Laurence saw them now. ‘Miss Crockford, Miss Kent.’ He bowed, released Penelope’s hands and looked so very discomposed that Harriet and Dido’s suspicions were immediately raised against him.
Had he been upon the point of a declaration?
They stood together a few minutes: all rather ill at ease, but for Penelope who had noticed nothing at all and was now busily enumerating the hardships of naval life, through battle, storm and privateers to what must be ‘the greatest inconveniences imaginable caused by the motion of the ship. I mean the sliding about of food upon the table and the falling out of beds and so forth …’
As she chattered, Dido’s eye was drawn away to a bench beside the great clock, from which the schoolmistress, Mrs Nolan, was watching. She was sitting very straight, with her hands clasped upon the handle of her umbrella: her face sharp and watchful in the shadow of her vast white cap and the elaborate bonnet which covered it. A cluster of flowers hanging low upon the brim half-obscured her eyes and gave her rather the appearance of a small, wild creature peering through undergrowth. But it would seem that she too had noticed the captain’s ‘attentions’ – and they had made her uneasy.
And it occurred immediately to Dido that her uneasiness might provide a very useful opening for conversation. Perhaps this was the moment to try for her confidence … Declaring, rather abruptly, that she was tired and must rest, she left Harriet to chaperone Penelope, and made her way purposefully back towards the schoolmistress.
‘My dear, Mrs Nolan,’ she cried with a smile as she approached, ‘you are looking very worried. Are you afraid of Miss Lambe’s tiring herself with walking about too much?’
‘Nay.’ Mrs Nolan shook her head and set the flowers flapping about her eyes. ‘She’s a stout lass, and I doubt a little knock on the head has turned her into an invalid. But …’ she raised her umbrella in Laurence’s direction and gave it a little shake, ‘I’m right vexed to see her walking about on yon fellow’s arm.’
‘Oh?’ said Dido in a tone of innocent surprise. ‘Do you not consider the captain a suitable acquaintance for the young lady?’
‘Suitable? Eeh, no!’ Mrs Nolan lowered the umbrella, folded her hands over its handle and gave Dido a doleful stare. ‘Pardon me for saying it, Miss Kent, but I’m accustomed to speaking my mind, and I tell you honestly, yon captain is such a fellow as I swear is sent to test and torment poor honest schoolteachers like myself. For I declare there ain’t no way of keeping young ladies safe from his sort.’
‘Is there not?’ said Dido, deeply interested. ‘And how …?’
‘As if the cost of candles for the schoolroom wasn’t trial enough,’ Mrs Nolan ran on, with all the appearance of a woman who is launched upon a favourite complaint and will not be easily turned aside from it. ‘And folks being so tardy over paying their fees! As if such things weren’t sufficient torment, there must be men like that one sent to make us miserable
‘Dear, dear,’ said Dido. She took a seat beside the schoolmistress, her head tilted in sympathetic attention.
‘Aye, a woman in my situation lives in terror of such fellows as that. One hears such tales, Miss Kent!’
‘Does one?’
‘Eeh yes! Ladders set up at bedroom windows in the dead of night and young lasses carried off to Gretna in the twinkling of an eye. Or worse …’ Mrs Nolan tapped at Dido’s foot with her umbrella to emphasise her point, ‘not carried to Gretna at all – if you gather my meaning.’
‘Oh heavens! How shocking! I confess I had heard …’ Dido bent a little closer. ‘But do such things truly happen?’
‘They do, my dear. Though …’ her face reddening. ‘Never in my establishment, I assure you.’
‘No, no of course not! I would not have thought it.’
‘Twenty-six years, come next Lady Day, I’ve been educating my lasses and not one has ever come to harm. And a schoolmistress’s reputation is her livelihood you know, Miss Kent. I’ve seen a school or two closed down because there’s been a breath of scandal – for the parents cannot trust then, you see.’
‘Dear, dear! What a very great worry it must be for you!’ Dido regarded her companion with great interest. But, unfortunately, the others were approaching now and Mrs Nolan was reaching out with the umbrella to tap Penelope on the arm with a ‘Well now, my dear, I think you have walked enough for today.’
And it was quite impossible to re-engage her in conversation, for a moment later Lucy and Silas also appeared and then they were all in a group talking together.
Silas had been very busy securing places at the obligatory entertainments of Bath. He had tickets for a concert in the assembly rooms that evening, and there was a theatre box taken for tomorrow. ‘A b … box which holds n … nine. So we are in hopes, Mrs Nolan that you and P … P … Miss Lambe will be kind enough to join us.’
Meanwhile Dido was considering the schoolmistress’s words – and concluding that the very best way to work upon her would be to somehow save Penelope from the captain. That would certainly create a high degree of obligation – in fact it might just overcome her reserve and bring her to confide who it was that paid the girl’s allowance …
Chapter Thirty-Three
The evening’s concert included – according to popular report – some of the foremost performers in the country. However, Dido knew that the foremost performers in the country were to be met with everywhere – under a great many variations of taste and talent – and she did not look forward to the evening very eagerly.
Her own taste for music was not great. She would rather have the sweet strains of pianoforte and harp in the background of her mind than the foreground. And, in the event, she found that she had scarcely ever enjoyed music better than she did now as she sat under the brilliant chandeliers of the concert room and peered around the tall feathered headdress of the lady in the next row to catch a glimpse of hautboy and fiddle. For here, she found, she was free to worry away at her mystery, while the duty of listening deterred other people from talking to her.
And, altogether, she had probably more pleasure in the entertainment than Lucy who declared that she ‘loved music more than any creature alive’, and ‘music was an absolute necessary of life to her’ – but who passed her evening fidgeting about and watching the gentlemen lounging at the sides of the room; and certainly more than poor Penelope who yawned through the full two hours, observed that ‘there was no understanding a word of Italian singing,’ and wondered from time to time ‘how anyone could make their fingers fly about so fast – and keep it up so long too.’
Dido was very comfortably occupied through the first act with running through the many questions in her mind – and with watching the seats of grandeur round the orchestra. Here she discovered Captain Laurence’s fat companion of the colonnade, accompanied by a fashionable woman with a great deal more face paint than bodice; and she fell to studying the lady with particular interest. The gay apparel and the slight, pleasing figure suggested youth – but the thick white painting of the face told of age concealed …