The Nonesuch Read online

  It was on her way back to Staples that she was overtaken by Lindeth, driving the late Mr Calver’s gig. He pulled up beside her, his eyes dancing with amusement. ‘Good-morning, ma’am! You have missed such a capital sight! Do get up beside me, and let me drive you home!’

  She smiled up at him. ‘Why, thank you, but I enjoy walking, you know! What sight have I missed?’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll tell you – but you must let me drive you! I think it’s going to rain, and you have no umbrella.’

  ‘Very well,’ she replied, taking the hand he stretched down to her, and mounting nimbly into the gig. ‘Though I think the clouds are too high for rain. Don’t keep me in suspense another moment! What did I miss?’

  ‘Arthur Mickleby, trying to catch the thong of his whip over his head!’ he said, still laughing. ‘I missed it too, but if you’d seen him – ! What must he do but practise the trick half-a-mile back on this lane, just where the trees overhang the road! What a cawker!’

  She began to laugh too. ‘Oh, no! Did it get caught up?’

  ‘I should rather think it did! By the time I came along he was in such a rage, cursing the tree, and the whip, and that nappy gray of his, that I couldn’t have helped laughing if it had been to save my life! Every time he got hold of the butt, and tried to twitch the thong free, the gray took fright, and started forward, so of course Mickleby was obliged to let the whip go while he got the hard-mouthed brute quiet again. So there he was, backing under the tree with the whip swinging like a pendulum, and knocking his hat off !’

  Miss Trent, much enjoying this story, said: ‘To think I should have missed it! Did he succeed in freeing it?’

  ‘Oh, lord, no! It’s still there – but I’ll lay you odds it won’t be for long! Mickleby’s gone off home: to fetch a ladder, I think! Before anyone comes along and sees the whip dangling, and starts making enquiries! I would, too. He was ready to murder me, but there was nothing I could do about it.’

  ‘Poor Arthur! I expect you were perfectly odious!’

  ‘Not a bit of it! I picked up his hat for him! Of course, the whole thing was Waldo’s fault: Mickleby must have seen him catch his thong over his head. I tell Waldo that if he stays here much longer he’ll get to be so puffed up that there’ll be no bearing it! Mickleby, and the rest of them, copy every single thing he does, you know. If he took to wearing his coat inside out they’d do the same!’

  ‘Yes, I think they would,’ she agreed. ‘Fortunately, he never does anything extravagant! Indeed, he has exerted a very beneficial influence over his devout worshippers – and has won great popularity amongst their parents in consequence!’

  He grinned. ‘I know he has. He is the most complete hand! But he won’t be popular with ’em when they find that he only wanted Broom Hall for his wretched brats!’

  ‘Wretched brats?’ repeated Miss Trent, in a queer tone.

  ‘Well, that’s what my cousin George calls ’em!’ chuckled his lordship. ‘He don’t approve of them at all! He’s a very good fellow, but a trifle too full of starch and propriety. Always in the established mode, is George! He told Waldo that to be housing the brats in a respectable neighbourhood is carrying his eccentricity too far. I must say, I wouldn’t dare do it myself. Well, even the Rector was pretty taken aback when Waldo broached it to him, and I fancy he’s in a bit of a quake over what people like Mrs Mickleby will say to him when they learn that he was in Waldo’s confidence!’ He became aware suddenly that Miss Trent was curiously silent, and stopped short in the middle of his cheerful rattle, and glanced round to find that her eyes were fixed on his face. There was a blank look in them, which made him say uneasily: ‘Waldo told you about his children, didn’t he, ma’am?’

  She looked away, saying stonily: ‘No. He hasn’t mentioned them.’

  ‘Oh, lord!’ exclaimed Lindeth, in the liveliest dismay. ‘I had a notion that – Now I am in the suds! For God’s sake, ma’am, don’t betray me! I don’t want one of Waldo’s trimmings!’

  He spoke half-laughingly; she forced her lips into a faint smile, and replied: ‘You may be easy on that head, sir. I shall certainly not speak of it.’

  ‘He warned me he didn’t want it talked of,’ said Lindeth remorsefully. ‘He never does himself, you know, except, of course – But I’m not going to say another word!’ An alarming thought suddenly assailed him; he said apprehensively: ‘You aren’t scandalized, are you, ma’am? I mean, I know all the old tabbies will nab the rust at having brats of that sort planted at Broom Hall, but you don’t hold up your nose at what you don’t think quite the thing ! After all, most men wouldn’t care a straw what became of the poor little devils, much less squander a fortune on housing them, and feeding them, and educating them! You may say that he’s so full of juice that it can’t signify to him, but –’

  Miss Trent, feeling herself to be on the verge of strong hysterics, interrupted him. ‘My dear Lord Lindeth, I assure you that you have not the smallest need to say more! I collect that you and Sir Waldo will soon be leaving Yorkshire?’

  He hesitated, before saying: ‘Yes – that is, I am not perfectly sure! I must go home, of course, but – I hope to be in Yorkshire again as soon as – well, soon !’

  ‘Next month, for the York Races,’ she agreed. ‘I daresay you have frequently attended them. This will be the first time I have had that opportunity. Mrs Underhill has the intention of getting up an agreeable party for the event, you know.’

  He followed this lead readily enough; and the rest of the short drive was beguiled with innocuous chattery, in which his lordship bore decidedly the major part. He would have turned in at the gates of Staples, but Miss Trent would not permit it, saying that if he would set her down at the lodge she would enjoy the walk up the avenue to the house. Her command over both her voice and her countenance was such as to banish from his mind any lingering fear that his indiscreet tongue might have wreaked more mischief than had ever been in his head; and he drove off with a cheerful wave of his beaver.

  She walked up the avenue, keeping to the carriageway by instinct rather than by sight, her eyes looking blindly ahead; and the empty basket weighing heavily on her arm. Her thoughts were chaotic; before she could attempt to marshal them into even the semblance of order some period of quiet and solitude would be necessary to enable her to recover from the shock of Lindeth’s artless disclosure.

  Mercifully, it was granted to her. When she entered the house, it was wrapped in an unusual silence. Tiffany and Courtenay had not returned from their ride; and the servants, all sweeping and dusting finished, were in their own quarters. No one observed her return, and no one disturbed her when she reached the refuge of her bedchamber. She untied the strings of her bonnet, and mechanically smoothed them, before restoring the bonnet to the shelf in her wardrobe. As she turned away she became aware of the trembling of her limbs, and sat down limply, resting her elbows on the dressing-table before her, and sinking her head between her hands. She had not known that shock could affect one in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of a feverish illness she had suffered years before.

  It was long before she could compel her brain to consider rather than to remember. It might be useless to recall everything the Nonesuch had said to her, everything he had done, but there was no helping it. So many of his words had assumed a new significance! He had had a certain proposition to lay before her; and every intention of making a clean breast of the matter to her; he had known that he would fall under the displeasure of his neighbours, but had fancied that her voice would not swell the chorus of disapproval, because she had too liberal a mind. She wondered, in the detachment of despair, what she could have said or done to imbue him, and Lindeth too, with so false an estimate of her character.

  The first impulse of her mind had been to reject as incredible the disclosure that Sir Waldo was a hardened libertine; and even when she grew calmer, and was able to think ra