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  In pursuance of this resolve, Mr Beaumaris sent for his curricle next morning. Ulysses, who had shared his breakfast, bundled ahead of him down the steps of his house, leaped into the curricle, and disposed himself on the passenger’s seat with all the air of a dog born into the purple.

  ‘No!’ said Mr Beaumaris forcibly. Ulysses descended miserably from the curricle, and prostrated himself on the flag-way. ‘Let me tell you, my friend,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘that I have a certain reputation to maintain, which your disreputable appearance would seriously jeopardise! Do not be alarmed! – I am not, alas, going out of your life for ever!’ He climbed into the curricle, and said: ‘You may stop grinning, Clayton, and let ’em go!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said his groom, obeying both these behests, and swinging himself expertly up on to the curricle as it passed him. After a minute to two, having twice glanced over his shoulder, he ventured to inform Mr Beaumaris that the little dog was following him.

  Mr Beaumaris uttered an oath, and reined in his reluctant pair. The faithful hound, plodding valiantly along, with heaving ribs, and several inches of tongue hanging from his parted jaws, came up with the curricle, and once more abased himself in the road. ‘Damn you!’ said Mr Beaumaris. ‘I suppose you are capable of following me all the way to Wimbledon! It now remains to be seen whether my credit is good enough to enable me to carry you off. Get up!’

  Ulysses was very much out of breath, but at these words he mustered up enough strength to scramble into the curricle once more. He wagged a grateful tail, climbed on to the seat beside Mr Beaumaris, and sat there panting blissfully. Mr Beaumaris read him a short lecture on the evils of blackmail, which sorely tried the self-control of his groom, discouraged him peremptorily from hurling a challenge at a mere pedestrian dog in the gutter, and proceeded on his way to Wimbledon.

  The Dowager Duchess of Wigan, who was the terror of four sons, three surviving daughters, numerous grandchildren, her man of business, her lawyer, her physician, and a host of dependants, greeted her favourite grandson characteristically. He found her imbibing nourishment in the form of slices of toast dipped in tea, and bullying the unmarried daughter who lived with her. She had been a great belle in her day, and the ravages of her former beauty were still discernible in the delicate bones of her face. She had a way of looking at her visitors with an eagle-like stare, had never been known to waste politeness on anyone, and was scathingly contemptuous of everything modern. Her children were inordinately proud of her, and lived in dread of her periodical commands to them to present themselves at her house. Upon her butler’s ushering Mr Beaumaris into her morning-room, she directed one of her piercing looks at him, and said: ‘Oh! So it’s you, is it? Why haven’t you been to see me since I don’t know when?’

  Mr Beaumaris, bowing deeply over her hand, replied imperturbably: ‘On the occasion of my last visit, ma’am, you told me you did not wish to see me again until I had mended my ways.’

  ‘Well, have you?’ said the Duchess, conveying another slip of soaked toast to her mouth.

  ‘Certainly, ma’am: I am in a fair way to becoming a philanthropist,’ he replied, turning to greet his aunt.

  ‘I don’t want any more of them about me,’ said her grace. ‘It turns my stomach enough already to have to sit here watching Caroline at her everlasting knitting for the poor. In my day, we gave ’em vails, and there was an end to it. Not that I believe you. Here, take this pap away, Caroline, and ring the bell! Maudling one’s inside with tea never did any good to anyone yet, and never will. I’ll tell Hadleigh to fetch up a bottle of Madeira – the lot your grandfather laid down, not that rubbish Wigan sent me t’other day!’

  Lady Caroline removed the tray, but asked her parent in a shrinking tone if she thought that Dr Sudbury would approve.

  ‘Sudbury’s an old woman, and you’re a fool, Caroline!’ replied the Duchess. ‘You go away, and leave me to talk to Robert! I never could abide a pack of females hangin’ round me!’ she added, as Lady Caroline gathered up her knitting: ‘Tell Hadleigh the good Madeira! He knows. Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself now you have had the impudence to show your face here again?’

  Mr Beaumaris, closing the door behind his aunt, came back into the room, and said with deceptive meekness that he was happy to find his grandmother in such excellent health and spirits.

  ‘Graceless jackanapes!’ retorted the Duchess with relish. She ran her eye over his handsome person. ‘You look very well – at least, you would if you didn’t make such a figure of yourself in that rig! When I was a girl, no gentleman would have dreamed of paying a social call without powder, let me tell you! Enough to make your grandfather turn in his grave to see what you’ve all come to, with your skimpy coats, and your starched collars, and not a bit of lace to your neckcloth, or your wristbands! If you can sit down in those skin-tight breeches, or pantaloons, or whatever you call ’em, do so!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can sit down!’ said Mr Beaumaris, disposing himself in a chair opposite to hers. ‘My pantaloons, like Aunt Caroline’s gifts to the poor, are knitted, and so adapt themselves reasonably well to my wishes.’

  ‘Ha! Then I’ll tell Caroline to knit you a pair for Christmas. That’ll send her into hysterics, for a bigger prude I never met!’

  ‘Very likely, ma’am, but as I am sure that my aunt would obey you, however much her modesty was offended, I must ask you to refrain. The embroidered slippers which reached me last Christmas tried me high enough. I wonder what she thought I should do with them?’

  The Duchess gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Lord bless you, she don’t think! You shouldn’t send her handsome gifts.’

  ‘I send you very handsome gifts,’ murmured Mr Beaumaris, ‘but you never reciprocate!’

  ‘No, and I never shall. You’ve got more than’s good for you already. What have you brought me this time?’

  ‘Nothing at all – unless you have a fancy for a mongrel-dog?’

  ‘I can’t abide dogs, or cats either. Fifty thousand a year if you’ve a penny, and you don’t bring me as much as a posy! Out with it, Robert! What did you come for?’

  ‘To ask you whether you think I should make a tolerable husband, ma’am.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed her grace, sitting bolt upright in her chair, and grasping the arms with her frail, jewelled hands. ‘You’re never going to offer for the Dewsbury girl?’

  ‘Good God, no!’

  ‘Oh, so that’s yet another idiot who’s wearing the willow for you, is it?’ said her grace, who had her own ways of discovering what was going on in the world from which she had retired. ‘Who is it now? One of these days you’ll go a step too far, mark my words!’

  ‘I think I have,’ said Mr Beaumaris.

  She stared at him, but before she could speak her butler had entered the room, staggering under a specimen of the ducal plate which her grace had categorically refused to relinquish to the present Duke, on the twofold score that it was her personal property, and that he shouldn’t have married anyone who gave his mother such a belly-ache as that die-away ninny he had set in her place. This impressive tray Hadleigh set down on the table, casting, as he did so, a very expressive look at Mr Beaumaris. Mr Beaumaris nodded his understanding, and rose, and went to pour out the wine. He handed his grandmother a modest half-glass, to which she instantly took exception, demanding to know whether he had the impertinence to suppose that she could not carry her wine.

  ‘I daresay you can drink me under the table,’ replied Mr Beaumaris, ‘but you know very well it’s extremely bad for your health, and also that you cannot bully me into pandering to your outrageous commands.’ He then lifted her disengaged hand to his lips, and said gently: ‘You are a rude and an overbearing old woman, ma’am, but I hope you may live to be a hundred, for I like you so much better than any other of my relatives!’

  ‘I daresay that’s not saying much,’ she remarked, rather please