Honora Clare, page 14
Having done his best to make their arrival seem a little less extraordinary, Dick walked into the house, with Henrietta beside him. The hall was very cool, deliciously so at first, though after a moment it felt too chilly for comfort. There were doors leading off into a series of low dark rooms, which were all perfectly empty, and all made gloomy by the bushes and creepers that grew up round the small windows, and by the shade of a great yew tree in the churchyard. The little panes of glass were thickly veiled in cobwebs.
“I did not know it would be like this,” whispered Henrietta.
The dreariness of the house seemed to set the seal of failure on her elopement.
“You’d do better to come upstairs to the gallery, ma’am,” said Mrs. Drake.
She was right. The small, sunny gallery was charming, the light streamed in from the south, and even though the air was full of dust, it was impossible not to admire the warmly glowing walls and the graceful plaster ceiling. Here Mrs. Drake brought them a hastily assembled meal: thick bread and butter with a basin of brawn and a slab of strong local cheese. There was a jug of home brewed ale and a pot of black, stewed tea.
Although there were no tables or chairs, there was space for them to sit on the broad window at with the plates and dishes between them.
They did not talk much while they ate. They were too hungry, and besides, Mrs. Drake kept running about with a broom and a duster and hurrying into one of the adjoining rooms, her arms full of flapping sheets and blankets. Through the open door they could see what was apparently the one piece of furniture in the front part of the house: an enormous tester bed with bulging posts the size of young oak trees. Henrietta looked hastily away.
When they had finished eating, and Mrs. Drake had removed the remnants of their meal, there was a short silence.
“I’m afraid it is not quite what you—what either of us expected, ” apologized Henrietta.
“Well, we’re here now, so it can’t be helped.”
It struck them both at the same moment that under the circumstances they ought not to care about their surroundings. Dick reached out a hand to Henrietta and she slid gratefully into his arms. He took refuge in the wordless language of kissing and caressing; it was the only language he had ever learned to speak to her, though neither of them had realized this.
Henrietta had been bewitched by the sensual enjoyment that Dick had given her, it was like a drug; each time they parted she began craving for the next time. In a sea of pleasure, she had hardly been aware of her own identity. Until now, when for some reason her mind seemed to be watching from somewhere outside her body, like a separate person—an entirely separate person from Dick, a stranger, who was rougher than usual and trying to do things he had never done before.
She shifted and pushed him back a little.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”
“It’s not very comfortable,” she said, making the hard window seat an excuse.
“No, it isn’t. If that old dame has finished making the bed, we may as well put it to use use right away.”
Henrietta sat up straight, bumping her head on his chin.
“Have I shocked you?” he asked, amused. “Going to bed in the afternoon is quite a fashionable pastime—and we are on our honeymoon.”
“No, we aren’t. A honeymoon doesn’t begin until you’ve been married. We must wait, Dick.”
He was incredulous and then outraged.
“Good God! What a little prude you are! Surely you don’t intend to make me wait until we get to Scotland? We were as good as married directly we burned our boats and ran off together. Or don’t you trust me to go through with the business?”
His eyes and mouth had become ugly, and for an instant she was not so much afraid as repelled.
“Of course I t-trust you,” she stammered. “I’m sorry to be so disobliging, only I’m sure it would be wrong to do what you ask. A sin.”
“A sin!” he scoffed. “I never heard such canting nonsense. What difference will it make to God or anyone else when you and I stand up in front of couple of Scotsmen and declare ourselves man and wife? We aren’t going to be married in church, you know. So you may as well give in straight away, you won’t be any holier on the other side of the border.”
She was confused and miserable.
“Please don’t be angry with me, Dick. Give me time to think.”
Dick stood up.
“Very well,” he said, in a tone of deep displeasure. “You shall have the rest of the afternoon to come to your senses.”
He stalked across the gallery and down the stairs.
( 2 )
About the time the runaways were breakfasting at Nailsworth, Honor was standing in Queen’s Square, desperately wondering how to set about finding them. If only she had not quarreled with Marcus Colvin! He would have known, better even than young Lyman, how to trace a carriage that had been hired in Bath this morning. Well, it was no use wishing, she could not crawl to him now. and after last night he would probably refuse to see her. Or would he? If she apologized and admitted that she had been unreasonable, it would be a tacit acknowledgement that some of the things he had said were justified. She had a fierce struggle with her pride, assuring herself that she could manage very well on her own. But she knew that Colvin’s superior knowledge of the different stables and posting houses might produce much quicker results, and every minute saved could make a difference when it came to following a carriage on crowded roads, hoping it would be remembered by busy people like turnpike keepers and ostlers.
Mentally gritting her teeth, she walked briskly to the Crescent.
Marcus had taken the ground floor apartment of a house near the Brock Street end. Honor was shown into a large room where he was walking about with a coffee cup in his hand, surveying a table covered with books and papers. He was wearing some kind of oriental dressing gown made of silk and brilliantly striped in green and gold, which reminded her of the suspicious, foreign-looking man in the violet coat—though such exotic plumage was quite permissible in a dressing gown.
He was extremely surprised to see her, and showed it.
