Bath Tangle

“Well, if he isn’t, I should like to know how it comes about he wasn’t snapped up years ago!” said Mrs Floore tartly. “He isn’t queer in his attic, is he?”

“Far from it! His understanding is excellent, and he does not suffer from any infirmity whatsoever.”

“Come, that’s better!” said Mrs Floore, relieved. “Is he handsome?”

“No. I should rather call him striking, ma’am. Certainly not handsome.”

“Do you know him well, my dear?”

Fanny cast an anxious glance at Serena. After a moment’s hesitation, Serena replied: “Very well. I have known him all my life.”

“There! What did I tell you?” Mrs Floore demanded of her escort. “I knew which shop to come to! So now you answer me this, my lady, if you’ll be so good, and that I know you are!—Is he the sort of man that’ll make my Emma a good husband?”

“Indeed, I hope so, ma’am! He can give her—a great position, wealth, consequence—”

“I know that,” interrupted Mrs Floore grimly. “And it ain’t what I asked you, my dear!”

Aware that not only Mrs Floore’s gaze was fixed upon her but Mr Goring’s also, Serena said: “Dear ma’am, you must not question me so closely, if you please! I think you cannot be aware that I was once engaged to Lord Rotherham myself!”

Mr Goring’s gaze now became intent; Mrs Floore was so much surprised that she nearly dropped her wineglass. “You?” she gasped. “Lord bless my soul! Goodness gracious! Well, I declare! That’s one thing Sukey didn’t see fit to tell me—if she knows it!”

“The engagement—and its termination—were in all the newspapers, ma’am,” Serena replied, her colour heightened.

“Ay, they would be,” nodded Mrs Floore. “It’s a lesson to me to read the Court page, which I don’t mind telling you I’m not in the habit of doing. Well, I’m sure I beg your pardon, my dear—not but what if I had known of it I’d still have asked you for your opinion of the gentleman, though I wouldn’t have done so but in private. Certainly not with Ned Goring sitting in the room, as I hope you’ll believe!”

“I don’t see that my being in the room makes any difference at all,” said Mr Goring unexpectedly. “I’ll go away, if you like, but, whether I go or whether I stay, don’t ask her ladyship any more questions, ma’am!”

“Thank you!” Serena said, smiling at him. “But it is very natural that Mrs Floore should wish to know why I cried off from the engagement. It was for no reason, ma’am, that precludes him from making some other female a perfectly respectable husband. The truth is that we found we did not suit. Our dispositions were too alike. Each of us, in fact, is autocratic, and neither of us has the sweetest of tempers. But a gentler woman than I am would not provoke Rotherham as I did, and might, I daresay, be very content to be his wife.”

“Yes, and I daresay this carpet is content to be trodden on!” retorted Mrs Floore. “A man should be master in his own house: I’ve got nothing to say against that, as long as he don’t interfere in what’s no business of his! But if I find this Marquis don’t know the difference between master and tyrant, not one penny will I settle on Emma, and we’ll see what he and Sukey have to say to that!”

“I’m afraid, ma’am, that Emily’s fortune is a matter of indifference to him.”

“Oh, it is, is it? Well, if Emily’s been pushed into this against her will, I’ll go up to London, and tell his lordship who I am, and what I mean to do, which is to hire a house in the best part of the town, and set up as his grandma! And we’ll see if that’s a matter of indifference to him!” declared the old lady triumphantly.

13

A letter from Lady Theresa followed hard upon the announcement in the Gazette. It was unfranked, so that Serena was obliged to pay for the privilege of reading two crossed pages of lament and recrimination. Not even his sister could have felt Rotherham’s engagement more keenly. Lady Theresa took it as a personal insult, and laid the blame at her niece’s door. As for Lady Laleham, no words could describe the shameless vulgarity of her conduct. From the moment of her having brought her chit of a daughter to town, she had lost no opportunity to throw her in Rotherham’s way—but who would have supposed that a man of his age would succumb to mere prettiness and an ingenuous tongue? Lady Theresa prophesied disaster for all concerned, and hoped that when Serena was dying an old maid she would remember these words, and be sorry. Meanwhile she remained her affectionate aunt.

Two days later Mrs Floore was the recipient of a letter from London. She met Serena in the Pump Room, her face wreathed in smiles, and pressed upon her a letter from Emily, begging her to read it. “Bless her heart, I’ve never had such a letter from her before, never!” she declared. “So excited as she is—why, she’s in downright transports! But you’ll see for yourself!”

Serena took the letter with some reluctance, but the old lady was obviously so anxious that she should read it that she made no demur.

It was neither well written nor well expressed, but it owed nothing to any manual: the voice of Emily spoke in every incoherent but ecstatic sentence. Serena thought it the effusion of a child; and could almost have supposed that she was reading a description of a promised treat rather than a girl’s account of her betrothal. Although Rotherham’s name occurred over and over again, it was always in connection with his rank, his riches, the fine houses he owned, the splendid horses he drove, and the envy the conquest of him had aroused in other ladies’ breasts. He had driven with her in the Park, in his curricle, which had made everyone stare, because he was said never to drive females. When he took them to the opera it was like going out with a Prince, because he had his own box in the best place imaginable, and everyone knew him, and there was never any delay in getting into his carriage, because as soon as the lackeys saw him coming they ran out to call to the coachman, and so they had not to wait in the vestibule, or to say who they were. Rotherham House, too! When Grandma saw it, she would be astonished, and wonder to think of her little Emily the mistress of such an establishment, giving parties in it, and standing at the head of the staircase with a tiara on her head. There were hundreds of servants, some of them so genteel you would take them for visitors, and all the footmen in black satin knee- breeches. Then there was Delford Park, which she had not yet seen, but she believed it to be grander even than Milverley, and how she would go on in such a place she couldn’t think.

So it went on, conveying to Serena the picture of an unsophisticated child, dazzled by riches, breathless at finding herself suddenly the heroine of a fantastic dream, intoxicated by her own staggering success. There was not a word to indicate that she had formed an attachment; she was concerned not with Ivo Barrasford, but with the Marquis of Rotherham.

Serena hardly dared look up from these pages, so clearly did they convey to her the knowledge that affection had played no part in one side at least of this contract. It seemed impossible that Mrs Floore could detect anything in the letter but the excitement of a flattered child; and it was a hard case to know what to say of so disquieting a communication.

“Well?” Mrs Floore said. “What do you think of that, my dear?”

Serena gave her back the folded sheets. “She is a little carried away, ma’am, which is not to be marvelled at. Perhaps—”

“Ay, that she is!” chuckled Mrs Floore. “So excited and happy as she is! Lord, he’s regularly swept her off her feet, hasn’t he? Lord Rotherham this, and Lord Rotherham that till you’d think there wasn’t another soul in London! Which you can see there isn’t, not in her eyes! Well, I don’t know when I’ve been in higher croak myself, and the relief it is to me, my dear, you wouldn’t credit!” She dived into her reticule for her handkerchief, and unashamedly wiped her eyes. “You see what she writes, my lady, about me visiting her in her grand house! Bless her sweet heart! I shan’t do it, but only to know she wants me to makes up for everything!”

Serena said all that was suitable, and left the old lady in a blissful dream of vicarious grandeur. She did not mention the letter to Fanny, and tried to put it out of her own mind. It recurred too often for her comfort; again and again she found herself dwelling upon all its implications, foreseeing nothing but disillusionment in store for such an ill-assorted couple, and wondering, in astonished disgust, how Rotherham could have been fool enough not to have perceived the feather-brain behind a charming face.

It was a week before she received an answer to her letter to him. The London mail reached Bath every