Enlightening Delilah (2 page)

The squire was very much at ease in the country, particularly with his farm labourers and tenant farmers. He was passionately interested in all the latest innovations in agriculture and stock breeding. As Town approached, he began to feel like a country bumpkin. He was frightened of women. The fact that he was about to enter into a business arrangement with two of the creatures made him shudder. He wondered for the hundredth time what these Tribble sisters would be like, and for the hundredth time conjured up a picture of two mondaine, fashionably dressed ladies with hard stares and painted faces who would make him feel like a rustic.

‘In the name of a whoreson’s bastard, will you come downstairs or not?’ yelled Amy Tribble.

Her sister, Effy, raised her hands to cover her ears. ‘Don’t swear and rant and shout, Amy,’ she said weakly. ‘I do not know why you cannot handle this matter yourself. He is only a country squire. I wrote the letter to tell him to come to London. You can surely do the rest.’

‘If he were a duke or a lord, you’d be knocking me over in your haste to get downstairs,’ said Amy. ‘It’s because he’s only a squire that you have decided it’s not worth your time. We were near starvation not so long ago, and could be again.’

The Tribble sisters had indeed been on the verge of ruin before they, with the help of their nabob friend, Mr Haddon, had thought up a scheme to reform difficult girls and make them marriageable. So far, they had had two successes.

The Tribbles were very different in manner and appearance. Amy was tall and bony and flat-chested with great hands and feet. She moved awkwardly and was forever falling over things. Effy was small and dainty with white hair, a pink-and-white complexion which was nearly all her own, and a neat figure.

They were both rumoured to be in their early fifties. In an age when people did not live very long, Amy and Effy could be expected to be planning their funerals. But both still dreamt of marriage as they had dreamt of marriage down the loveless and spinster years. Behind the wrinkles and the fading eyesight, both had hearts as young as they had been when they were seventeen and trembling on the edge of the ballroom floor.

They had become rivals for the affection of their old friend, Mr Haddon. He was to call at five in the afternoon, and Amy knew that that was also the reason Effy preferred to stay in her room with her hair in curl papers and cream on her face.

‘You are no support to me at all,’ said Amy, striding up and down the room. ‘You let me do all the work.’

‘That is not true,’ said Effy, and she began to cry. Amy should have known after all this time that her sister could cry at will, but for some reason Effy’s tears always made Amy feel like a brute.

Amy stopped her pacing and looked at the clock. Nearly one! Squire Wraxall was due to arrive any minute. Amy cast a baffled look at her weeping sister and left the room.

She went down to the drawing room. A housemaid was just finishing arranging bowls of chrysanthemums. Amy shuddered. Chrysanthemums were a new flower, recently imported for the first time and therefore considered fashionable, but Amy thought they smelled of autumn. Another autumn. Another year nearer the grave.

The clocks were just chiming one o’clock when she heard a tattoo sounding on the street door knocker. She smoothed down her silk gown and adjusted her turban on her grey-streaked locks.

After a few moments, the butler, Harris, threw open the door. ‘Mr Wraxall,’ he announced.

Amy rose to meet the squire, tripping over a footstool as she walked forward, and regaining her balance by clutching hold of his sleeve. She blushed miserably and apologized and then indicated a chair by the fire. The squire sat down gingerly and Amy sat opposite.

‘I thank you for your letter, Mr Wraxall,’ said Amy. ‘I will need to ask you a few questions about your daughter.’

Harris came in with the tea tray. Amy looked at the embarrassed and fidgeting squire and told Harris to take away the tea-things and bring in a decanter of the best port.

‘My daughter is a very beautiful girl,’ began the squire. ‘But she is not married. She is twenty-three.’

‘Does she have a good dowry?’ asked Amy.

‘Yes, very good, Miss Tribble.’

‘Has she had any offers of marriage?’

‘Yes, Miss Tribble. A great many.’

‘I assume, then,’ said Amy, ‘that she turned them all down. Why?’

The squire looked at her miserably. He did not like to discuss his daughter with strangers.

Amy looked at his blue eyes which were like the eyes of a troubled child. ‘This is so very hard for you, is it not?’ she said. ‘But, you see, I feel awkward myself. I am new to business and there always comes a point when I have to bring up the subject of money, and it makes me feel hot and prickly.’

