A Woman of Consequence

acquaintance with Miss Lambe begun? I can imagine a handsome, plausible man going on very well once he has a fair opportunity. But how does he begin? How does he get an introduction?’

‘Lord! My dear Miss Kent, young fellows these days scarcely need an introduction! Not in public places such as this.’ And Mrs Nolan scowled about her as they hurried through the dirt of the road – as if the very streets of Bath were her personal enemies. ‘They begin by watching, you see – you may be sure I had noticed the captain and his fat friend watching the poor girl a week or more before he acted. And then he played his trick … and it was such an old, worn-out trick as only an innocent like Miss Lambe could be taken in by.’

‘Oh?’ Both Harriet and Dido looked at her with interest.

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘for it was nought but the old game of picking up a lady’s dropped handkerchief. In the Pump Room one morning, not six weeks past! That’s how he forced himself upon the poor lass’s attention.’

‘I see.’ Dido knew the trick well. In her youth she had dropped a handkerchief or two herself, though she had always found it a rather unsatisfactory stratagem, since they had invariably been retrieved by the wrong gentleman.

‘But,’ protested Harriet with a frown, ‘that’s a game two must play, is it not? For, when all’s said and done, the handkerchief must be dropped before it can be returned.’

‘Oh Lord!’ exclaimed Mrs Nolan. ‘You are nigh as innocent as Miss Lambe herself! In Bath these days fellows such as yon captain carry a ready supply of ladies’ handkerchiefs in their pockets – aye, and fans too. And then it is all, “I beg your pardon, but I was sure it fell from your hand. In this crowd it is so difficult to determine …” And very clever it is, for, of course, the less the lass believes it, the more flattered she is.’

‘How very … unpleasant,’ said Dido.

‘Aye. But the difficulty,’ she confided, ‘lies in ensuring that it does not become anything worse than “unpleasant”, if you take my meaning.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Dido and Harriet. And they all stopped, as if by common consent, looking down upon the sluggish river flowing from beneath Pulteney Bridge and at the gulls which wheeled above it, crying out as harshly as the men in the crowding boats. For a moment they were all lost in the awful contemplation of that great chasm of ‘worse than unpleasant’ which gapes just beneath the intercourse of the respectable world and threatens always to swallow up incautious members of the fair sex.

But, all at once, Dido’s considerations took an entirely different turn …

‘Pardon me, Mrs Nolan,’ she cried, ‘but did you say that Captain Laurence has been acquainted with Miss Lambe for only six weeks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that is very odd – very odd indeed.’ She frowned thoughtfully and turned to Harriet. ‘I understood from Lucy,’ she said as they all walked on to the bridge, ‘that it was about then that he introduced Penelope to you.’

‘It was,’ said Harriet.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ confirmed Mrs Nolan, ‘I remember it perfectly well. It was no more than two days after he had so kindly “picked up her handkerchief”.’

‘How very strange.’ Dido fell into a reverie.

They turned onto the bridge and made their way as best they could between the carriages passing on the busy road and the people loitering about to look in the windows of the little shops.

‘Why …’ said Dido slowly at last, ‘…was he in such a very great hurry to make that introduction?’

‘Why,’ said Mrs Nolan, glancing a little uneasily at Harriet, ‘to get her invited to the country, I suppose, so that he might carry on his attentions there.’

But Dido shook her head. ‘No,’ she said with emphasis, ‘I do not think so. I am sure that cannot have been his motive. It is very stupid of me not to have thought of this before! I am quite sure he could have pursued her more conveniently here, where, as you say, the public places allow a great deal more license than is ever possible in private parties.’

‘Aye,’ agreed Mrs Nolan slowly, ‘I suppose that is true enough.’

‘And,’ continued Dido eagerly, warming to her theme, ‘since the good captain seems also to be in pursuit of Lucy, his schemes must have been made more dangerous by the introduction.’

Harriet nodded. ‘I confess,’ she said, ‘I had wondered …’

‘I am sure,’ cried Dido, ‘that he had another reason for wishing Penelope to be at Badleigh – or else …’ she added, her mind firmly fixed upon that tantalising possibility of Penelope being Miss Fenn’s daughter, ‘or else he wished her to go to Madderstone Abbey!’

‘But why should he wish her to go to Madderstone?’ asked Harriet in a puzzled voice. And Dido was struggling for a plausible answer when she became aware that Mrs Nolan had stopped walking.

She turned back and saw that the schoolmistress was staring intently into the window of one of the bridge’s little shops – though, since it offered The Finest Gentlemen’s Tailoring, it did not seem to provide much interest for a widowed lady. The flowers and foliage of her bonnet, the wide expanse of white cap below it, almost obscured her face, but, upon the little bit of pale cheek which could be seen, muscles were working fitfully – as if something in the conversation had struck a chord.

‘Mrs Nolan?’ said Dido, stepping back to her. ‘Do you agree with me that there was something strange in the introduction?’

‘Oh dear! I hardly know I’m sure, Miss Kent!’ She left the window and hurried on so fast that Dido and Harriet could scarcely keep pace with her.

They found Penelope and Lucy in Sydney Gardens, amid the arching beauty of ornamental trees, standing upon one of the pretty little iron bridges which span the new canal, with all the reflected red and gold of turning leaves shimmering upon the water below. Though their arms were linked, they were not talking but seemed rather to be engaged upon private reveries, for, while Lucy’s head was thrown back in soulful contemplation of the autumnal scene, Penelope’s attention was smilingly turned upon a little child who was clinging to the hand of his nursemaid and taking unsteady steps across the grass nearby.

Harriet hurried forward immediately with a greeting, but Mrs Nolan held back. Beneath the nodding flowers, her soft white face puckered into a frown. And Dido hesitated at her side, feeling that she understood precisely the apprehension she was experiencing.

For the moment of handing the letter to Lucy was upon her – and she still knew not how to prevent disaster … She looked again towards the two girls standing on the bridge in their fluttering white muslins. Something must be done – and done quickly – to bring them both to disillusion … And yet she dared not offer a word of advice … She dared not even tell Harriet the truth …

Mrs Nolan had drawn out her letter and was reading the direction of it – as if she hoped that somehow it might have changed. Her eyes were narrowed against the sharp sunlight and shadows which were shifting across the paper; she held it closer to her eyes to make out the writing …

And all at once Dido saw, in that one simple movement, the answer to all their difficulties!

She touched her companion gently on the arm. ‘I too have something to deliver,’ she said quietly and, taking the letter from her own pocket, she held it out for Mrs Nolan’s inspection.

‘Eeh dear me!’

‘I wonder,’ said Dido hurriedly, ‘whether you might permit me to deliver both letters.’

Mrs Nolan looked a little uncertain, but relinquished her letter and Dido stood for a moment looking down at the two pieces of paper with their black sprawling directions: so innocent looking, so very dangerous – and so very, very alike …

‘It is,’ she remarked, ‘extremely difficult to make out the writing in this light, is it not?’ She swapped the letters about in her hands and smiled.

There was a moment of puzzlement on the schoolmistress’s face – and then a dawning of understanding. ‘Eeh! Miss Kent! You would not!’

But Dido did not reply. She was already running along the path towards the bridge. Lucy and Penelope were walking towards her, their faces flushed with sun and exercise, their bonnet-strings streaming behind them in the breeze.

She looked down just once more at the letters, frowning with all the appearance of a woman dazzled. She held out a hand to each of the girls.