Arabella Read online

  ‘I cannot help feeling,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘that Jemmy would benefit by country air.’

  This suggestion found favour. ‘Nothing could be better for him!’ agreed Arabella. ‘Besides, there is no reason why he should tease you, I am sure! Only how may it be contrived?’

  Much relieved at having so easily cleared this fence, Mr Beaumaris said: ‘The notion did just cross my mind, ma’am, that if I were to take him into Hampshire, where I have estates, no doubt some respectable household might be found for him.’

  ‘One of your tenants! The very thing!’ exclaimed Arabella. ‘Quite a simple cottage, mind, and a sensible woman to take care of him! Only I am afraid she would have to be paid a small sum to do it.’

  Mr Beaumaris, who felt that no sum could be too large for the ridding of his house of one small imp who threatened to disrupt it, bore up nobly under the warning, and said that he had envisaged this possibility, and was prepared to meet it. It then occurred to Arabella that he might reasonably expect so great an heiress as herself to bear the charge of her protégé; and she embarked on a tangled explanation of why she could not at present do so. Mr Beaumaris interrupted her speech when it showed signs of becoming ravelled beyond hope. ‘No, no, Miss Tallant!’ he said. ‘Do not deny me this opportunity to perform a charitable action, I beg of you!’

  So Arabella very kindly refrained from doing so, and bestowed so grateful a smile upon him that he felt himself to have been amply rewarded.

  ‘Are you quite in disgrace with Lady Bridlington?’ he asked quizzically.

  She laughed, but looked a little guilty. ‘I was,’ she owned. ‘But since she has seen that the story has not got about, she has forgiven me. She was persuaded that everyone would be laughing at me. As though I would care for such a thing as that, when I had but done my duty!’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Do you know, I had begun to believe that everyone in town – all the grand people, I mean – were quite heartless, and selfish?’ she confided. ‘I am afraid I was not quite civil to you – indeed, Lady Bridlington assures me that I was shockingly rude! – but then, you see, I had no notion that you were not like all the rest. I beg your pardon!’

  Mr Beaumaris had the grace to acknowledge a twinge of conscience. It led him to say: ‘Miss Tallant, I did it in the hope of pleasing you.’

  Then he wished that he had curbed his tongue, for her confiding air left her, and although she talked easily for a few more minutes he was fully aware that she had withdrawn from him again.

  He was able to retrieve his position a few days later, and took care not to jeopardise it again. When he returned from a visit to his estates he called in Park Street to give Arabella comfortable tidings of Jemmy, whom he had foisted on to a retired servant of his own. She was a little concerned lest the town-bred waif should feel lost and unhappy in the country, but when he informed her that the last news he had of Jemmy, before leaving Hampshire, was that he had let a herd of bullocks out of the field where they were confined, pulled the feathers from the cock’s tail, tried to ride an indignant pig round the yard, and eaten a whole batch of cakes newly baked by his kind hostess, she perceived that Jemmy was made of resilient stuff, and laughed, and said that he would soon settle down, and learn to be a good boy.

  Mr Beaumaris agreed to it, and then played his trump card. He thought Miss Tallant would like to know that he had taken steps to ensure the well-being of Mr Grimsby’s future apprentices.

  Arabella was delighted. ‘You have brought him to justice!’

  ‘Well, not quite that,’ confessed Mr Beaumaris. He saw the disappointed look in her eye, and added hastily: ‘You know, I could not feel that to be appearing in a court of law was just what you would like. Then, too, when it is a question of apprentices one is apt to find oneself confronted with all manner of difficulties in the way of removing boys from their masters. It seemed best, therefore, to drop a word in Sir Nathaniel Conant’s ear. He is the Chief Magistrate, and as I have some acquaintance with him the thing was easy. Mr Grimsby will take care how he disregards a warning from Bow Street, I assure you.’

  Arabella was a little sorry to think that Mr Grimsby was not to be cast into gaol, but being a sensible girl she readily appreciated the force of Mr Beaumaris’s arguments, and told him that she was very much obliged to him. She sat pondering deeply for some moments, while he watched her, wondering what now was in her head. ‘It should be the business of people with interest and fortune to enquire into such things!’ she said suddenly. ‘No one seems to care a button in a great city like this! I have seen such dreadful sights since I came to London – such beggary, and misery, and such countless ragged children who seem to have no parents and no homes! Lady Bridlington does not care to have anything of that nature spoken about, but, oh, I would like so much to be able to help such children as poor Jemmy!’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ he asked coolly.

  Her eyes flew to his; he knew that he had been too blunt: she would not tell him the truth about herself. Nor did she. After a tiny pause, she said: ‘Perhaps, one day, I shall.’

  He wondered whether her godmother had warned her against him, and when she excused herself from dancing with him at the next Assembly was sure of it.

  But the warning came from Lord Bridlington. Mr Beaumaris’s marked attentions to Arabella, including, as they had, so extraordinary a gesture as the adoption of Jemmy, had aroused the wildest hopes in Lady Bridlington’s shallow brain. If any of his previous amatory adventures had led him to perform a comparable deed, she at least had never heard of it. She began to indulge the fancy that his intentions were serious, and had almost written to give Mrs Tallant a hint of it when Lord Bridlington dashed her hopes.

  ‘You would do well, ma’am, to put your young friend a little on her guard with Beaumaris,’ he said weightily.

  ‘My dear Frederick, and so I did, at the outset! But he has become so particular in his attentions, showing such a decided preference for her, and trying to fix his interest with her by every means in his power, that I really begin to think he has formed a lasting attachment! Only fancy if she were to form such a connection, Frederick! I declare, I should feel it as much as if she were my own child! For it will be all due to me, you know!’

  ‘You would be very unwise to put such a notion into the girl’s head, Mama,’ he said, cutting short these rhapsodies. ‘I can tell you this: Beaumaris’s intimates don’t by any means regard his pursuit of Miss Tallant in that light!’

  ‘No?’ she said, in a faltering tone.

  ‘Far otherwise, ma’am! They are saying that it is all pique, because she does not appear to favour him above any other. I must say, I should not have expected her to have shown such good sense! You must know that men of his type, accustomed as he is to being courted and flattered, are put very much on their mettle by a rebuff from any female who has not been so foolish as to pick up the handkerchief they have carelessly tossed towards her. It puts me out of all patience to see anyone so spoiled and caressed! But be that as it may, you should know, Mama, that bets are being laid and taken at White’s against Miss Tallant’s holding out against this siege!’

  ‘How odious men are!’ exclaimed Lady Bridlington indignantly.

  Odious they might be, but if they were laying bets of that nature at the clubs there was nothing for a conscientious chaperon to do but warn her charge once more against lending too credulous an ear to an accomplished flirt. Arabella assured her that she had no intention of doing so.

  ‘No, my dear, very likely not,’ replied her ladyship. ‘But there is no denying that he is a very attractive man: I am conscious of it myself! Such an air! such easy address! But it is of no use to think of that! I am sadly afraid that it is a kind of sport with him to make females fall in love with him.’

  ‘I shall not do so!’ declared Arabella. ‘I like him very well, but, as I told you before, I am not such a go