece!’

Not unnaturally, the effect of this intervention was far from happy. The injured tradesman appealed to the onlookers for support, and although one or two persons recommended him to pardon the thief, several others ranged themselves on his side. The air was rent with argument; but Lindeth, who had never before found himself in the centre of so embarrassing a scene, collected his wits and his dignity, and in a voice which held a remarkable degree of calm authority bade the shopkeeper declare the worth of the stolen fruit.

The man seemed at first to be determined on revenge, but after some more argument, in which some six or seven members of the crowd took part, he consented to accept the coin held out to him, and withdrew, accompanied by several of his supporters. The crowd now began to disperse; the small thief, coming round from his swoon, started to cry for his home and his Mammy; and while Patience soothed him, assuring him that she would take him to his home directly, and that no one should lock him up in prison, or give him up to the beadle (an official of whom he seemed to stand in terror), Miss Trent, Lord Lindeth, and the gentleman in sporting toggery, who had descended from the tilbury to join in the discussion, held a hurried council.

Throughout this animated scene Tiffany had been standing neglected and alone, rigid with mortification, jostled by such low-bred persons in the crowd as wished to obtain a closer view of the group in the gutter; pushed out of the way by Lord Lindeth; sharply adjured by Miss Trent not to stand like a stock, but to pick up Patience’s belongings; and left without chaperonage or male protection by those who should have made her comfort and safety their first concern. Even the sporting gentleman in the tilbury had paid her no heed! Patience –
Patience
– ! – kneeling in the road, with her dress stained with blood, and a ragged and disgusting urchin in her arms, was the heroine of this most revolting piece, while she, the Beautiful Miss Wield, was left to hold as best she might two parasols, two purses, and a load of parcels.