“I must say, one would take him for a regular slow-top,” agreed Ninian. “He isn’t, though. It might be that he doesn’t approve of females hunting.”
“A great many gentlemen don’t,” said Miss Farlow. “My own dear father would never have permitted me to hunt. Not that I wished to, even if I had been taught to ride, which I wasn’t.”
There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this, and a depressed silence fell on the company. Lucilla broke it. “Depend upon it,” she said, “my aunt will write to Uncle Carleton and he will order me to do as I’m bid. I don’t believe there is any hope for me.”
“Oh, don’t despair!” said Annis cheerfully. “It wouldn’t surprise me if your aunt were to be too thankful to learn that you are in safe hands to raise the least objection to your prolonging your visit to me. She might even be glad of a respite! And if she thinks the matter over she will surely perceive that to fetch you back immediately would give rise to just the sort of scandal-broth she must be most anxious to avoid. Ninian escorted you here because I invited you: what could be more natural? I wonder where I made your acquaintance?”
Lucilla smiled faintly at this, but it was a woebegone effort, and it took a little time to convince her that there was no other way out of her difficulties. Annis felt extremely sorry for her, since it was obvious that Mrs Amber was so morbidly conscious of the responsibility laid on her that she chafed the poor child almost to desperation by the excessive care she took of her.
Before the tea-tray was brought in, Annis took Ninian to her book-room while she there wrote the letter he was to carry to Mrs Amber, and supplied him with enough money to defray the various expenses he had incurred. She told Lucilla that she needed his help in the composition of the letter, but her real object was to discover rather more about Lucilla’s flight than had so far been disclosed. She had mentally discounted much of what Lucilla had told her as the exaggeration natural to youth, but by the time Ninian had favoured her with his version of the affair she had realized that Lucilla had not exaggerated the pressure brought to bear on her, and could easily picture the effect on a sensitive girl such pressure would have. No one had ill-treated her; she had been suffocated with loving kindness, not only by her aunt, but by Lord and Lady Iverley, and by Ninian’s three sisters; even Eliza, a ten-year old, conceiving a schoolgirl passion for her, and doting on her in a very embarrassing way. Cordelia and Lavinia, both of whom Miss Wychwood judged to be two meekly insipid young women, had, apparently, told Lucilla that they looked forward to the day when they could call her sister. This, Ninian said, in a judicial way, had been a mistaken thing to have done; but it did not seem to have occurred to him that his own conduct left much to be desired. It was obvious to Miss Wychwood that his devotion to his parents was excessive; but when she asked him if he had indeed been prepared to marry Lucilla, he replied: “No, no! That is to say—well, what I mean is—oh, I don’t know, but I thought something would be bound to happen to prevent it!”
“But I collect, my dear boy,” said Miss Wychwood, “that your parents love you very dearly, and have never denied you anything?”
“That is just it!” said Ninian eagerly. “My—my every wish has been granted me, so—so how could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to do the only thing they have ever asked me to do? Particularly when my mother begged me, with tears in her eyes, not to shatter the one hope my father had left to him!”
This moving picture failed to impress Miss Wychwood. She said, somewhat dryly, that she was at a loss to understand why his loving parents should have set their hearts on his marriage to a girl he had no wish to marry.
“She is the daughter of Papa’s dearest friend,” explained Ninian, in a reverential tone. “When Captain Carleton bought Old Manor, it was in the hope that the two estates would be joined, in the end, by this marriage.”
“Captain Carleton, I assume, was a gentleman of substance?”
“Oh, yes! All the Carletons are full of juice!” said Ninian. “But that has nothing to do with the case!”
Miss Wychwood thought that it probably had a great deal to do with the case, but kept this reflection to herself. After a moment, Ninian said, flushing slightly: “My father, I daresay, has never had a mercenary thought in his head, ma’am! His only desire is to ensure my—my happiness, and he believes that because, when we were children, Lucy and I were used to play together, and—did indeed like each other very much, we should deal famously together as husband and wife. But we shouldn’t!”declared Ninian, with unnecessary violence.
“No, I don’t think you would!” agreed Miss Wychwood, amusement in her voice. “Indeed, it has me in a puzzle to guess what made your parents think you would!”
“They believe that Lucy’s wildness comes of her being young, and kept too close by Mrs Amber, and that I should be able to handle her,” said Ninian. “But I shouldn’t, ma’am! I never could keep her out of mischief, even when we were children, and—and I don’t wish to be married to a headstrong girl, who thinks she knows better than I do always,and says I have no spirit when I try to stop her doing something outrageous! I did try to stop her running away from Chartley, but, short of taking her back by force, there was no way of doing it. And,” he added candidly, “by the time I caught up with her she had reached a village, and she said if I so much as laid a finger on her she would scream for help, besides biting and scratching and kicking, and if it was pudding-hearted of me to have hung up my axe, very well, I’m a pudding-heart! Only think what a scandal it would have created, ma’am! She would have roused the whole place—and several of the farmworkers were already going to start work in the fields! I was obliged to knuckle down! Then she said that since they would none of them believe her when she said nothing would prevail upon her to marry me, the best way of proving it to them was by running away. And I’m bound to own that I did feel it might be a good thing to do. But when she tried to persuade me to go home, and pretend I knew nothing about her having left the house before dawn, I did not knuckle down! Well, what a miserable fellow I should be to let such a stupid chit jaunter about quite unprotected!”
“Is that what she did?” asked Miss Wychwood, unable to repress a note of appreciation in her voice.
“Yes, and if only I hadn’t been woken up by the moonlight on my face I shouldn’t have known a thing about it!” said Ninian bitterly. “Of course I got up to pull the blinds closely together, and that’s why I saw Lucy. She was making off down the avenue, and carrying a portmanteau. I wish I hadn’t seen her, I don’t mind owning, but since I did see her, what could I do but follow her?”
“I can’t imagine!” confessed Miss Wychwood.
“No, well, you see how it was! I had to dress, of course, and then creep out of the house, to the stables, and by the time I’d harnessed a horse to my gig, and fobbed off Sowerby—he’s one of our grooms, and what must he do but come out in his nightshirt to see who was stealing a horse and carriage!—Lucy was half-way to Amesbury. I guessed she must be going that way, for I naturally supposed her to be trying to go back to Cheltenham, and I am pretty sure there’s a coach which goes to Marlborough from Amesbury, and Marlborough’s on the post-road to Cheltenham. I thought that was as bird-witted as it could be, but it wasn’t as bird-witted as her precious Bath-scheme! I said all I could to persuade her to abandon such a hare-brained notion, but it was to no purpose, so when it came to her saying that by hedge or by style she would get to Bath, it seemed to me that the only thing to be done was to drive her there.”
He ended on a defensive note, and looked so sheepish that Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in realising that Lucy, by far the stronger character, had, in fact, talked him into reluctant compliance. She said, however, that he had certainly done the right thing; and advised him to tell his father, without reserve, what were his sentiments on the subject of the marriage proposed to him. “Depend upon it,” she said, “he will hardly feel surprise now that Lucilla has made it abundantly clear what her sentiments are! I shouldn’t wonder at it if he felt relief at being spared such a daughter-in-law!” She affixed a wafer to the letter she had inscribed, and rose from her desk, saying, as she handed the letter to him: “There! That will, I trust, reassure Mrs Amber and may even convince her—though she sounds to me to be a remarkably foolish woman!—that her wisest course will be to give Lucilla permission to remain in my charge until she has had time to recover from all this agitation. Come, let us go back to the drawing-room! Limbury will be bringing in the tea-tray immediately.”