Sprig Muslin Read online

  The tone was as gentle as ever, but Miss Povey, permitting herself only the indulgence of a sniff, lost no time in altering her phraseology. ‘For the young lady, I should say, my lady.’

  ‘Oh, yes! The Blue bedchamber will be just the one. Thank you: I shan’t need you any longer.’

  This dismissal by no means pleased the handmaiden. On the one hand, she was extremely reluctant to wait upon Amanda, and would, indeed, have bitterly resented a command to do so; but, on the other, she was agog with curiosity. After a brief struggle with her feelings, she said: ‘I thought, my lady, being as how Miss hasn’t brought her own abigail, she would like me to dress her hair, and that.’

  ‘Yes, presently,’ said Hester. ‘And perhaps, since Miss Smith’s trunk has gone to Oundle, you could bring that pink gown of mine to her room.’ She smiled diffidently at Amanda, adding: ‘Should you object to wearing one of my dresses? I think it would become you, for it is too young for me, and I have not worn it more than once.’

  ‘No, not at all. In fact, I shall be excessively obliged to you,’ replied Amanda warmly. ‘For the only other gown I have with me is another morning one, and I daresay it will be odiously crumpled. And this one is very dirty, through my having walked a great distance in it, besides being in the carrier’s cart, though I took the greatest care to wrap my cloak round me.’

  ‘Muslin seems to pick up the dirt so easily!’ agreed Hester, accepting the carrier’s cart as the merest commonplace. ‘But Povey will wash and iron it for you to wear again in the morning.’

  With these calmly uttered words, she led Amanda into her allotted bedchamber, firmly closing the door on her scandalized abigail.

  The bandboxes had been unpacked, and Amanda’s few possessions disposed in the appropriate places. That damsel, after a comprehensive survey of the apartment, awarded it her approval, adding candidly: ‘And Sir Gareth was quite right: I do like you very much, ma’am, though I quite thought I should not!’

  ‘I am so glad,’ murmured Hester. ‘Do let me untie the strings of your hat!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda, submitting to this, ‘but I must warn you, because I never tell lies to people I like, that I do not at all wish to visit an Earl!’

  ‘I expect you have been brought up on revolutionary principles,’ said Hester wisely. ‘I do not, myself, know very much about it, but I believe that many people nowadays –’

  ‘Oh, no! But the thing is that I particularly wish to establish myself in the sort of situation from which one’s relations are bound to rescue one. And if it had not been for Sir Gareth I daresay I might have done it. I was never so taken-in! He said he would take me to Huntingdon, where I had every expectation of being hired as a chambermaid at the George, – at least, that is what I thought he said he would do, only I soon discovered that it was all a hoax – and then, when he had lured me into his curricle, he brought me here instead!’

  Lady Hester, quite bewildered by this recital, sat down a little weakly, and said: ‘I don’t think I perfectly understand, Amanda. I expect it is because I am being stupid, but if you could tell it all to me from the start I am persuaded I shall. But not, of course, if you don’t wish! I don’t care to ask you questions, for there is nothing more disagreeable than to be obliged to listen to questions, and scoldings, and good advice.’ Her sudden smile, which betrayed a gleam of shy mischief in her eyes, swept across her face. ‘You see, I have suffered from that all my life.’

  ‘Have you?’ said Amanda, surprised. ‘But you are quite old! I mean,’ she corrected herself hastily, ‘you – you are not under age! I wonder you should not tell people who scold you to go about their business.’

  ‘I am afraid I have not enough courage,’ said Hester ruefully.

  ‘Like my aunt,’ nodded Amanda. ‘She has no courage, either, and she lets Grandpapa bully her, which puts me out of all patience, because one can always get one’s own way, if only one has resolution.’

  ‘Can one?’ said Hester doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, though sometimes, I own, one is forced to take desperate measures. And it is of no use to tease oneself about propriety,’ she added, with a touch of defiance, ‘because it seems to me that if you never do anything that is not quite proper and decorous you will have the wretchedest life, without any adventures, or romance, or anything!’

  ‘It is very true, alas!’ Hester smiled at her again. ‘But not for you, I think.’

  ‘No, because I have a great deal of resolution. Also I have made a very good plan of campaign, and if you will faithfully promise not to try to overset it, I will tell you what it is.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think I could overset anyone’s plans,’ said Hester reflectively. ‘Indeed, I promise I won’t try!’

  ‘Or tell those other people?’ Amanda said anxiously.

  ‘My family? Oh, no!’

  Reassured, Amanda sat down beside her, and for the second time that day recounted the tale of her adventures. Lady Hester sat with her hands lightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed wonderingly on the animated little face beside her. Several times she blinked, and once a little trill of laughter was surprised out of her; but she did not make any comment until Amanda reached the end of her recital, and then she only said: ‘How very brave you are! I hope you will be able to marry your Brigade-Major, for I am sure you must have been made to be a soldier’s wife. I should think, you know, that your grandfather would give his consent if only you could be content to wait for a little while longer.’

  ‘I have waited a very long time already, and now I am determined to be married, so that I can accompany Neil to Spain,’ stated Amanda, looking mulish. ‘I daresay you think it is very wrong of me, and that I ought to obey Grandpapa, and so it may be – only I don’t care for anything except Neil, and I won’t go meekly home, whatever anyone says!’

  This was uttered very challengingly, but all Hester said was: ‘It is very difficult to know what would be the best thing to do. Do you think, perhaps, you should send for Neil?’

  Amanda shook her head. ‘No, because he would take me back to Grandpapa, and there’s no depending on Grandpapa’s being grateful enough to give his consent to our marriage. In fact, he would very likely think I had plotted it all with Neil, which would be fatal! That is what he is bound to think, at the outset, but when he discovers that Neil knows no more than he does where I am, he will see that it is not so. And besides that he will be in a much worse pucker about me, which would be a good thing.’

  This ruthless speech moved Hester to make a faint protest, but it was cut short by a tap on the door. Povey came in, with a dress of pink silk over her arm, and an expression of long-suffering on her face; and Hester got up, saying: ‘We are very much of a height, I believe, and I am quite sure that that gown will become you very much better than it becomes me. Will you put it on, and then, if it needs some little adjustment, Povey will arrange it for you?’

  Amanda, whose eyes had sparkled at sight of the dress, said impulsively: ‘Thank you! It is most obliging of you, and exactly the sort of gown I wish for! I have never worn a silk one, because my aunt has the stuffiest notions, and she will not buy anything but muslin for me, even when she took me to the Bath Assemblies.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Hester, looking conscience-stricken. ‘She is perfectly right! How shatterbrained of me! Never mind! The dress is not cut very low, and I will lend you a lace shawl to put round your shoulders.’

  She then drifted away to find the shawl, but before she had reached her own room she heard her name spoken, and turned to see that Sir Gareth had come out of his bedchamber.

  He had changed his driving-dress for knee-breeches and silk stockings, an elegant waistcoat of watered silk, and a swallowtailed coat of black cloth; and no one, observing the exquisite set of that coat across his shoulders, and the nicety with which his starched neckcloth was arranged, could have suppose