The squire studied her. He did not see Amy as she really was – a thin, gawky woman with a face like a horse; he saw only the concern in her eyes and admired her for her direct manner.

He smiled suddenly and Amy blinked. That smile wiped away the years. She thought that Mr Wraxall must have been devastatingly handsome as a young man.

‘You drink your port,’ said Amy soothingly, ‘and I will outline what we do. Now, if the girl does not have the necessary accomplishments – by that I mean water-colouring, dancing, playing the pianoforte and so on – we hire tutors. Dress is no problem. We have a resident dressmaker, Yvette, who can make all the latest fashions. If the girl is too wild and unruly, we discipline her. If she is too shy, we train her in self-confidence. We teach the very necessary arts of flirting and conversation. We supply town bronze. You say your daughter is beautiful. Perhaps her head has been turned by too much attention?’

‘Not quite,’ said the squire.

‘Have another glass of port and take your time,’ said Amy.

The room was sunny and warm and scented pleasantly with the peppery smell of chrysanthemums mixed with wood smoke from the fire. There was a good landscape over the fireplace, a view of woods and trees, very like the squire’s beloved countryside. Amy was wearing a gown of some dull stuff, but she had a magnificent Kashmir shawl draped about her shoulders, its scarlets and golds adding a touch of barbaric colour. A backless sofa was the one concession to modernity. The chair in which the squire sat had been made in the reign of George II, when mahogany was still a newly discovered wood. It was very comfortable and big enough for his large frame. The other furniture was a pleasing mixture of styles. Each piece had obviously been put there because it was liked, rather than to follow the fashion of having a whole room done out in one of the latest crazes. The Egyptian mode, for example, often led the squire to think the Egyptians must have had a very uncomfortable time of it.

He could feel the tension going out of his body. There was nothing to be afraid of here. He owed it to Delilah to do the best for her.

‘This is difficult,’ he said, ‘but I will do my best. Delilah was not always thus. I must tell you plain she has become a flirt. When she was seventeen, she was happy, gentle, and kind. She fell in love with a neighbour of mine, Sir Charles Digby, a baronet. Sir Charles was, is, a trifle too old for her. Or so it seemed then. He was twenty-eight. Delilah was very much in love with him. I was uneasy about it, for Sir Charles was very polished, very elegant, and rather haughty and cold. But I admit it all seemed very suitable. He was rich, handsome, his land bordered mine.’

‘You say “was”,’ prompted Amy. ‘Did he die?’

‘Worse than that,’ said the squire. ‘He went up to London. Delilah told me he would call on his return and ask leave to pay his addresses. He returned – in uniform. It was at the height of another scare about Napoleon invading Britain. He called to see me, but not to ask me if he could marry Delilah, but to say goodbye. I suggested he could serve his country just as well by joining one of the volunteer regiments, a part-time soldier, so to speak, but he said he had already made arrangements for his land to be looked after by a steward. I tried to broach the subject of Delilah, saying I thought there was an understanding there. He was icily surprised. He even went so far as to suggest Delilah had been reading too many romances. So off he went. When I told Delilah, she did not say much, but for weeks she was very silent and sad and I feared she would fall ill. I roused myself to take her to balls and assemblies. We may be in the heart of the countryside, but a great deal of entertaining goes on, particularly at the great houses in winter. She began to flirt, at first a little, then a lot. And so it went on. She gained a reputation, but with her beauty, men kept falling in love with her and putting the rumours about her down to jealousy on the part of less fortunate females. If I could be persuaded that her character had changed so much that she had become hard and unfeeling, I would not mind so much. But I am sure she is not happy. That is why I have decided to put her in your care. I know it is a long time until the next Season, but there is the Little Season almost upon us. Do you think you can do anything with her?’

‘Of course,’ said Amy, who actually felt quite dismayed at the prospect. Delilah Wraxall sounded like a horrible girl. Well, hardly girl. She was a woman of twenty-three.

‘Then perhaps we can get down to discussing terms,’ said the squire.

