The Foundling Read online

  He almost thrust his guest into a chair by the fire, and hurried off in search of his wife. He found her in her dressing-gown, in conference with the housekeeper, and surrounded by a litter of bandboxes. She was a handsome woman, dressed in the first style of elegance in a Rutland half-robe, with a striped zephyr shawl, and a somewhat formidable turban. Her nose was high-bridged, and her blue eyes at once penetrating and cold. One glance at her spouse sufficed to make her dismiss the housekeeper; and as soon as this portly dame had curtsied herself out of the room, she said: ‘Well, Ampleforth? What is it?’

  ‘I have Sale downstairs,’ he said. ‘He has been with me this past half-hour.’

  ‘Sale!’ she exclaimed, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘My love, he has made me an offer for Harriet’s hand. He expressed himself with the greatest propriety: I think you would have been pleased to have heard him.’

  ‘I was beginning to think he meant to cry off!’ she said, in the outspoken way which always made her lord wince. ‘So he has offered at last! He could not have chosen a more awkward moment! The drawing-room is under holland covers already, and it is quite out of the question for us to be asking him to dine. We have only the under-cook here.’

  ‘Upon my word, I had thought you would have been glad of the news!’ said his lordship, quite astonished.

  ‘Pray do not talk to me in that foolish manner, Ampleforth! You know very well that I am excessively glad of it, but why he might not have made his offer at a more seasonable time I have not the remotest conjecture. We should have held a dress-party, and the announcement should have been made at it. People will think it a shabbily contrived business!’

  ‘You forget, ma’am,’ rather feebly suggested his lordship, ‘that we are still in black gloves. It will not be thought wonderful that we do not –’

  ‘Cousin Albinia, and I know not how many times removed, besides having been as mad as Bedlam for years! I assure you I should not have regarded that! However, it is of no use to repine! The thing is that Sale has been brought up to scratch, and heaven knows I must be thankful for that, for I don’t scruple to tell you, my lord, that I have been fearing Harriet was to be obliged to wear the willow. Where have you put him?’

  ‘He is in my book-room. I said I must first speak with you.’

  ‘Very well, I will come directly. I daresay Harriet dressed all by guess this morning, for we are in such an uproar, with half the servants already gone to Ampleforth!’ said the lady, tugging vigorously at the bell-pull. ‘Do not be loitering here, my lord, I do beg of you, but go back to Sale, and say Harriet will come down presently. Oh, is it you, Mrs Royston? No, I did not precisely wish for you, but it doesn’t signify! Be good enough to desire Lady Harriet and Miss Abinger to wait on me here directly! Pray, what do you stay for, Ampleforth? Go down to Sale at once, and entertain him until I come!’

  The Lady Harriet was discovered to be in the school-room, helping to keep her younger sisters amused while the nurse busied herself with the packing of their many trunks. At a table in the window, the governess, Miss Abinger, was endeavouring to instruct two stout lads in frilled shirts and nankeen pantaloons in the use of the globes. When Lady Ampleforth’s message was delivered by the panting housekeeper, Harriet jumped up from the floor, where she had been sitting, and instinctively put up her hands to smooth her soft brown curls. ‘Mama wants me?’ she said in a scared voice. ‘Oh, what is it, Royston dear?’

  The housekeeper beamed at her knowingly. ‘Ah, that is for her ladyship to tell you, my lady! But what would you say to a lovely young gentleman’s being closeted with your papa?’

  Lady Harriet’s large blue eyes dilated; she said faintly: ‘Oh, no!’

  Miss Abinger, a sensible-looking woman in the late thirties, rose from her seat, saying in a commonplace tone: ‘Lady Harriet will come to her ladyship directly. You will do well to tidy your hair, my dear. Come into your bedchamber and let me draw a comb through it. You know your mama likes you to be neat in your appearance.’

  ‘Harry, don’t be gone for ever!’ begged Lady Maria, a buxom twelve-year-old. ‘Ten to one it is only one of Mama’s fusses!’

  ‘Oh, hush, love!’ Harriet whispered.

  ‘Good gracious, Harry!’ exclaimed Lady Caroline, who at sixteen bade fair to resemble her mother very nearly, ‘you don’t suppose it is Sale, do you?’

  Harriet, blushing furiously, ran out of the room. Miss Abinger said severely: ‘You will oblige me, Caroline, by writing out in your fairest hand, and without blots, fifty times, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his heart from troubles.’ She waited for a moment to be sure that her pupil dared not venture on any retort, and then followed Lady Harriet out of the room, and down one pair of stairs to a bedchamber at the back of the house.

  Here, the abigail who was folding her young mistress’s dresses in silver paper betrayed by her air of barely suppressed excitement that the rumour that was already running through the house had reached her ears. She greeted the governess with a gasp, and an involuntary question. ‘Oh, miss, is it true?’

  Miss Abinger ignored this impertinence, and trod over to the dressing-table, before which Harriet had seated herself. ‘You have crushed your gown a trifle, my dear, but it will not do to keep your mama waiting, and we must hope that she will not notice it. Let me take that comb!’

  Harriet permitted her to remove it from her singularly nerveless grasp. ‘Oh, Abby, you do not think – ?’

  ‘I think your mama will not like it if you do not bestir yourself, Lady Harriet,’ replied the governess calmly.

  Harriet said, in a helpless way: ‘No,’ and submitted to having her hair combed and tidied. She then rose, and with trembling knees followed her preceptress downstairs to Lady Ampleforth’s dressing-room.

  Her ladyship cast one comprehensive glance over her daughter, and exclaimed in exasperated accents: ‘Exactly so! Your old plain muslin, and I daresay everything packed up already! Well, it will not do! Miss Abinger, oblige me by seeing to it that Lady Harriet changes her dress immediately! The cambric muslin with the double scallop work at the bottom is what she should be wearing, or if that is not readily procurable, the new sprig gown, with the sleeves drawn at the top with coloured ribbons! My love, Sale is below, with your papa. You will allow your mama to be the first to felicitate you upon the very flattering offer that has been made you!’

  ‘Gilly!’ Harriet uttered, in a voice so suspended by surprise as to be barely audible. ‘Oh, no! surely you must be mistaken, ma’am!’

  A look of annoyance seemed to sharpen Lady Ampleforth’s features. ‘There is no occasion that I know of for these die-away airs, Harriet!’ she said. ‘You are very well aware of your papa’s and my intentions for you!’

  ‘Oh, yes! But I had not supposed – he has never been particular in his attentions – Mama, I did not think Gilly loved me!’

  ‘I can only conclude, Harriet,’ said Lady Ampleforth, with a condemnatory glance at Miss Abinger, ‘that you have been taking novels out of some circulating-library, which is a thing I have never permitted.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mama!’ Harriet faltered.

  ‘Then I am at a loss to understand where you can have learnt such trumpery notions, and I beg you will not make a figure of yourself by mentioning them again! Sale has expressed himself very properly to your papa, and if he and I are satisfied you have surely nothing to cavil at! He is waiting to address you himself. I trust you know your duty well enough to make it unnecessary for me to tell you in what terms you must answer him.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, pray – !’

  ‘Harriet, what is this nonsense?’ demanded her ladyship irately. ‘I will allow it to be a most inconvenient time for Sale to be declaring himself, but so it is always! Men have not the least common sense! But if you mean to tell me that you hold him in aversion –’

  ‘Oh, no, no!