He coloured, but said: “I don’t think it was well done of me. I ought not to have spoken so to my father. I’m sorry for it, but I meant what I said, and I’m dashed well not going to crawl back until he is sorry too! Even if I starve in a ditch!”
“Oh, pray don’t think of doing such a thing!” said Miss Farlow, who had been listening open-mouthed to this recital. “So embarrassing for dear Miss Wychwood, for people would be bound to say she should have rescued you! Not that I think you would be allowed to die in a ditch in Bath—at least, I never heard of anyone doing so, because they are so strict about keeping the streets clean and tidy, and destitute persons are cared for at the Stranger’s Friend Society: a most excellent institution, I believe, but I cannot think that your worthy parents would wish you to become an inmate there, however vexed they may be with you!”
This made Lucilla giggle, but Miss Wychwood, preserving her countenance, said: “Very true! You must hold it as a weapon in reserve, Ninian, to use only if your father threatens to cast you off entirely. In the meantime, I suggest that you put up at the Pelican. It is in Walcot Street, and I’m told its charges are very reasonable. It isn’t a fashionable hotel, but I believe it is comfortable, and provides its guests with a good, plain ordinary. And if it should be too plain for you, you can always dine here!” She added, with a lurking twinkle in her eyes: “I’ve never dined there, but of course I have visited it, to see the room Dr Johnson slept in!”
“Oh!” said Ninian, all at sea. “Yes—of course! Dr Johnson! Exactly so! Was he—was he a friend of yours, ma’am? Or—or one of your relations, perhaps?”
Lucilla gave a crow of laughter. “Stupid! He was the dixionary-man, and he died years and years ago—didn’t he, ma’am?”
“Oh, a writing cove!” said Ninian, in disparaging accents. “Come to think of it, I have heard of him—but I’m not bookish, ma’am!”
“But surely, dear Mr Elmore, they must have used his Dixionary at your school?” said Miss Farlow.
“Ah, that would be it!” nodded Ninian. “I daresay I must have seen the name on the back of some book or other, which accounts for my having had the notion that I recognized it!”
“If recognition you could call it!” murmured Miss Wychwood. “Never mind, Ninian! We can’t all of us be bookish, can we?”
“Well, I don’t scruple to say that I never had the least turn for scholarship,” Ninian somewhat unnecessarily disclosed. He added a handsome rider to this statement, saying, with a beaming smile: “And I promise you, ma’am, no one would ever suspect you of being bookish!”
Overwhelmed by this tribute, Miss Wychwood uttered in a shaken voice: “How kind of you, Ninian, to say so!”
“It’s very true,” said Lucilla, adding her mite. “No one could think she was bookish, but she reads prodigiously, and even keeps books in her bedchamber!”
“How can you be so treacherous, Lucilla, as to betray me?” demanded Miss Wychwood tragically.
“Only to Ninian!” Lucilla said, regarding her rather anxiously. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else, but he won’t say a word about it, will you, Ninian?”
“No, never!” he responded promptly.
Miss Wychwood shook a mournful head. “If only I may not have sunk myself beneath reproach in your eyes!”
They made such haste to reassure her that her suppressed laughter escaped her, and she said: “You absurd babies! Oh, don’t look so astonished, or you will send me into fresh whoops! I know you can’t think why, and if I were to explain it to you you would believe me to be all about in my head! Tell me, Ninian, did you give my letter to Mrs Amber?”
“No, because she was too ill to receive me, but my mother gave it to her.” He hesitated, and then said, with a deprecatory grin: “She—she wasn’t well enough to write to you, but she did charge my mother with a message!”
“A message to me?” Miss Wychwood asked, her brows lifting slightly.
“Well, not precisely!” he replied. His grin widened, and he gave a chuckle. “What she said, in fact, was that she washed her hands of Lucilla!”
“She says that every time I vex her!” said Lucilla disgustedly. “And never does she mean it! Depend upon it, she will come to fetch me back, and all my pleasure will be at an end!”
“Oh, I don’t think she’ll do that!” said Ninian consolingly. “She does seem to be quite knocked-up. What’s more, when my mother asked her if she was to direct one of the maids to pack up your gear and send it to you she said that if after all she had done for you you preferred a stranger to her she only trusted that you wouldn’t regret it, and wish her to take you back, because she never wanted to set eyes on you again!”
Lucilla considered this, but presently shook her head, and sighed: “I don’t set the least store by that, but it does at least make it seem that she won’t come to Bath immediately. It always takes her days to recover from her hysterical turns!”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But perhaps I ought just to mention to you that the first thing she did, before she took to her bed, was to send off a letter to Mr Carleton. Ten to one he won’t pay any heed to it, but I think I ought perhaps to warn you about it!”
“Oh, if that isn’t just like her!” cried Lucilla, flushing with wrath. “She is too ill to write to Miss Wychwood, but not too ill to write to my uncle! Oh, dear me, no! And if he means to come here, to force me to return, I can’t and I won’t bear it!”
“Well, don’t put yourself into a stew!” recommended Miss Wychwood. “If he does come here with any such intention he will find he has me to deal with—and that is an experience which I fancy he won’t enjoy!”
Chapter 4
On the following morning, Miss Wychwood sent her groom to Twynham Park with instructions to bring her favourite mare to Bath. He carried with him a letter to Sir Geoffrey, in which Miss Wychwood informed her brother that she had a young friend staying with her whom she wished to entertain with riding expeditions to the various places of interest in the surrounding countryside.
When she had first set up her own establishment in Camden Place, she had brought two saddle-horses with her, assuming, rather vaguely, that she would find riding, in Bath, the everyday matter it was at Twynham. It had not taken very long to disabuse her mind of this misapprehension. At Twynham, she had been used to ride, as a matter of course, every day of her life, whether into the village, on an errand of mercy to one of her father’s tenants struck down by sickness, or on a visit to a friend living in the neighbourhood; but she soon discovered that life in town—particularly in such a town as Bath, where the steep cobbled streets made equestrian traffic rare—was very different from life in the country. In Bath, one either walked, or took a chair: one could not stroll down to the stables on a sudden impulse, and order one’s groom to saddle up for one. It was necessary to appoint a time for one’s horse to be brought round to the house; and it was even more necessary that the groom should accompany one. Miss Wychwood found this intolerable, and frankly owned that it was one of the disadvantages of town-life. She also owned (but only to herself) that it was one of the disadvantages of being an unattached spinster; but having decided that the advantages of living under her own roof in Bath, subject to no fraternal vetoes, outweighed the disadvantages, she indulged in no vain repinings, but within a very few weeks sent her mare back to Twynham Park, where Sir Geoffrey, to his credit, kept her, exercised and groomed, for her use whenever she came to stay with him. She kept her carriage-horses in Bath, and one neatish bay hack, which, being an old and beloved friend, she could not bring herself to sell.