The Nonesuch (16 page)

She listened in seething fury to the plans that were being formulated. The sporting gentleman – he said that his name was Baldock, and that he begged to be allowed to place himself at their disposal – was offering to drive Patience and the dirty little boy to the infirmary; Lindeth was assuring her that he would himself convey the pair of them to the boy’s home (no doubt a hovel in the back-slums of the town!), and Miss Trent was promising to proceed on foot to the infirmary immediately, there to render Patience all the aid and protection of which she was capable. Not one of them had a thought to spare for
her
!
She was tired; she wanted to go home; out of sheer kindness of heart she had agreed to allow Patience (whom she had never liked) to accompany her to Leeds; she had submitted, without a word of protest, to being dragged all over the town in search of some stupid pink satin; her own companion – hired to take care of her! – instead of escorting her away from this degrading scene was merely concerned with Patience’s welfare; and now she and Lindeth, without the slightest reference to her, were talking of driving that nasty child to his home in
her
carriage.

‘I think I am going to faint!’ she announced, in a penetrating voice which lent no colour to this statement.

Lindeth, who was lifting the boy out of Patience’s arms, paid no heed; Miss Trent, assisting Patience to her feet, just glanced at her, and said: ‘I can’t attend to you now, Tiffany!’ and Mr Baldock, with no more than a cursory look at her, said: ‘Don’t see why
you
should faint, ma’am! Shouldn’t have wondered at it if
this
lady had, but not she! Didn’t quite catch your name, ma’am, but shall take leave to say you’re a regular trump! No – shouldn’t have said that! Not the thing to say to a female! Beg your pardon: never been much of a lady’s man! What I meant was, you’re a – you’re a –’

‘Heroine!’ supplied Lindeth, laughing.

‘Ay, so she is! A dashed heroine!’

‘Oh, pray – !’ Patience protested. ‘I’m very much obliged to you, but indeed I’m nothing of the sort! If you will be so very good as to drive me to the infirmary, let us go immediately, if you please! He is still bleeding, and I’m afraid he may have injured his leg as well. You can see how it is swelling, and he cries if you touch it!’ She looked round. ‘I don’t know what became of my parcels, and my – Oh, Tiffany, you have them all! Thank you! I am so sorry – so disagreeable for you!’

‘Oh,
pray
don’t mention it!’ said Tiffany, quivering with fury. ‘I
like
picking up parcels and parasols for other people! I
like
being jostled by vulgar persons!
Pray
don’t consider me at all!
Or
ask my leave to use
my
carriage for that odious, wicked boy!’

‘Well, of all the shrews!’ gasped Mr Baldock.

Lindeth, who had been staring at Tiffany, a queer look in his eyes, and his lips rather tightly compressed, turned from her, and said quietly: ‘Hand Miss Chartley into your tilbury, will you? I’ll give the boy to her then, and we can be off.’

‘Yes, but it will be the deuce of a squeeze,’ responded Mr Baldock doubtfully.

‘No, it won’t: I’m going to get up behind.’ He waited until Patience had climbed into the carriage, and then deposited the whimpering child in her lap, saying gently: ‘Don’t be distressed! There’s no need, I promise you.’

She was feeling ready to sink, and whispered: ‘I never thought – I didn’t know – Lord Lindeth, stay with her! I shall do very well by myself. Perhaps you could hire a carriage for me? Oh, yes! of course that’s what I ought to do! If you would direct the coachman to drive to the infirmary –’

‘Stop fretting!’ he commanded, smiling up at her: ‘We’ll discuss what’s best to be done presently. Meanwhile, Miss Trent will look after Miss Wield: I am coming with you!’ He turned, as Miss Trent came up to give Patience her purse, and told her briefly what he meant to do, adding, in an undervoice: ‘Will you be able to come to the infirmary, ma’am? I think you should, don’t you?’

‘Of course I shall come,’ she replied. ‘Just as soon as I have taken Miss Wield back to the King’s Arms!’

He looked relieved. ‘Yes, if you please. Then I’ll find Waldo. He’s the man we want in this situation!’

She had been thinking so herself, and although she was surprised that he should have said it she agreed cordially. It was then his lordship’s turn to be a little puzzled, for he had spoken more to himself than to her, and (since Waldo very much disliked having his peculiar philanthropy puffed-off) was already regretting it. Before it could be established that they were talking at cross-purposes, Tiffany, almost beside herself with rage at their continued neglect, stalked up to them to demand in a voice vibrant with passion how much longer Miss Trent meant to keep her waiting.

‘Not an instant!’ replied her preceptress cheerfully, removing from her grasp the parasol and the various packages with which she was still burdened. Over her shoulder, she smiled reassuringly at Patience. ‘I’ll join you at the infirmary directly, Miss Chartley. Now, Tiffany!’

‘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 very 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 rôle 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 nuncheon. 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 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.