April Lady (30 page)

Nell was obliged to break in on her volubility, and to beg that Selina might be sent for. Mrs. Thorne was perfectly agreeable, but she could not think that Selina would be able to throw any light on the mystery of her cousin's whereabouts. When she was told of the meeting that afternoon in Bond Street, she could scarcely be brought to believe that such a thing could have happened. "Selina going off to Bond Street! Oh, you don't mean it, Lady Cardross! I never heard of such a thing! To be sure, girls aren't kept so strict now as they were when I was young—why, not a step outside the house could I take unless my mother, or the governess was with me! And very irksome it was, I can tell you! I made up my mind I wouldn't use
my
girls so, and nor I have, but as for letting any of them go jauntering about town without one of her sisters, or Betty, to go with her, that would be quite beyond the line! Good gracious, whatever would people say? It doesn't bear thinking of, and if I find Martha was telling you the truth, which, however, it's very likely she wasn't, I declare Selina shall go to Miss Puttenham's seminary, say what she will! It was what Mr. Thorne said she should do, when Miss Woodbridge left us, but she pleaded so hard against it—well, there! But that Martha would say anything! Depend upon it, my dear Lady Cardross, Selina knows no more than the man in the moon where her cousin may be!"

But when Selina presently came into the room it was evident even to her fond parent that she knew very well why she had been sent for. She was in fine feather, and perfectly ready to be martyred in her cousin's cause. Hers had not been the chief role in the delightful drama, but she had been able easily to convince herself that without her self-abnegating offices the interested parties would by this time have been obliged to resign themselves to their equally disagreeable fates. Letty (if she did not go into a decline, and expire within the year) would have been ruthlessly forced into marriage with a titled Midas of evil disposition, at whose hands she would have suffered brutal ill-usage; and Mr. Allandale, unaccountably forgotten by his superiors, would have worn out his life in a foreign land, always carrying his lost love's likeness next his heart, and dying (in circumstances of distressing neglect and anguish) with her name on his writhen lips.

Until she found herself confronting Nell, of whom she stood in a good deal of awe, this affecting story had seemed to her so probable as to border on the inevitable. She had several times rehearsed the elevating utterances she would make, if called upon to account for her actions; and in these scenes every effort made by Letty's persecutors to drag from her the secret of her whereabouts failed. Sometimes she remained mute while the storm raged over her devoted head; but in general she was extremely eloquent, expressing herself with such moving sincerity that even such worldly persons as her father and Lord Cardross were often brought to see how false and mercenary were their ideas, and emerged from the encounter with changed hearts, and the highest opinion of her fearlessness, nobility, and good sense.

But in these scenes the other members of the cast spoke the lines laid down for them; in real life they said things so very different as to throw everything quite out of joint. In the event, Selina pronounced only one of her rehearsed speeches. Asked by her mother if she knew what had become of Letty, she clasped her hands at her breast, and declined to answer the question. She then invited the two ladies to threaten her as much as they chose, to do with her what they would; but warned them that they would find it impossible to force her to betray her cousin.

Mrs. Thorne should then have conjured her daughter on her obedience to divulge the truth; instead, and with a lamentable lack of histrionic ability, she begged her irritably not, for goodness sake, to start any of her play-acting; and before Selina could recover from this set-back Nell completed her discomfiture by saying in a tone of grave reproof: "Indeed, Selina, you must not make-believe over this, for I am afraid it is much more serious than you have any idea of."

After that, there could be no recapturing the dramatic flavour of the piece. Selina did say that she wouldn't tell anything, but even in her own ears this sounded very much more sulky than noble; and when Mrs. Thorne, heaving herself out of her chair, declared her intention of hailing her immediately before her papa, who would know how to deal with such impertinence, instead of behaving like a heroine, she collapsed into frightened tears.

