20
The Russian Scandal
Summer in Nettleford and its environs was waning into autumn in a golden haze. The more genteel part of the populace was about equally divided into excitement, disgust and, sad to state, disappointment, as the gold-embossed cards of invitation began to arrive.
“Dean, I really do think you could have spared us this!” cried his wife loudly.
“There was no discernible reason, oecumenical or otherwise, to refuse.”
“Is he even a communicating member of the Church of England?” she cried, refusing the oecumenical gambit.
“So he claims: yes.”
“What rubbish!”
“I could scarcely call him a liar to his face. He certainly seems acquaint with the order of service.”
“I shall not attend,” she warned.
“Thus offending in one clever move not only the Prince and his Princess, but also the Bishop—”
“Stop it, David!” she cried.
The Dean sighed. “Hush, my dear. Comfort yourself with the reflection that she will be well and truly out of Sleyven’s hair.”
Lady Judith breathed hard for a while but acknowledged: “Possibly if I remind myself of it night and morning until the great day dawns, I shall be able to support with at least the appearance of equanimity the sight of that Creature flaunting herself in Nettleford Cathedral in orange blossom and a coronet!”
“A coronet?” he echoed feebly.
His wife gave him a scorching look and swept out. Refusing, the Dean noted glumly, the hair gambit.
In a handsome house on the other side of Nettleford Mrs Cunningham raised her eyebrows very high. “Unseemly haste,” she drawled.
Mr Cunningham had been examining the over-elaborate card of invitation with a certain relish. He gave a smothered snigger. “Aye. Well, dare say she ain’t about to let him escape her net, now she’s snared him. Er—s’pose we’ll have to go, since she’s a relative.”
Mrs Cunningham took a deep breath. “The first week of October? I think not. We have engagements in town, as you must recall.”
“No, we— Oh, aye! Out of course we do!” he choked.
Mrs Cunningham did not go so far as to smile, but she looked mildly gratified.
“Good; perhaps we might also find ourselves obliged to be in town,” offered her eldest son.
“Oh, Michael! No! I would not miss it for the world!” protested Lady Paula Cunningham with a laugh.
Her husband swallowed a sigh. “Very well, my love.”
The card of invitation was not received with joy, or even complaisance, at Verne Lea. “I shall not attend,” said Mrs Patterson grimly, crumpling the said card fiercely and throwing it into the fireplace.
“But Winifred—”
“NO!” she shouted.
Mr Patterson shrugged a little, and wandered out to commune with his strawberry beds.
The atmosphere at Nettlefold Hall was little better, though in, so to speak, the opposite direction, as soon became evident to Lord Sleyven after his visitor had taken a seat and refreshed himself.
“Her La’ship’s insistin’,” Sir William reported glumly.
The Earl gave him a look in which irony was mingled with a certain sympathy. “Mm.”
The Squire cleared his throat. “S’pose you, yourself—?”
“No,” he said evenly. “Attending the damned engagement party was more than enough. Besides, I have to be in town very soon: the parliament is to sit.”
“Then I dare say we might see you, my Lord,” he said glumly, “for her La’ship’s insistin’ on goin’ up to buy a damned new outfit for it.”
Jarvis swallowed a laugh and managed to say that Sir William would of course be very welcome at Wynton House at any time.
Apparently joy was not unalloyed even at Dinsley House itself.
Miss Harrod blew her nose very hard. “Of course, I am not her only sister... And I know I am not young, she did not have to say— But it is not as if it is a first marriage, and—and I was planning to order up a new outfit, and a misty grey would not be at all unsuitable!”
Poor Mrs Hunter looked at her afternoon guest limply and could only find disjointed murmurs of sympathy to utter. No-one with any taste would actually desire the skinny, yellowish, grey-haired Miss Harrod, who could scarcely have been more than passable even in her long-gone youth, to feature as their bridesmaid: true. But then, could anybody with a heart refuse her it, when it obviously meant so much to her?
Lady Judith’s daughter-in-law’s reaction to the card was exceedingly unlike her Ladyship’s.
“Ooh!” Polly gasped. “I never expected to be invited!”
Dr Golightly swallowed a sigh, smiled nicely, and agreed that, in especial as the Michael Cunninghams were going and Papa was presiding...
The details of Kitty’s guest list—and of the reactions to it—were of course spreading rapidly in Nettleford and district.
“I suppose we couldn’t have expected...” explained Miss Platt wistfully.
Miss Janet White looked at her with great sympathy. “But surely— After all, you and dear Mrs Kinwell know her quite well, I thought, Miss Platt? Why, I’m sure it was but two months back that Mrs Newbiggin was telling us you’d been taking tea with her, with the Bishop’s lady, herself!”
“Ye-es. She was so kind as to send her barouche... Rather more than two months,” admitted Miss Platt with a sigh.
“Maybe the invitation’s late,” suggested Miss Janet kindly.
Miss Platt smiled wanly. “I dare say.”
“Well, now, how about this length of cambric?” prompted Miss Janet.
Jumping, Miss Platt recalled why she had come into the shop.
The transaction being complete, she confided sadly: “I was thinking, if I should be so fortunate as to be invited, that those new watered-silk ribbons you have in would be just the very— But I suppose there’s no point, now.”
“Good for trade, I don’t think!” concluded Miss Janet with an angry sniff when the sisters were alone.
“Ar,” agreed Miss White sourly. “Them what’s going think themselves too good to shop ’ere, and far’s I can see, she ain’t invitin’ them what do shop ’ere!”
