Arabella Read online

  ‘Good God, why did he not?’

  He coughed in an embarrassed way. ‘Might have been a little bit on the go,’ he said diffidently. ‘Scared of being pounded by the tipstaffs, too. Come to think of it, might easily be if he stayed with me. Dashed tradesmen know he’s a friend of mine! At all events, he ain’t with me – didn’t send me word where he was till this morning – feeling too blue-devilled, I daresay. Don’t blame him: would myself!’

  ‘Oh, poor Bertram, poor Bertram!’ she cried, wringing her hands. ‘I do not care where he is, see him I must, if I have to go to this Willow Walk alone!’

  ‘Good God, ma’am, mustn’t do that!’ he exclaimed, appalled. ‘Very rough set of coves in Willow Walk! Besides –’ He paused, looking acutely uncomfortable. ‘Not quite himself!’

  ‘Oh, he must be ill with worry, and despair! Nothing would keep me from him at a such a time! I will fetch my bonnet, and we may be off directly!’

  ‘Ma’am, he won’t like it!’ Mr Scunthorpe said desperately. ‘Very likely be ready to murder me only for telling you! You can’t see him!’

  ‘Why can I not?’

  ‘He’s been in the sun a trifle! You see – very understandable thing to do! – shot the cat!’

  ‘Shot the cat?’

  ‘Can’t blame him!’ Mr Scunthorpe pleaded. ‘Wouldn’t have told you, if you hadn’t been so set on seeing him! Felt desperate – shot the cat – felt better – kept on swallowing balls of fire – result, looking as queer as Dick’s hatband, when I saw him!’

  ‘Do you mean that he has been drinking?’ demanded Arabella. ‘What, in heaven’s name, is a ball of fire?’

  ‘Brandy,’ said Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Devilish bad brandy too. Told him to make Blue Ruin the preferred suit. Safer.’

  ‘Every word you say makes me the more determined to go to him!’ declared Arabella.

  ‘Assure you much better to send him some blunt, ma’am!’

  ‘I will take him all I have, but oh, it is so little! I cannot think yet what is to be done!’

  Mr Scunthorpe pointed significantly to the ceiling. ‘You don’t think the old lady – ?’ he suggested delicately.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, no, no! Impossible!’

  Mr Scunthorpe looked a little thoughtful. ‘In that case, ma’am, better take you to him. Talking very wildly this morning. No saying what he might do.’

  She almost ran to the door. ‘We have not a moment to waste, then!’

  ‘No, no!’ he assured her. ‘No need to be on the fret! Won’t cut his throat today! Told the girl to hide his razor.’

  ‘What girl?’

  He became very much confused, blushed, and uttered: ‘Girl he sent to my lodging with a message. Been looking after him.’

  ‘Oh, God bless her!’ Arabella cried fervently. ‘What is her name? How much I must owe her!’

  As the lady in question had introduced herself to Mr Scunthorpe as Leaky Peg, he was obliged to take refuge in prevarication, and to hope devoutly that they would not encounter her in Willow Walk. He said that he had not caught her name. Arabella seemed a little disappointed, but since this was no time for wasting over trifles she said no more, but ran out of the room to fetch her bonnet and shawl.

  It was impossible for her to leave the house without the butler’s being aware of it, but although he looked surprised, he made no comment, and in a few minutes’ time she and Mr Scunthorpe were seated in a ramshackle hackney coach, which seemed as though, many years before, it had formed part of a nobleman’s equipage, but which had fallen into sad decay. The coverings to the seats and the squabs were tattered and dirty, and the vehicle smelled strongly of beer and old leather. These evils Arabella scarcely noticed, in such a turmoil was her mind. It was a struggle to support her spirits at all; she felt ready to sink; and was unable, while in such a state of agitation, to form any plan for Bertram’s relief. The only solution which had so far presented itself to her mind was an instinctive impulse, no sooner thought of than recoiled from, to send off an express to Heythram. Mr Scunthorpe’s suggestion of applying to Lady Bridlington she well knew to be useless, nor would her pride tolerate the putting of herself under such added obligation to her godmother. Wild notions of selling Mama’s diamonds, and the pearl necklet that had belong to Grandmama Tallant, could not, she knew, be entertained, for these trinkets were not hers to dispose of at will.

  Beside her, Mr Scunthorpe, feeling vaguely that her spirits required support, tried to entertain her by pointing out, conscientiously, the various places of interest the hackney drove past. She scarcely heeded him, but when they reached Westminster, began to look about her a little, insensibly cheered by the respectability of the neighbourhood. But the hackney lumbered on, and in a surprisingly short space of time it was hard to realise that she must be within a stone’s throw of the Abbey, so squalid were her surroundings. An unlucky attempt made by Mr Scunthorpe to divert her, by pointing out an ugly brick structure which he said was the Tothill Fields Bridewell, made her shudder so alarmingly that he hastily informed her that it was so crammed to overflowing with felons that there was no room for another soul behind its walls. A row of squat, almshouses was the next object of interest to be seen. This was followed by a charity school, but the district seemed to Arabella to be largely composed of wretched hovels, ancient mansions, fallen into depressing decay, and a superfluity of taverns. Frowsy looking women stood in the doorways of some of the hovels; half-naked urchins turned cartwheels on the dirty cobbles, in the hope of gaining largesse from persons well-breeched enough to travel in hackney coaches; at one corner, a fat woman, seated behind an iron cauldron appeared to be dispensing tea to a curiously ill-assorted crowd of persons, ranging from bricklayers to bedizened young women; various street-cries echoed in the narrow streets, from offers of coal to entreaties for old iron; and the male population seemed to consist entirely of scavengers, sweeps, and unidentifiable persons with blue jowls, and mufflers round their necks in place of collars.

  After passing the entrances to several noisome alleys, the hackney turned into Willow Walk, and proceeded down it for some way before drawing up outside a dingy house, whose windows showed, besides fluttering oddments of washing hung out to dry, several broken panes of glass. In the open doorway, an old woman sat in a rocking-chair, puffing at a clay pipe, and engaged in conversation with a younger female, who held a squalling infant on one arm, which she from time to time shook, or refreshed from a black bottle, from which she herself took frequent pulls. Arabella had no positive knowledge of what was in that black bottle, but that it must contain strong liquor she felt convinced. The thought of Bertram was momentarily banished from her head; as Mr Scunthorpe handed her down from the hackney, and punctiliously brushed off the straws that clung to the flounce of her simple cambric dress, she opened her reticule, hunted in it for a shilling, and astonished the mother of the infant by pressing it into her hand, and saying earnestly: ‘Pray buy the baby some milk! Oh, pray do not give it that horrid stuff!’

  Both women stared at her with fallen jaws. The old Irishwoman, the first to regain command over her faculties, burst into a cackle of mirth, and informed her that she was talking to no less a personage than Quartern Sue. This conveyed little to Arabella, but while she was still puzzling over the appellation, Quartern Sue, recovering from her stupefaction, had launched forth into a catalogue of her embarrassments, and was holding her hand cupped suggestively. Mr Scunthorpe, beads of sweat standing upon his brow, took it upon himself to hustle his charge into the house, whispering to her that she must not get into talk with such ill-famed women. Quartern Sue, never one to let slip an opportunity, followed them, her beggar’s whine rising to a crescendo, but was repulsed at the foot of a rickety, uncarpeted stairway by a strapping young woman, with a tousle of greasy yellow hair, a countenance which not all the ravages of gin had entirely deprived of comeliness, and a tawdry dress, stained in various pl