Snowdrift and Other Stories Read online

  The Marquis grasped her wrist in a somewhat cavalier fashion, and said angrily: ‘Let me have no vapours, if you please! Come into the parlour!’

  Miss Wyse uttered a throbbing moan. ‘How could you, Granville? Oh, I wish I were dead!’

  The Marquis fairly dragged her into the parlour, and shut the door upon the landlord’s scarcely-veiled curiosity. ‘You do not waste much time, Fanny,’ he said. ‘Is this a sample of what I am to expect in the future? The very day our engagement is announced!’

  ‘Do not speak to me!’ shuddered Miss Wyse, who seemed to have a leaning towards the dramatic. ‘I am so mortified, so –’

  ‘I know, I know!’ he interrupted. ‘But you would have done better to have stayed at home.’

  Miss Wyse, who had tottered to the nearest chair, sprang up again at this, and said: ‘No! Never! Do you hear me, Carlington? Never!’

  ‘I hear you,’ he replied. ‘So, I imagine, can everyone else in the place. There is a great deal I must say to you, but this is not the moment. My whole object now is to avert a scandal. Explanations – oh yes, they will be hard enough to make! – can come later.’

  ‘I don’t care a fig for scandal!’ declared Miss Wyse stormily. ‘People may say what they please: it is nothing to me! But that I should find you here – that you should have – Oh, it is cruel of you, Carlington!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the truth hard to believe, but I promise you you shall hear the truth from me. I beg of you, be calm! I will myself escort you back to town –’

  ‘Do not touch me!’ said Miss Wyse, retreating. ‘You shan’t take me back! I won’t go with you!’

  ‘Don’t be such a little fool!’ said the Marquis, exasperated. ‘I warn you, this is no moment to play-act to me! I shall take you home, and there shall be no scandal, but help you to create a scene I will not!’

  Miss Wyse burst into tears. ‘I dare say you’re very angry with me,’ she sobbed, ‘and I know I have behaved badly, but indeed, indeed I couldn’t help it! I meant to be sensible – really I did, Carlington! – but I couldn’t bear it! Oh, you don’t understand! You’ve no s-sensibility at all!’

  Rather pale, he answered: ‘Don’t distress yourself, Fanny. Upon my soul, there is no need! This escapade means nothing: I will engage to give you no cause for complaint when we are married.’

  ‘I can’t!’ said Miss Wyse desperately. ‘You shan’t escort me home!’

  He regarded her with a kind of weary patience. ‘Then perhaps you will tell me what you do mean to do?’ he said.

  Miss Wyse lowered her handkerchief and looked boldly across at him. ‘I’m going to Gretna Green!’ she announced. ‘And nothing you can say will stop me!’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ he demanded. ‘There’s no question of going to Gretna! And if there were what in the name of heaven could possess you to go there?’

  ‘I’m going to be married there!’ said Miss Wyse in a rapt voice.

  ‘Oh no, you are not!’ replied the Marquis forcibly. ‘Though it is just like you to do your best to turn everything to dramatic account! If you go to Gretna, you’ll go alone!’

  Miss Wyse gave a shriek at this. ‘Good God, what do you mean to do?’ she cried, running forward, and clasping her hands about his arm. ‘Granville, I implore you, have mercy!’

  The Marquis disengaged himself, looking down at her in the liveliest astonishment. Even supposing her to be on the verge of a fit of strong hysterics her behaviour seemed to him inexplicable. He was just about to enquire the reason for her last outburst when the door into the coffee-room was thrust open, and a young man in a bottle-green coat strode into the parlour, and checked on the threshold, staring in a challenging way at Carlington.

  His bearing, though not his dress, proclaimed the soldier. He was about five-and-twenty years old, with a fresh, pleasant countenance, and a curly crop of brown hair brushed into the Brutus style made fashionable by Mr Brummell.

  Carlington, turning his head to observe the newcomer, said somewhat irascibly: ‘This, my good sir, is a private room!’

  Miss Wyse released Carlington’s arm, and sped towards the intruder, upon whose manly bosom she seemed more than half inclined to swoon. ‘Henry!’ she cried. ‘This is Carlington himself!’

  Henry said in a grave, rather conscious voice: ‘I apprehended that it could be none other. I beg of you, however, not to be alarmed. My lord, I must request the favour of a few words with you alone.’

  ‘Oh no, he will kill you!’ quavered Miss Wyse, grasping the lapels of his coat.

  The Marquis put a hand to his brow. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘I do not expect my name to be known to your lordship, but it is Dobell – Henry Dobell, Captain in the –th Foot, and at present on furlough from the Peninsula. I am aware that my action must appear to you desperate; of the impropriety of it I am, alas, miserably aware. Yet, my lord, I believe that when it is explained any man of sensibility must inevitably –’

  The Marquis checked this flow of eloquence with an upflung hand. ‘Captain Dobell, have you ever been badly foxed?’ he said sternly.

  ‘Foxed, sir?’ repeated the Captain, quite taken aback.

  ‘Yes, foxed!’ snapped the Marquis.

  The Captain gave a cough, and replied: ‘Well, sir, well –! I must suppose that every man at some time or another –’

  ‘Have you?’ interrupted the Marquis.

  ‘Yes, sir, I have!’

  ‘Then you must know what it is to have a head like mine this morning, and I beg you’ll spare me any more long-winded speeches, and tell me in plain words what you’re doing here!’ said Carlington.

  Miss Wyse, finding herself out of the picture, thought it proper at this moment to interject: ‘I love him!’

  ‘You need not hang upon his neck if you do,’ replied the Marquis unsympathetically. ‘Is he a relative of yours whom you have dragged into this affair?’

  ‘Relative! No!’ said Miss Wyse, affronted. ‘He is the man I love!’

  ‘The man you –?’ The Marquis stopped short. ‘Good God, is this an elopement?’ he demanded.

  ‘But – but you know it is!’ stammered Miss Wyse.

  The Marquis, who had almost reeled under the shock, recovered himself, and came towards them. ‘No, no, I’d not the least idea of it!’ he said. ‘I thought – well, it’s no matter what I thought. You must allow me to offer you my most sincere felicitations! Are you on your way to Gretna Green? Let me advise you to lose no time! In fact, I think you should set forward again at once. You may be pursued, you know.’

  ‘But did you not come in pursuit of us, sir?’ asked the astonished Captain.

  ‘No, no, nothing of the sort!’ replied the Marquis, grasping his hand, and wringing it fervently. ‘You have nothing in the world to fear from me, my dear fellow. I wish you every imaginable happiness!’

  ‘Every imaginable happiness?’ cried Miss Wyse indignantly. ‘Have you forgot that I am engaged to you, Carlington?’

  ‘You will be much happier with Henry,’ the Marquis assured her.

  ‘The advertisement will be in today’s Gazette!’

  ‘Don’t let that weigh with you! Is a mere advertisement to stand in the path of true love?’ said the Marquis. ‘I’ll repudiate it immediately. Leave everything to me!’

  ‘Don’t you want to marry me?’ gasped Miss Wyse.

  ‘Not in the – Not when your heart is given to another!’ said his lordship, with aplomb.

  ‘But Mama said – and your mama too – and everybody – that I must accept you because you were desperately in love with me, and it had been understood for so many years! Only when I had done it I knew all at once I couldn’t bear it, and I sent for Henry, and –’

  ‘Very right and proper,’ approved his lordship. ‘I could wish, of course, that you had sent for Henry before I wrote the advertisement for the Gazette, but never mind that now. The thing is for you to waste no time