It took a little time to drag the whole story out of her and the effect of her revelations on Mrs. Thorne was severe enough to make Nell feel profoundly sorry for the poor lady. She was so much stunned by the discovery that when she had believed Selina to have gone under the escort of her maid to a dancing-class, or a music-lesson, that abandoned damsel had been setting forth by stealth for the most fashionable quarter of the town, alone, and for the purpose of aiding and abetting her cousin in conduct that, if it were to become known, would disgrace them both for ever in the eyes of all persons of ton, that she could do nothing but reproach Selina, and wonder how she came to have a daughter so lost to all sense of propriety. It was left to Nell to question Selina, which she did with a gentle coldness that overawed her far more than did her mother's scoldings.

Letty had sold the necklace to Catworth on the day that she had gone with her cousin to choose a wedding-gift for Fanny. They had dismissed the carriage outside the Pantheon, telling the coachman to call for them at Gunter's, in Berkeley Square, considerably later in the day. After purchasing a couple of thick veils, they had set out in a hack for Cranbourn Alley, having discovered the existence of the firm of Catworth and Son through the simple expedient of asking the jarvey on the box to recommend them a jeweller not patronized by persons of quality. While Letty had transacted her business with the younger Catworth, Selina had remained in the hack, because the jarvey, when instructed to wait outside the shop, apparently suspecting them of trying to give him the slip, had expressed a strong wish of being paid off then and there.

After the sale of the necklace, only one thing was needed for an elopement, and that was the bridegroom, who was then still out of town.

At this point, Mrs. Thorne exclaimed: "Never tell me Allandale was ready to take her with no more than two thousand pounds!"

"My dear ma'am, you cannot suppose that Mr. Allandale was a party to such a thing!" Nell said.

"No, he wasn't," corroborated Selina. "Letty said she would tell him she had it from her godfather, in case he should think she ought not to have taken the necklace."

The two girls had met that afternoon by prearrangement, and as soon as Martha had been got rid of, which was done because Letty wished, with rare consideration, to protect her from blame, they had purchased such necessities as Letty had been unable to pack in her bundle, and brought them to Bryanston Square, to be bestowed in an old cloak-bag belonging to Papa. Finally, Letty had departed in a hackney for Mr. Allandale's lodging in Ryder Street. "But you won't catch them," Selina said, with a last flicker of defiance, "because that was
hours
ago, and you may depend upon it they are many miles away by now!"

This seemed all too probable to Mrs. Thorne, sinking back in her chair with a groan of dismay, but Nell was more hopeful. When Selina had been dismissed to bed, with the promise of bread and water for her supper, an interview with Papa on the morrow, and incarceration for an unspecified length of time in a Bath seminary for young ladies, she rose to her feet, saying that she would go at once to Ryder Street.

"But what is the use, my dear?" wailed Mrs. Thorne. "You heard what that wicked child of mine said! They're off to Gretna Green, depend upon it!"

"I cannot credit it! No doubt that was Letty's plan, but I shall own myself astonished if it was Mr. Allandale's. Oh, he would not do such a thing! I am quite confident he would not!"

"Good gracious, Lady Cardross, where else could they go? They couldn't be married in England, what with Letty's being under age, and special licenses, and I don't know what beside! Surely to goodness he wouldn't have let her run away to him if he didn't mean to marry her immediately?"

"I don't believe he knew anything about it," declared Nell. "Only consider, ma'am! He is a respectable man of superior sense, and with extremely nice notions of propriety. I am persuaded he would not entertain for an instant the thought of eloping with a child of Letty's age. Her expectations, too! Oh, no, he couldn't do it! If his own good feeling did not prevent him, the knowledge that he would be thought to have behaved like a most unprincipled fortune-hunter surely would!"

"Ay, there is that," agreed Mrs. Thorne, a little doubtfully. "He would lose his employment, too, I daresay. But, you know my dear, when a man falls head over ears in love there's no saying what he may do. And you aren't going to tell me Letty ran off to elope with him without him knowing she meant to do it!"

"Yes, I am," Nell said, on a tiny choke of laughter. "It would be exactly like her to do so!"

"Well!" gasped Mrs. Thorne. "Of all the brazen little hussies! A nice surprise it will be for Allandale when he goes home from the Foreign Office, thinking of nothing but his dinner, as I don't doubt he will be, and finds that naughty girl in his lodging, as bold as brass, and expecting him to set out with her for Scotland! Well, I hope it will be a lesson to him, that's all! Only, if that's the way it was, why didn't he bring her back to you long since?"

