Bath Tangle

“Yes, most certainly I do! But, oh, how much I wish I still had the pair I was used to drive! Match greys, Hector, and such beautiful steppers!”

“Serena—my dearest! I beg you won’t! I know you are an excellent whip, but you could not have a more dangerous carriage!”

“No—if I were not an excellent whip!”

“Even nonpareils have been known to overturn these high-perch phaetons!”

“To be sure they have!” she agreed, with a mischievous smile. “The difficulty of driving them is what lends a spice!”

“Yes, but—My love, you are the only judge of what it is proper for you to do, but to be driving the most sporting of all carriages—Dearest, do females commonly do so?”

“By no means! Only very dashing females!”

“No, don’t joke me about it! Perhaps, in Hyde Park—though I own I should have thought—But in Bath—! You can’t have considered! You would set the whole town talking!”

She looked at him with surprise. “Should I? Yes, very likely!—there is no knowing what people will talk of! But you can’t—surely you can’t expect me to pay the least heed to what they may choose to say of me?”

He was silenced, startled to discover that he did expect this. After a moment, she said coaxingly: “Will you go with me, and see whether I am to be trusted not to overturn myself? I must try these job horses of mine. From what I can see of them I fancy there can be no fear that they will have the smallest desire to bolt with me!”

“You will give Bath enough to stare at without that!” he replied, in a mortified tone, and left her.

It was as well he did so, for quick anger flashed in her eyes, and he might otherwise have had another taste of her temper. His solicitude for her safety, though it might fret her independent spirit, she could understand, and make a push to bear with patience. Criticism of her conduct was an impertinence she would tolerate no better from him than from her cousin Hartley. She had almost uttered a blistering set-down, when he turned on his heel, and was shocked to realize that she had been within an ace of telling him that whatever might be the creed governing the behaviour of the ladies of his set, she was Spenborough’s daughter, and profoundly indifferent to the opinion such persons might hold of her.

It was not to be expected that she would, in this instance, think herself at fault. An easy-going father, famed for his eccentricities, had sanctioned, even encouraged, her sporting proclivities. In much the same spirit as he had told her, facing her first jump, to throw her heart over, he had taught her to handle all the most mettlesome teams in his stables. This very high-perch phaeton had been built for her to his order: disapproval of it was disapproval of him. “Whatever else you may do, my girl,” had said the late Earl, “don’t you be missish!”

The Major having removed himself, Serena’s wrath was vented, in some sort, on Fanny. “Intolerable!” she declared, striding up and down the drawing-room, in her mannishly cut driving dress. “I to pander to the prejudices of a parcel of Bath dowds and prudes! If that is what he thinks I must do when we are married the sooner he learns that I shall not the better it will be for him! Pretty well for Major Kirkby to tell a Carlow that her behaviour is unseemly!”

“Surely, dearest, he cannot have said that!” expostulated Fanny mildly.

“Implied it! What, does he think my credit to stand upon so insecure a footing that to be seen driving a sporting carriage must demolish it?”

“You know he does not. Don’t be vexed with me, Serena, but it is not only a parcel of Bath dowds who think it a fast thing for you to do!” She added hastily, as the blazing eyes turned towards her: “Yes, yes, it is all nonsense, of course! You need not care for it, but I am persuaded that no man could endure to have his wife thought fast!”

“What Papa countenanced need not offend Hector!”

“I am sure it does not. Now, do, do, Serena, be calm! Did not what your papa countenanced very frequently offend his own sister?” She saw the irrepressible smile leap to those stormy eyes, the lips quiver ruefully, and was emboldened to continue: “What he permitted must have been right—indeed, how could I feel otherwise?—but, you know, he was not precisely the same as other people!”

“No! The eccentric Lord Spenborough, eh?”

“Do you think that it vexed him to be called that?” asked Fanny, fearing that she had offended.

“On the contrary! He liked it! As I do! Anyone who chooses to say that I am as eccentric as my father may do so with my good-will! I don’t seek the title, any more than he did: it is what hum-drum, insipid provincials say of anyone who does not heed all their tiresome shibboleths! I do what I do because it is what I wish to do, not, believe me, my dear Fanny, to court the notice of the world!”

“I know—oh, I know!”

“You may, but it appears that Hector does not!” Serena flashed. “His look—the tone in which he spoke—his final words to me—! Intolerable! Upon my word, I am singularly unfortunate in my prétendants: First Rotherham—”

“Serena!” Fanny cried, with a heightened colour. “How can you speak of Rotherham and Major Kirkby in the same breath?”

“Well, at least Rotherham never lectured me on the proprieties!” said Serena pettishly. “He doesn’t give a button for appearances either.”

“It is not to his credit! I know you don’t mean what you say when you put yourself into a passion, but to be comparing those two is outrageous—now, isn’t it? The one so arrogant, his temper harsh, his disposition tyrannical, his manners abrupt to the point of incivility; and the other so kind, so solicitous for your comfort, loving you so deeply—Oh, Serena, I beg your pardon, but I am quite shocked that you could talk so!”

“So I apprehend! There is indeed no comparison between them. My opinion of Rotherham you know well. But I must be allowed to give the devil his due, if you please, and credit him with one virtue! I collect you don’t count it a virtue! We won’t argue on that head. My scandalous carriage awaits me, and if we are not to aborder one another I’d best leave you, my dear!”

She went away, still simmering with vexation, a circumstance which caused her groom, a privileged person, to say that it was as well she was not driving her famous greys.

“Fobbing, hold your tongue!” she commanded angrily.

He paid no more attention to this than he had paid to the furies of a seven-year-old termagant, but delivered himself of a grumbling monologue, animadverting severely on her headstrong ways and faults of temper; recalling a great many discreditable incidents, embellished with what he had said to his lordship and what his lordship had said to him; and drawing a picture of himself as an ill-used and browbeaten serf, which must have made her laugh, had she been listening to a word he said.

Her rages were never sullen, and by the time she had discovered the peculiarities of her hired horses, this one had quite vanished. Remorse swiftly took its place, and the truth of Fanny’s words struck home to her. She saw again the Major’s face, as much hurt as mortified, remembered his long devotion, and without knowing that she spoke aloud, exclaimed: “Oh, I am the greatest beast in nature!”

“Now, that, my lady,” said her henchman, surprised and gratified, “I never said, nor wouldn’t. What I do say—and, mind, it’s what his lordship has told you time and again!—is that to be handling a high-spirited pair when you’re in one of your tantrums—”

“Are you scolding still?” interrupted Serena. “Well, if these commoners are your notion of a high-spirited pair, they are not mine!”

“No, my lady, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to you if they was prime ’uns on the fret!” said Fobbing, with asperity.

“It would make a great deal of difference to me,” she sighed. “I wonder who has my greys now?”

“Now, we don’t want to have a fit of the dismals!” he said gruffly. “If you was driving a pair of stumblers, you’d still take the shine out of any other lady on the road, my lady, that I will say! It’s time you was thinking of turning them, if you don’t want to be late back—them not being what you might call sixteen mile an hour tits.”

“Yes, we must go back,” she agreed.

He relapsed into silence, and she was free to pursue her own uncomfortable reflections. By the time they had reached Laura Place again, she had beaten herself into a state of repentance which had to find instant expression.