Arabella Read online

  At the end of a week, Mr Swindon, urged thereto by Mr Scunthorpe, delivered the new clothes, and, after purchasing such embellishments to his costume as a tall cane, a fob, and a Marseilles waistcoat, Bertram ventured to show himself in the Park, at the fashionable hour of five o’clock. Here he had the felicity of seeing Lord Coleraine, Georgy à Cockhorse, prancing down Rotten Row on his mettlesome steed; Lord Morton, on his long-tailed gray; and, amongst the carriages, Tommy Onslow’s curricle; a number of dashing gigs and tilburies; the elegant barouches of the ladies; and Mr Beaumaris’s yellow-winged phaeton-and-four, which he appeared to be able to turn within a space so small as to seem impossible to any mere whipster. Nothing would do for Bertram after that but to repair to the nearest jobmaster’s stables, and to arrange for the hire of a showy chestnut hack. Whatever imperfections might attach to the bearing and style of a young gentleman from the country, Bertram knew himself to be a bruising rider, and in this guise determined to show himself to the society which his sister already adorned.

  As luck would have it, he encountered her on the day when he first sallied forth, mounted upon his hired hack. She was sitting up beside Mr Beaumaris in his famous phaeton, animatedly describing to him the scene of the Drawing-room in which she had taken so humble a part. This event had necessarily occupied her thoughts so much during the past week that she had been able to spare very few for the activities of her adventurous brother. But when she caught sight of him, trotting along on his chestnut hack, she exclaimed, and said impulsively: ‘Oh, it is – Mr Anstey! Do pray stop, Mr Beaumaris!’

  He drew up his team obediently, while she waved to Bertram. He brought his hack up to the phaeton, and bowed politely, only slightly quizzing her with his eyes. Mr Beaumaris, glancing indifferently at him, caught this arch look, became aware of a slight tension in the trim figure beside him, and looked under his lazy eyelids from one to the other.

  ‘How do you do? How do you go on?’ said Arabella, stretching out her hand in its glove of white kid.

  Bertram bowed over it very creditably, and replied: ‘Famously! I mean to come – I mean to visit you some morning, Miss Tallant!’

  ‘Oh, yes, please do!’ Arabella looked up at her escort, blushed, and stammered: ‘May I p-present Mr Anstey to you, Mr Beaumaris? He – he is a friend of mine!’

  ‘How do you do?’ responded Mr Beaumaris politely. ‘From Yorkshire, Mr Anstey?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I have known Miss Tallant since I was in short coats!’ grinned Bertram.

  ‘You will certainly be much envied by Miss Tallant’s numerous admirers,’ responded Mr Beaumaris. ‘Are you staying in town?’

  ‘Just a short visit, you know!’ Bertram’s gaze reverted to the team harnessed to the phaeton, all four of them on the fret. ‘I say, sir, that’s a bang-up team you have in hand!’ he said, with all his sister’s impulsiveness. ‘Oh, don’t look at this hack of mine – showy, but I never crossed a greater slug in my life!’

  ‘You hunt, Mr Anstey?’

  ‘Yes, with my uncle’s pack, in Yorkshire. Of course, it is not like the Quorn country, or the Pytchley, but we get some pretty good runs, I can tell you!’ Bertram confided.

  ‘Mr Anstey,’ interrupted Arabella, fixing him with a very compelling look, ‘I think Lady Bridlington has sent you a card for her ball: I hope you mean to come!’

  ‘Well, you know, Bel – Miss Tallant!’ said Bertram, with disastrous lack of gallantry, ‘that sort of mummery is not much in my line!’ He perceived an anguished expression in her eyes, and added hastily: ‘That is, delighted, I am sure! Yes, yes, I shall be there! And I shall hope to have the honour of standing up with you!’ he ended punctiliously.

  Mr Beaumaris was obliged to pay attention to his team, but he did not miss the minatory note in Arabella’s voice as she said: ‘I collect we are to have the pleasure of receiving a visit from you tomorrow, sir!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Bertram. ‘Yes, of course! As a matter of fact, I shall be taking a look-in at Tattersall’s, but – Yes, to be sure! I’ll come to visit you all right and tight!’

  He then doffed his new hat, and bowed, and rode off at an easy canter. Arabella appeared to be conscious that some explanation was called for. She said airily: ‘You must know, sir, that we have been brought up almost as – as brother and sister!’

  ‘I thought perhaps you had,’ responded Mr Beaumaris gravely.

  She glanced sharply up at his profile. He seemed to be wholly absorbed in the task of manoeuvring the phaeton through a gap between a dowager’s landaulet and a smart barouche with a crest on the panel. She reassured herself with the reflection that whereas she favoured her Mama, Bertram was said to be the image of what the Vicar had been at the same age, and said: ‘But I was telling you about the Drawing-room, and how graciously the Princess Mary smiled at me! She was wearing the most magnificent toilet I ever saw in my life! Lady Bridlington tells me that when she was young she was thought to be the most handsome of all the princesses. I thought she looked to be very good-natured.’

  Mr Beaumaris agreed to it, reserving to himself his enjoyment in hearing this innocent description of the Regent’s most admired sister. Miss Tallant, entrancing him with one of her unguarded moments of naïvety, then told him of the elegant, gilt-edged card of invitation which had arrived that very day in Park Street from no less a personage than the Lord Chamberlain, who informed Lady Bridlington that he was commanded by his Royal Highness the Prince Regent to invite her, and Miss Tallant, to a Dress-party at Carlton House on Thursday next, to have the honour of meeting (in large capitals) Her Majesty The Queen. He said that he should be on the look-out for her at Carlton House, and refrained from observing that the Regent’s parties, planned as they were on a magnificent scale which offended the taste of such arbiters of true elegance as himself, were amongst the worst squeezes in town, and had even been known to include such vulgarities as a fountain playing in the middle of the dinner-table to which he had himself been bidden.

  He entered into her feelings upon this event with far more sympathy than did Bertram, when he presented himself in Park Street on the following afternoon. Lady Bridlington having retired, as she always did, to her couch, to recruit her energies for an evening to be spent at no fewer than four different parties, Arabella was able to enjoy the luxury of a tête-à-tête with her favourite brother. While acknowledging handsomely that he was glad to think of her being invited to Carlton House, he said that he supposed there would be a vast rout of fashionables present, and that for himself he preferred to spend his evenings in a simpler style. He further begged her not to favour him with a description of the gown she meant to wear. She perceived that he was not much interested in her social triumphs, and turned willingly enough to his own chosen amusements. He was slightly evasive on this subject, replying to her questions in general terms. His experience of the female sex had not led him to indulge his imagination with the belief that even an adoring sister would regard with favour such delights as a visit to Cribb’s Parlour, where he had actually handled the Champion’s famous silver cup, presented to him after his last fight, some years previously, against Molyneux, the Black; the blowing of a cloud at the Daffy Club, surrounded by young Bloods of the Fancy, veterans of the Ring, promising novices, and an array of portraits hanging round the walls of past champions whose very names filled him with awe; or a lounge through the famous Saloon at Covent Garden, where the bold, ogling glances of the Cyprians who made this haunt their hunting-ground both shocked and terrified him. Nor did he tell her of an assignation he had made with a new acquaintance, encountered at Tattersall’s that very morning. He had seen at a glance that Mr Jack Carnaby was quite the thing – almost a Tulip of Fashion, in fact, if dress and air were anything to judge by – but something warned him that Arabella would regard with horror his approaching introduction into a snug little gaming-house under the auspices of this gentleman. It would be of very little use to assure her that