"I've thought of that," Nell said. "It does seem strange, but if he were kept late at his work—? Then, too, it would take him a little time, you know, to persuade Letty to give up the scheme. In fact, the likeliest chance is that she fell into one of her hysterical fits of crying, and the poor man could not have the least notion how to stop her! Oh, I must go to Ryder Street at once!"

The conviction that she would arrive at Mr. Allandale's lodging to find him endeavouring to soothe his would-be bride grew steadily upon Nell as she was bounced and jolted there in yet another hack, and she began to be quite buoyant again, feeling that if she could only restore his sister to Cardross with her reputation unblemished she would have done much to atone for the follies and extravagances of the past weeks. But when the hackney turned out of St. James's Street into Ryder Street, she suffered a check. The coachman pulled up his aged horse, and clambered down from the box to discover what was the number of the house she wished to visit; and it suddenly occurred to Nell that she did not know it. Nor did the coachman. Asked if he was perhaps familiar with Mr. Allandale, he said he wasn't one to bother his head over the names of the gentlemen who patronized him, and surveyed his fair passenger with unwelcome interest. She was put a little out of countenance by this, and had, indeed, been feeling a trifle uneasy from the moment the hack turned into St. James's Street, and she had seen all the clubs' windows lighted up, and several gentlemen of her acquaintance strolling along the flagway. This quarter of fashionable London, which lay between Pall Mall and Piccadilly, belonged almost exclusively to the Gentlemen, and it was not considered good ton for a lady to be seen within its bounds. Nearly all the clubs were to be found in St. James's Street; and the streets which led from it abounded in bachelor lodgings and gaming-hells. The coachman was plainly wondering whether he had been mistaken in the social status of his fare, and Nell was beginning to feel rather helpless and extremely uncomfortable when she providentially remembered that Mr. Hethersett also lived in Ryder Street, and would no doubt be able to direct her to Mr. Allandale's abode, if she were fortunate enough to find him at home. So she told the coachman to drive her to Number 5. It did not seem probable that Mr. Hethersett would be at home, for it was now past eight o'clock, but fortune favoured her. Just as she was searching in her reticule for her purse the door of No. 5 was opened, and Mr. Hethersett himself came out of the house, very natty in knee-breeches and silk stockings, a waistcoat of watered silk, a swallow-tailed coat, and a snowy cravat arranged by his expert hands in the intricate style known as the Mathematical Tie. Set at a slight angle on his oiled locks was an elegant chapeau bras, and hanging from his shoulders was a silk-lined cloak. He carried a pair of gloves in one hand, and an ebony cane in the other, but perceiving the unusual spectacle of a lady engaged in paying off a hackney-coachman at his very door, he transferred the gloves to his right hand so that he could raise one eye the quizzing-glass that was slung about his neck. At just this moment, Nell turned to mount the few steps to his door, and uttered a joyful exclamation. "Felix! Oh, how glad I am to have caught you!"

The jarvey, observing that the expression on Mr. Hethersett's face was of profound dismay, clicked his tongue disapprovingly. In his view, Nell—as dimber a mort as he had clapped eyes on in a twelvemonth—was worthy of a warmer greeting than the startled: "Good God!" which broke from Mr. Hethersett.

"What the deuce brings you here?" demanded Mr. Hethersett, alarmed out of his usual address. "Cardross hasn't met with an accident, has he? Or—"

"Oh, no, no! nothing like that!" she assured him. "I shan't keep you above a moment—are you on your way to a party? —but I have most stupidly forgotten the number of the house Mr. Allandale lodges in!"

Disappointed in this conversation, the jarvey adjured his lethargic steed to get up, and drove slowly off.

"Thank the lord he's gone!" said Mr. Hethersett. "You know, cousin, you shouldn't be driving about in a hack, and coming here to ask me for Allandale's direction! I mean—not my business, but it ain't at all the thing! Cardross wouldn't like it. Besides, what do you want with Allandale?"