Bath Tangle

young Thormanby, and myself, Mr Goring was the most creditable member of the expedition!”

“Good heavens, did he go with you?”

“He did, upon Mrs Floore’s suggestion. It was out of my power to refuse to sponsor him, and by the time I had run my eye over the rest of the party I was glad of it! He is not, perhaps, the most enlivening of companions, but he may be depended upon to maintain a stolid sobriety, and his joining us enabled me to dispense with Fobbing’s escort, for which I was thankful! I should have been in disgrace with Fobbing for a week, had he seen our cavalcade! I am well-served, you will tell me, for not attending to Hector! He told me how it would be—though I don’t think he foresaw that I should spend the better part of my time in Wells in giving set-downs to one dashing blade, and foiling the attempts of another to withdraw me from the rest of the party!”

“Dearest, how disagreeable it must have been! I wish you had not gone!”

“Yes, so did I! It was a dead bore. We didn’t reach Wells until noon, for in spite of all the fine tales I was told it is a three-hour drive; and we spent four interminable hours there, resting the horses, eating a nuncheon, looking at the Cathedral, and dawdling about the town. And, that nothing might be lacking to crown my day, I allowed Emily to drive to Wells in a landaulet with the young Aylshams and no chaperon to check the sort of high spirits that inevitably attack a party of children of whom not one is over eighteen years of age! By the time she had reached Wells she was by far too full of liveliness for propriety, and ready to maintain an à suivie flirtation with the court-card who had ridden close to the landaulet all the way to Wells.”

“Serena, you did not permit it? For either of you to be in a chain with such vulgar persons is shocking!”

“Exactly so! I formed an instant alliance with the respectable Mr Goring, and between us we kept her under close guard. To do her justice, once away from the wilder members of the party she soon became sober again. But I gave her a tremendous scold on the way home, I promise you!”

“Did you consider what Lord Rotherham would say to all this?” Fanny asked, glancing fleetingly at her.

“It was unnecessary: I knew! That was the gist of my scold, and it brought upon me a flood of tears, and entreaties not to tell him, or Mama.”

“Tears and entreaties! Do you still say that she is not afraid of him, Serena?”

“No, she is a good deal in awe of him, and I fancy he has frightened her,” Serena replied coolly.

“If he has done that, you will scarcely persist in believing that he loves her!”

Serena turned away to pick up her gloves. “I have every reason to believe, my dear Fanny, that he loves her à corps perdu,” she said, in a dry voice. “Unless I much mistake the matter, it is the violence of his passion which has put her in a fright, not his withering tongue! Of that she stands in awe merely, and it is as well she should, for she is too giddy, and too often betrayed into some piece of hoydenish conduct. She was not thrown into a panic by rebuke, I’ll swear! She is too well accustomed to it. For a man of experience, Rotherham has handled her very ill. If I did not suspect that he has realized it already, I should be strongly tempted to tell him so.”

“Serena!” Fanny protested, quite scandalized.

“Don’t distress yourself! I fancy that is why he has not come to Bath to see Emily. No doubt Lady Laleham hinted him away: she at least is clever enough to know that with such a shy little innocent as Emily it would be fatal to set too hot a pace to courtship. I wonder she ever left them alone together—except that I collect he was at first careful not to alarm a filly he must have known was as shy as she could stare, ready to bolt at one false move.” Her lip curled. “He’s impatient, but I never knew him to be so on the box or in the saddle. I own, I am astonished that a man with such fine, light hands could have blundered so!”

“Serena, I do beseech you not to talk in that horrid way!” broke in Fanny. “Emily is not a horse!”

“Filly, my love, filly!”

“No, Serena! And whatever you may choose to imagine, it’s my belief he hasn’t come to Bath because he doesn’t know Emily is here. Recollect that Lady Laleham would not let him set eyes on Mrs Floore for the world! Depend upon it, she has fobbed him off—if it was necessary, which I don’t at all believe! —with some lie.”

“Rotherham is well aware of Emily’s direction. She received a letter from him yesterday, written from Claycross,” replied Serena. “Lady Laleham found another means of keeping him away from Bath, you see. I don’t doubt he will handle Emily with far more discretion when he meets her again—though I cannot think it wise of him to write, pressing for an early marriage, before he has soothed her maidenly fears. However, I trust I have to some extent performed that office for him.”

“He is pressing for an early marriage?” Fanny repeated.

“Yes, why not?” Serena said evenly. “He is very right, though he had better have seen her first. Once she is his wife, he will very soon teach her not to shrink from his embraces.”

“How can you? Oh, how can you?” Fanny exclaimed, shuddering. “When you know that she neither loves nor trusts him!”

“She will rapidly do both. She is amazingly persuadable, I assure you!” Serena retorted. She glanced at the clock. “Do we dine at eight? How tonnish we become! I must go and make myself tidy. Does Hector dine with us tonight, or is he vexed with me for having flouted his extremely wise advice?”

“You know he is never vexed,” Fanny said. “But he doesn’t come to us tonight. He called this afternoon, to desire me to tell you that he was obliged to go into Kent for a few days, and meant to catch the mail, at five o’clock.”

“Good heavens, what a sudden start! Has some disaster befallen?”

“Oh, no! That is, I did not question him, naturally! But he said something about business which he had neglected, and his agent’s having written to tell him that it had become most urgent.”

“Oh, I see! Very likely, I daresay. I recall that he told me once that he had come to Bath for a few weeks only. The weeks have turned into months! I hope he will dispatch his business swiftly: how moped we shall be without him!”

“Yes, indeed!” Fanny agreed. Her voice sounded hollow in her own ears; she fancied Serena had noticed it, and made haste to change the subject. “Serena, if Rotherham comes to see Emily—and if he is now at Claycross you cannot doubt that he will!—”

“I doubt it very much,” Serena interrupted. “I understand he has been there for a fortnight, or more! He has neither visited Emily, nor suggested to her that he should. If you won’t allow my first answer to that riddle to be correct, perhaps he is trying to pique her. How good for him to be kept champing at the bit! I wish I might see it!”

“Can it be that he has guests staying with him?” said Fanny.

“I have not the remotest conjecture, my dear!” replied Serena. “Perhaps, since Lady Laleham is at Cherrifield Place again, he finds her company sufficiently amusing!”

But his lordship, although alone at Claycross, showed no disposition to fraternize with his future mother-in- law. He even omitted to pay her the compliment of leaving cards at Cherrifield Place, a circumstance which made her so uneasy that she bullied Sir Walter into riding over to Claycross to discover whether Rotherham had taken offence at Emily’s prolonged stay in Bath, and to reassure him if he had. Sir Walter was a man of placid temperament, but he was also strongly opposed to any form of activity that seemed likely to cast the least rub in the way of his quite remarkable hedonism, and he resented this effort to compel him to enter into his wife’s matrimonial schemes. It was his practice to abandon home and children entirely to her management, partly because he was indifferent to both, and partly because argument was abhorrent to him. Having long outlived his fondness for his wife, he spent as little time in her vicinity as was possible, and was inclined to be aggrieved that his only reward for being so obliging as to spend a week under his own roof was to be hunted out on an embarrassing errand.

“I sometimes wonder,” declared Lady Laleham acidly, “whether you have a spark of affection for your children, Sir Walter!”

He was stung by the injustice of this speech, and replied indignantly: “Very pretty talking, upon my soul, when I’ve let you drag me down to this damned lazar-house! If coming to see the brats when they’re covered all over with spots isn’t being affectionate, I should like to know what is!”

“Have you no desire to see your eldest daughter creditably established?” she