“You may wonder at my calling, Mr. Colvin,” she began stiffly, “and I had much sooner not have come.”
She paused, aware that this was hardly conciliating.
He said quickly, “Something has happened—an accident? Is it Sally?”
She now found herself apologizing for something quite different.
“It is nothing of that kind; Sally is perfectly well, I assure you. I am sorry to have given you such a scare. I should have realized how it must seem, my coming here at such an hour. But we are in great trouble and I need your advice. Henrietta Delahaye has eloped with Samuel Harris, the actor.”
“Good God, what a stupid thing to have done. Surprising, too. Of course I will help you in any way I can. Do sit down and tell me all about it.”
She told him the whole story, ending, “I don’t know where to start my inquiries, and that is where I need your help. I tried to get hold of Henrietta’s cousin, but he’s gone off with a party of friends to Wiltshire.”
“Oh? I suppose that’s why he tried to borrow some money from me yesterday.”
Honor was not much interested in Dick Lyman. She was embarrassed by having to acknowledge how badly she needed a man to help her, and could avoid noticing how generously Marcus behaved over this, There was no mean triumph, not a trace of satisfaction.
“I’ll try the White Hart first, then the York or the Christopher. If you go home, I will come and see you as soon as I have anything to report.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you also, for being so magnanimous. I’m afraid I was dreadfully disagreeable last night.”
“Yes, but you had a great deal of provocation,” he said, smiling. “I’m glad to have the chance to make amends.”
When Honor got back to the school, she heard a chorus of young voices declaiming the capital cities and rivers of Europe. Lucy was making a gallant effort to keep up the daily routine as though nothing was wrong. Outside the schoolroom door Nancy was standing with her back to the wall—sent out of the room for some petty crime.
“What have you been doing, Nancy?” Honor asked automatically. She was too preoccupied to be really interested.
“Miss Fielder sent me out for talking in class. Can I ask you something, Miss Clare? Is it true that Henrietta is supposed to have run away with Sam Harris?”
“That is no concern of yours,” said Honor austerely.
“I don’t believe it anyway. She doesn’t care two straws for him. She is in love with Dick Lyman.”
Honor was on the point of going into the parlor and closing the door behind her. She felt her spine prickle.
Turning, she said to Nancy, “Come in here and. tell me why you think she doesn’t care for Mr. Harris. She has not confided in you?”
“She told me she thought his acting rather ridiculous, if you call that confiding. She has always laughed at him. Only Martha is quite stupid about him, and we could not resist teasing her a little. Not unkindly, you know, she didn’t mind. That was what Hen was doing when she fell in the river. And then when poor Mr. Harris fished her out and got his beautiful clothes all muddied, Hen and I could not look at each other, we were laughing so much.”
This account rang so true, so much truer, somehow, than the vision of Henrietta succumbing to - her brave rescuer, that Honor almost laughed, herself. It was very reprehensible, a girl of Nancy’s age had no business to be talking of such things. But Nancy was very acute, much cleverer than Martha, and, possibly, than Henrietta herself.
“Have you any real reason to suppose she is in love with her cousin?”
“Dick isn’t her cousin, Miss Clare.”
“Nonsense, of course he is! Her guardian told me so.”
“No, truly. Hen said there was a mistake, though she could not understand how it came about. Dick is the godson of that lady she was living with in Sussex. You can ask Martha, she’ll bear me out. Hen was already sweet on Dick when she came here—and it was Dick she went to Sydney Gardens with the other night, because I saw them walking down Belmont together from my bedroom window.”
Honor was bewildered. Could this extraordinary story be true? It too was convincing, and accorded better with her own observations than the legendary passion for Harris. And what was this tax about them not being cousins?
She looked doubtfully at Nancy, remembering her past record.
“Will you promise me that you are telling the truth? This is too serious a matter for playing tricks.”
“I know how serious it is, otherwise I shouldn’t be telling tales. My mother was like Hen, she was very pretty and she used to slip out secretly to meet my father. She was imprudent,” Nancy spoke the ambiguous word with a savage derision unnerving in anyone so young. “And when my grandfather found out, he made them get married to save her reputation. Only it was too late, I was born in six months, so there was quite a scandal after all, and she wouldn’t have me in the room or look at me. She’s hated me ever since.”
Honor was thunderstruck. “My dear Nancy, I’m sure that cannot be true; that your mother hates you, I mean…”
She caught the expression in Nancy’s eyes, the contempt of an honest person who was being lied to, and the conventional reassurance died away.
So this explained the unloved and unloving young creature, hostile yet forlorn, who had arrived here in the spring. How could her parents be so cruel? And irrational too, for in spite of their forced marriage, they seemed to be living together quite happily, with several younger children they were fond of.
“Will you go after Hen and bring her back?” asked Nancy, returning calmly to the main object.
Honor dragged her wits together. “Yes, if I can discover which road they have taken. Do you think Martha is likely to know anything?”
When she was consulted, Martha confirmed what Nancy had said, but knew nothing more. Lucy was horrified by Henrietta’ s duplicity, though after rereading the farewell letter she pointed out something they had not noticed before.
