Snowdrift and Other Stories Read online

  ‘Indeed, ma’am, I believe Mr Edmund Monksley to be a most unexceptionable young man,’ replied Miss Fairfax, perceiving that in Lady Wilfrid Lucilla would find an eager ally. ‘The only objections are Lucilla’s youth and Mr Monksley’s lack of fortune.’

  Lady Wilfrid fixed her with a singularly calculating gaze. ‘My nephew never had the least disposition to sympathise with the Pangs of Love,’ she uttered. ‘With me, it is otherwise. I have the tender heart of a parent, and such vulgar considerations as poverty, or inequality of birth, weigh with me not at all. Nothing could be more affecting than Lucilla’s story! But then I am all sensibility, quite unlike Shane, who has a heart of stone! I shall tell him that he has no right to forbid this marriage.’

  The Honourable Frederick, who had apparently been pondering the situation, once more ceased sucking the knob of his cane to say in a tone of great relief, ‘Well this is famous! If he does not wed the governess, and we can prevail upon him to consent to Lucilla’s marriage to this swooning-fellow, I do not at all despair of a happy issue.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Miss Fairfax, conscious of her reddening cheeks. ‘I think I should go downstairs to assist in restoring Mr Monksley.’

  By the time Miss Fairfax reached his side, Mr Monksley, a fresh-faced young man, with very blue eyes and a decided chin, had recovered consciousness. Finding himself looking straight up into the countenance of his Lucilla’s guardian, he at once embarked on a speech, which would no doubt have become extremely impassioned had not the Earl cut it short by saying, ‘Yes, you may tell me all that later, but you had better be still now until the surgeon has attended to your shoulder.’

  Tenderly clasping one of Mr Monksley’s hands, Miss Gellibrand said in resolute accents, ‘Nothing you can say, Shane, will prevent my going to Gretna as soon as Edmund is well enough!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said his lordship. ‘These Gretna weddings are not at all the thing, and you had better put such romantic fustian out of your head at once.’

  ‘Believe me, my lord,’ said Mr Monksley faintly, ‘nothing but the sternest necessity could have prevailed upon me to propose so clandestine a union to one for whom I entertain feelings of the deepest respect!’

  ‘I wish you will not talk to me like a play-actor!’ said his lordship irritably. ‘If you must marry my ward, let it at least be in a respectable fashion!’

  ‘Angel!’ cried Miss Gellibrand, lifting a glowing face.

  His lordship regarded her with the utmost disfavour. ‘If it is angelic to be more than willing to rid myself of a most tiresome charge, I am certainly an angel,’ he said witheringly.

  The arrival of a surgeon, carrying an ominous black bag, created a timely diversion. Mr Monksley’s broken shoulder was set and securely bound; two of the serving-men carried him upstairs to a bedchamber; and it was not until he had been comfortably disposed between sheets, and was being fed with spoonfuls of broth by his adoring Lucilla, that Miss Fairfax had leisure to go in search of her employer. She found him in the parlour belowstairs, giving some directions to the landlord. When he saw her, he smiled, and held out his hand, a gesture which made her feel very much inclined to burst into tears. The landlord having bowed himself out of the room, she said, however, in as prosaic a tone as she was able to command, ‘Mr Monksley is feeling much easier now. You have been so very kind, sir!’

  ‘Oh, the devil take Monksley, and Lucilla too!’ said his lordship. ‘We have more important things to consider. What in thunder are we to do, Mary Fairfax? I told that abominable old woman that we were going to be married at Gretna Green. But no consideration on earth would prevail upon me to behave in such a preposterous fashion! Besides, I cannot possibly take you to Gretna without another rag to your back than what you stand up in.’

  ‘My dear sir, there is no need for you to trouble your head about it,’ said Miss Fairfax, trying to smile. ‘I told Lady Wilfrid there was no question of our going to Gretna.’

  ‘You did, did you?’ said the Earl, looking at her rather keenly.

  ‘Yes of course, sir. Where – where is Lady Wilfrid?’

  ‘Gone to put up at the George, where I heartily hope she may find the sheets damp!’

  ‘But – but why?’ stammered Miss Fairfax.

  ‘Because,’ said the Earl, ‘I told her that we were going to be married just as soon as I can procure a licence!’

  Miss Fairfax had the oddest sensation of turning first hot and then cold. ‘You are being absurd!’ she said, in a voice which did not seem to belong to her.

  ‘Mary,’ said his lordship, taking her hands in his, and holding them fast, ‘have those shocking faults of mine given you a disgust of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Fairfax weakly. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘I don’t know how I came to be such a fool (but you said I was stupid), yet – would you believe it? – it was not until my aunt accused me of it that I knew I had been in love with you for years!’

  Miss Fairfax trembled. ‘But you can’t! Marry to disoblige your family? Oh, no, no!’

  ‘My family be damned!’ said the Earl. ‘I wish you will look at me, Mary!’

  ‘Well, I won’t,’ said Miss Fairfax, making a feeble attempt to free her hands. ‘I did think that you regarded me sometimes with – with a certain partiality, but I know, if you do not, how shocking such a match would be, and I won’t marry you. I shall look for another eligible situation.’

  ‘No one will employ you without a testimonial, and I shan’t give you one.’

  ‘I think you are extremely disagreeable, besides being mad!’ said Miss Fairfax, in a scolding tone.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Earl, taking her in his arms. ‘And I have also the most overbearing manners, so you may as well stop arguing with me, and kiss me instead.’

  Miss Fairfax, apparently struck by this advice, abandoned her half-hearted struggles, said, ‘Oh, my dearest!’ in a wavering voice, and subsided meekly into his embrace.

  Runaway Match

  AS THE POST-CHAISE and four entered the town of Stamford, young Mr Morley, who had spent an uncomfortable night being jolted over the road, remorselessly prodded his companion.

  ‘We have reached Stamford,’ he announced. ‘We change horses here, and whatever you may choose to do, I shall bespeak breakfast.’

  Miss Paradise, snugly ensconced in her corner of the chaise, opened a pair of dark eyes, blinked once or twice, yawned behind her feather muff, and sat up.

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Paradise, surveying the spring morning with enthusiasm. ‘It is quite daylight! I have had the most delightful sleep.’

  Mr Morley repeated his observation, not without a hint of pugnacity in his voice.

  Since the start of the elopement, rather more than nine hours before, Miss Paradise, who was just eighteen, had been a trifle difficult to manage. She had begun by taking strong exception to the ladder he had brought for her escape from her bedroom window. Her remarks, delivered in an indignant undertone as she had prepared to descend the ladder, might have been thought to augur ill for the success of the runaway match; but Mr Morley, who was also just eighteen, had quarrelled with Miss Paradise from the cradle, and thought her behaviour the most natural in the world. The disposition she showed to take the management of her flight into her own hands led to further wrangles, because, however much she might have been in the habit of taking the lead in their past scrapes, an elopement was a very different matter, and called for a display of male initiative. But when he had tried to point this out to Miss Paradise she had merely retorted, ‘Stuff! It was I who made the plan to elope. Now, Rupert, you know it was!’

  This rejoinder was unanswerable, and Mr Morley, who had been arguing in favour of putting up for the night at a respectable posting-house, had allowed himself to be overruled. They had travelled swiftly northwards by moonlight (a circumstance which had filled the romantic Miss Paradise with rapture) with the result that a good deal of Mr Morley’s zest for the adventure had worn off by the time he made his announcemen