Arabella Read online

  There was a pregnant silence, while all the implications of this speech sank into the Vicar’s brain. He said at length, rather wistfully: ‘I had hoped that one day a suitable parti would present himself, to whom I might have given Arabella with a thankful heart.’

  Mrs Tallant threw him an indulgent glance. ‘Very likely, my dear, but it would be a great piece of nonsense to pretend that such things happen when one has made not the least push to bring them about! Eligible partis do not commonly appear as by magic in country villages: one must go out into the world to find them!’ She saw that the Vicar was looking a little pained, and laughed. ‘Now, do not tell me that it was otherwise with us, Mr Tallant, for you know very well I met you first at a party in York! I own it was not in the expectation of my falling in love with you that my Mama took me there, but in your turn you will own that we should never have met if I had sat at home waiting for you!’

  He smiled. ‘Your arguments are always unanswerable, my love. Yet I cannot entirely like it. I believe Arabella to be a well-behaved girl enough, but she is very young, after all, and I have thought sometimes that her spirits might, lacking wiser guidance, betray her into unbecoming conduct. Under Lady Bridlington’s roof, she would, I fear, lead a life gay to dissipation, such as must make her unfit afterwards for rational society.’

  ‘Depend upon it,’ said Mrs Tallant soothingly, ‘she is by far too well-behaved a girl to occasion us a moment’s anxiety. I am sure, too, that her principles are too sound to allow her to lose her head. To be sure, she can be a sad romp, and that, my dear sir, is because she has not yet enjoyed the advantages of town polish. I am hopeful of seeing her much improved by a season spent with Bella Bridlington. And if – mind, I only say if! – she were to contract a suitable alliance I am sure you would be as thankful as anyone could be!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the Vicar, sighing. ‘I should certainly be glad to see her comfortably established, the wife of a respectable man.’

  ‘And not the wife of young Dewsbury!’ interpolated Mrs Tallant.

  ‘Indeed, no! I cannot suppose that any child of mine could attain happiness with a man whom I must – with reluctance – think a very vulgar fellow!’

  ‘In that case, my dear,’ said Mrs Tallant, rising briskly to her feet, ‘I will write to accept Lady Bridlington’s most obliging invitation.’

  ‘You must do as you think right,’ he said. ‘I have never interfered with what you considered proper for your daughters.’

  Thus it was that, at four o’clock on this momentous day, when the Vicar joined his family at the dinner-table, he surprised them by making a humorous reference to Arabella’s projected trip. Not even Betsy would have ventured to have mentioned the scheme, for it was generally supposed that he must disapprove of it. But after grace had been said, and the family had disposed themselves about the long table, Arabella began, not very expeditiously, to carve one of the side-dishes, and the Vicar, looking up from his own labours in time to see her place a slightly mangled wing of chicken on a plate, remarked, with a twinkle: ‘I think Arabella must take lessons in carving before she goes into society, or she will disgrace us all by her unhandiness. It will not do, you know, my dear, to precipitate a dish into your neighbour’s lap, as you seem to be in danger of doing at this moment!’

  Arabella blushed, and protested. Sophia, the first to recover from the shock of hearing Papa speak with such good-humour of the London scheme, said: ‘Oh, but, Papa, I am sure it will not signify, for ten to one all the dishes are served by the footmen in grand houses!’

  ‘I stand corrected, Sophia,’ said the Vicar, with dry meekness.

  ‘Will Lady Bridlington have many footmen?’ asked Betsy, dazzled by this vision of opulence.

  ‘One to stand behind every chair,’ promptly replied Bertram. ‘And one to walk behind Arabella every time she desires to take the air; and two to stand up behind my lady’s carriage; and a round dozen, I daresay, to form an avenue in the front hall anytime her ladyship increases her covers for guests. When Arabella returns to us she will have forgotten how to pick up her own handkerchief, mark my words!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how she will go on in such a house!’ said Betsy, half-believing him.

  ‘Nor I, indeed!’ murmured Arabella.

  ‘I trust she will go on, as you not very elegantly phrase it, my child, exactly as she would in her own home,’ said the Vicar.

  Silence followed this rebuke. Bertram made a grimace at Arabella across the table, and Harry dug her surreptitiously in the ribs with his elbow. Margaret, who had been wrinkling her brow over her father’s words, ventured at last to say: ‘Yes, Papa, but I do not precisely see how she can do so! It must be so very different to what we are accustomed to! I should not be surprised, for instance, if she found herself obliged to wear her party-gowns every evening, and I am sure she will not help with the baking, or starch shirts, or feed the chickens, or – or anything of that nature!’

  ‘That was not quite what I meant, my dear,’ responded the Vicar repressively.

  ‘Will she not be made to do any work at all?’ exclaimed Betsy. ‘Oh, how much I wish I had a rich godmother!’

  This ill-timed remark brought an expression of grave displeasure to the Vicar’s face. It was evident to his family that the picture thus conjured up, of a daughter given over wholly to pleasure, was not one he could contemplate with anything but misgiving. Several darkling looks were cast at Betsy, which boded ill for one tactless enough to call down upon her sisters a lecture on the evils of idleness; but before the Vicar could speak, Mrs Tallant had intervened, calling Betsy to order for chattering, and saying cheerfully: ‘Well, and I think Papa will agree that Arabella is a good girl, and deserves this indulgence more than any of you. I am sure I do not know how I shall manage without her, for whenever I want a task performed I know I may rely upon her to do it. And, what is a great deal to the point, let me tell you all! – she never shows me a pouting face, or complains that she is bored, or falls into a fit of the sullens because she is obliged to mend her old gown instead of purchasing a new one.’

  It could scarcely be expected that this masterly speech would please the three damsels to whom it was pointedly addressed, but it had the happy effect of softening the Vicar’s countenance. He glanced at Arabella, who was furiously blushing and holding her head bent over her plate, and said gently: ‘Indeed, I am disposed to think that her character is well-established amongst us as one who wants neither sense nor feeling.’ Arabella looked up quickly, her eyes brightened by tears. He smiled at her, and said in a teasing voice: ‘If she will not let her tongue run like a fiddle-stick, nor express herself in terms which I might almost suppose she learns from her brothers, nor play pranks like a hoyden, I really believe I may indulge the hope that we shall not hear from Lady Bridlington that she is sunk quite beyond reproach in London!’

  Such was the relief of his children at escaping one of Papa’s homilies that this mild jest was received with a flattering degree of appreciation. Bertram seized the opportunity afforded by the general outcry of laughing protests to inform Betsy in a savage under-voice that if she opened her lips again he would most faithfully drop her in the middle of the duck-pond on the morrow, which promise so terrified her that she sat mumchance throughout the rest of the meal. Sophia, with real nobility of character, then asked Papa to explain something she had read in Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia, which the Vicar, whose only personal extravagance was his purchase of books, had lately added to his library. This was a happy inspiration: while her contemporaries gazed at Sophia in stupefaction, the Vicar, becoming quite animated, expounded at length on the subject, quite forgetting the immediate problems of the hour, and reducing his other offspring to a state of speechless indignation by saying, as he rose from the table, that he was glad to find that he had one daughter at least of a scholarly turn of mind.

  ‘And Sophy never read a word of the b