Amy longed to lower their fees. Their usual price seemed like an awful lot of money to demand from a country squire. But then it took a monstrous amount of money to launch anyone on London society. She went to a little escritoire in the corner and began to write busily. Then she sanded the paper and silently handed it to the squire. He studied the figures and then nodded his head. ‘That seems fair enough,’ he said. ‘I will make arrangements for my bank to transfer the money to yours.’

Amy beamed on him, relief making her quite light-headed. ‘And where are you staying in London, Mr Wraxall?’ she asked.

‘Limmer’s, madam.’

‘I believe it is quite a comfortable hotel.’

The squire shrugged. ‘Not exactly, but then I never expect to enjoy anything about London.’

‘Oh, there are many things to enjoy,’ said Amy.

‘The only things I am ever interested in are so unfashionable, I hardly dare to mention them.’

A wild thought that he might mean the brothels of Covent Garden crossed Amy’s mind for a moment. ‘What, for example?’ she said.

‘I would like to see the wild beasts at Exeter Change.’

Amy grinned. ‘Sir, I shall take you there myself,’ she said, getting to her feet. Amy knew that Effy would adore this handsome squire and felt that by going out with him she was punishing her sister for not doing her share of work.

The squire looked delighted. ‘I did not come in my carriage,’ he said. ‘How do we get there?’

‘In my carriage,’ said Amy. ‘I rent, you know.’

She rang the bell and told Harris to go and hire a carriage from the livery stables and bring it around right away. Then she began to ask the squire about his estates and soon Mr Wraxall was busily describing the wonders of a new plough which had just been invented in Aberdeen.

By the time they both stepped into the carriage, they were firm friends.

Effy struggled out of bed and looked down from her bedroom window. The squire, looking very tall and handsome, was helping Amy into an open carriage. It wasn’t fair, thought Effy furiously. Amy might have sent up word that the squire was handsome. She tugged up the window and leaned out. ‘Amy!’ she screamed.

The carriage moved off.

‘I thought I heard someone shouting,’ said the squire.

‘Probably some street urchin,’ said Amy maliciously.

Two days after her father had departed for London, Delilah Wraxall decided to go for a walk. The day had turned quite warm. She slipped into a serviceable pair of boots, then put an old, shady, brimmed straw hat on her head and a shawl about her shoulders. She did not look her usual beautiful and fashionable self, but then, there were no hearts left in the immediate neighbourhood to break.

She wanted to go for a long, brisk walk and sort out in her mind how she could find out what her father was up to. She walked through the fields, climbing over stiles, until she reached a path that ran along beside a river. The river banks were thick with trees, which supplied a welcome shade from the sun. Blackberries gleamed wetly in the tangled undergrowth, and one late rose shone in the gloom under the trees. The air was full of the sound of birdsong and rushing water.

Delilah came to a point in the path where her father’s estate ended and that of Sir Charles Digby began. She had never set foot in Sir Charles’s estate since the day he had gone off to the wars. But that day, she decided to continue her walk. It was silly not to go on. There was no fear of meeting Sir Charles. The war was over and still there was no news of him. His steward knew Delilah by sight and would certainly not dream of accusing her of trespassing. She walked on.

After she had gone a little way, she realized it had been a mistake. Here it was she had walked with Sir Charles, deeply in love, looking forward to a happy marriage. There was the ruined cottage with the mossy wall in front of it where they used to sit and talk. What had they talked about? Delilah frowned. He had talked at great length about the war and obviously followed every report in the newspapers. She had talked about simple things, the books she had read, the dances she had attended, village gossip, things like that. He had never mentioned marriage. But he had sought her advice in the redecoration of his home, had shown no interest in any other female and had stood up twice with her at each of the local balls. Everyone had assumed they would marry. On the day before he went to London, he had taken her walking along this very path and here, under this spreading oak, he had caught her in his arms and kissed her, and that kiss had sent Delilah’s heart spinning. She had trustingly told her father to expect a proposal of marriage from Sir Charles.

He had called on her father on his return from London. Delilah had stayed in her room, waiting and waiting to be summoned. She could hear the rise and fall of voices coming up from below. Then, at last, she heard the front door close and, running to the window, had seen Sir Charles riding off. And that had been the last she had seen of him.