“She doesn’t actually say whom she is going to marry. She says she is sorry to have deceived us about Sam Harris (which she certainly did, pretending she went to the Gala with him) and that she is going to Scotland to be married. What a little hypocrite!”
Honor and Lucy spent some time writing to Mrs. Porcheston; it took all the diplomacy they could muster.
They had barely finished when Marcus walked in, no longer dressed as a Sultan but as an English country gentleman in breeches and top boots.
“How glad I am to see you!” exclaimed Honor, jumping up.
“No news so far, I’m afraid, but it has just struck me that most of the actors live in in Bristol, so Harris might have hired a carriage from there.”
“Harris doesn’t matter any more—that’s what I wanted to tell you. She hasn’t gone off with Harris, she’s gone with Dick Lyman.”
“How very odd. Did she change her mind?”
“No, of course not. She set out to make fools of us and we fell into the trap.”
He interrupted only once while she was explaining, and that was to say, on a sharp note of inquiry, “Mrs. Porcheston’s godson?”
“Mrs. Porcheston is the lady in whose family Henrietta was living in Sussex. She brought her here and made all the arrangements.”
“Now I begin to see…”
He sounded so grim that she turned to him curiously wondering what he meant by that enigmatic remark.
“That young scoundrel tried to borrow some money off me,” he said. “I’m glad to say I turned him down. He told me he’d been robbed, but I thought there was something in his manner—that he was up to no good, and of course I was right. He wanted the money to elope with Henrietta.”
“What impudence, expecting you to stake him!”
“Yes, wasn’t it? However, I now have something useful to tell you after all. While I was at the White Hart I heard by chance that Lyman had ordered a post chaise for this morning, canceled it, and taken his curricle instead. He asked for details of posting inns on the Gloucester road. What do you make of that?”
“Surely he cannot mean to take her all the way to Scotland in that flimsy little open carriage,” said Lucy.
“Not if he’s short of funds. They’ll want somewhere they can live very cheaply. Or better still, free.”
There was a thoughtful silence.
Then Marcus said, “General Delahaye has a house in Gloucestershire.”
“How do you know?” asked Lucy.
He did not answer directly, and Honor, more worldly than Lucy, thought that this was the sort of thing men of a certain position in society did know about each other, even without being personally acquainted.
Marcus said, “The name of the house is Greengrace Manor, and if Henrietta is there, we will go and fetch her back. We’ll drive out along the Gloucester road and I am sure we shall soon get news of them.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Honor, torn between gratitude and diffidence. “I hardly like to accept. Because one of our pupils has gone astray, that is no reason why you should be expected to play fox and geese half across Gloucestershire.”
“I shall be delighted to rescue your silly little goose from that particular fox. I feel partly responsible for her plight.”
“But that is nonsense. How can you feel responsible?”
There was a brief pause.
“You can put it down to my passion for interfering,” said Marcus Colvin.
( 3 )
Half-an-hour later Marcus was back to fetch Honor in a hired carriage. It was the barouche he had driven on the day of the picnic, and he had chosen it, he told her, in preference to a postchaise, because they did not want two gaping postilions to witness any awkward scene that might take place when they caught the runaways, She thought this very sensible.
They did not talk much at first. Honor was too wretched. She had managed to keep fairly hopeful while there were things to be done, plans to be made. Having to sit idle (even on the box of a fastmoving barouche) was the worst torment for a young woman of her temperament. As well as being anxious about Henrietta she had no doubt that a scandal over an eloping pupil would ruin her school. And if it was selfish to think about her own survival at such a time, she was bound to think about poor Lucy and about the other girls. Nancy, for instance. That pathetic revelation this morning had explained and even excused so much of Nancy’s tiresome behavior. She had improved out of all knowledge in the last few weeks, and, if they could keep her long enough, Honor felt that she and Lucy could give her the judgment and stability to face life philosophically, in spite of the wicked cold-hearted hypocrisy of her parents. This would require patience and growth. If Nancy was taken from them now, she would probably revert to her old unhappy self, and the same might be said of Evelina, so much better since she came to Bath. And as for the Marlows—what was to be done with them if the school had to close?
“Don’t look so sad,” said Marcus. “I’m sure we’ll get her back.”
“I do trust we shall. I’m very fond of Henrietta (though I could murder her at this moment) and clearly we are to blame for not looking after her properly.”
“The odds were against you, I see that now.”
“I wish I did. Not that it makes any difference, I must stop blaming other people for my own shortcomings. I lay awake last night, thinking over what you said—”
“So did I, and I came to the conclusion that all those names I called you: quixotic, obstinate—”
“Pig headed.”
“Did I say that? How inelegant, I beg your pardon. And yet, you know, they are all qualities I particularly admire.”
She could not help laughing, and glanced sideways at him, outlined against the sky. They were bowling smoothly along an open stretch of road, the horses were moving well and the hand holding the reins lay easily against his knee. He had regained his power over her without apparently making the slightest effort. Better not think of that now, this was no occasion for dalliance, and indeed the liveliness had died out of his expression. He looked remote, even grim.