A customer coming in, they hastily resumed the more refined tones of their tradespersons’ personae, but as the customer was one who would be likely to be interested in the news that Mrs Marsh’s rise in the world was apparently inducing her to drop the less distinguished of her local acquaintance like hot coals, she was duly favoured with it.
In a country vicarage such as Nettlefold’s an invitation to a Royal wedding ceremony in the cathedral itself might have been expected to meet with a rapturous reception. Not so, alas.
“And I know not what the dear Dean can be at, permitting her to have it in the cathedral!” said Mrs Waldgrave, red as a turkey-cock.
“But—”
“Not another word, if you please, Septimus. You, of course, must do as you think fit; but your daughters and I will not attend.”
“Look, Marina, we can’t offend the Dean!” he gasped.
Mrs Waldgrave gave the card of invitation an evil look. “I know not how it can offend him if the girls and I spend the Little Season with my cousins in town.”
Glumly Mr Waldgrave reflected that she might get Portia and Amanda to go: in fact it would be just as well if Amanda were to miss the damned wedding, for they’d had continuous floods of tears ever since the engagement was announced; but he’d like to see her get Eugenia up to town. –No, on second thoughts, he wouldn’t.
Apparently his wife was reading his mind, because she added coldly: “Eugenia may remain in Oxford with that bluestocking.”
“Yes. But my dear, we cannot afford—”
“Nonsense, Septimus. We shall be staying with my cousins: there will be very little expense involved. I do not wish to discuss it further, if you please: I have made up my mind.”
The Reverend Mr Waldgrave subsided glumly. Very evidently she had, yes.
Over at Plumbways its chatelaine’s reception of the invitation was not unlike the vicar’s lady’s, though its manifestation was different.
Mr Somerton watched uneasily as Mrs Somerton’s narrow lips tightened. “Suppose that’s the invitation to the damned wedding. The cathedral, is it?”
She took a deep breath. “Most certainly.”
“Well, at least you and Lacey needn’t bother with new bonnets for the wom—”
This had been the wrong thing to say entirely.
“The whole county will be there. I suppose you wish your wife and child to disgrace you?” she said acidly.
Mr Somerton subsided glumly.
Mrs Somerton gave the invitation a look of loathing. “Insufferable,” she muttered.
He brightened momentarily. “Well, there you are then, my dear! Don’t go!”
“Rubbish.”
He subsided again, and a sour silence reigned in the refurbished sitting-room of the Somertons’ charming Jacobean residence.
The gilded cards of invitation—and the news—had now reached as far as Kendlewood Place.
Miss Humphreys blew her nose. “Everyone has been invited!”
Colonel and Mrs Langford had been: certainly. Though they had no intention of accepting the invitation.
“It—it will be a very showy affair, dear Miss Humphreys,” offered Lettice uneasily. “And then, the cathedral is so cold and draughty—”
“I would not care for that!” She blew her nose again. “And she cut me in the High Street in Nettleford only two days since,” she said dolefully.
“Er—mayhap she did not see you: the High Street is always so bus—”
Miss Humphreys gave her a brave smile. “You are very kind, dear Mrs Langford, but of course she saw me. She was with the Bishop’s wife and a very grand lady in a green bonnet. Well, it is understandable: I am a nobody, after all.”
“Dearest Miss Humphreys, the woman is not worth knowing!” cried Lettice loudly.
“No, you are quite right,” she said, squaring her thin shoulders. “I fear I have been mistaken in her. Well, it was very silly of me, and I shall not think of it any more!”
Lettice smiled and nodded encouragingly and introduced the much safer topic of Master Justin Langford.
Those like poor Miss Humphries, Mrs Kinwell and Miss Platt, who had long since served their purpose, were not the only ones to await in vain a gilded card of invitation to the nuptials of Mrs Katherine Marsh and His Royal Highness Alexei Alexandrovitch Petrovsky. Some who should have been invited and would have wished to attend had also been ignored. A tactical error on the bride-to-be’s part, as was immediately apparent to the original conspirators.
“You know she ain’t invited Lizzie Sigley? Mad as foire, she is,” confided Mrs Newbiggin with relish. “After that municipal reception what she made ’Is Worship give for the Prince, an’ all!”
Mr Bottomley-Pugh gave a smothered snigger.
Mrs Newbiggin slowly winked one protuberant blue eye. “’Is Worship was planning to wear ’is chain of office to it, too.”
Slapping his knee, Mr Bottomley-Pugh collapsed in helpless splutters.
Captain Cornwallis rode slowly over the fields in the general direction of Nettleford House. He was in no hurry: he intended to call on Miss Bottomley-Pugh, but he had set off very early. It was a fine, warm morning, with a scattering of light clouds high in the blue: bidding fair to be a perfect day. The Captain’s thoughts wandered pleasantly. He had not, it must be admitted, defined to himself his intentions towards Miss Bottomley-Pugh. Certainly Mrs Cumbridge’s fears were unfounded: he did not cherish evil intentions towards her, whatever her father was. But as she was so much younger than he, and as he hardly knew her, he had not formulated in so many words the idea that he might marry her. He was merely aware that she was all that was charming, sweet and kind. He rode on slowly, humming under his breath now and then, and now and then smiling to himself.
The land rose gently, and dipped again to the meandering, ill-kept road that led from Dinsley Dell to the twin houses. The Captain on his horse descended the dip, crossed the road, and mounted the rise on its far side. He rode on a little, parallel with the road. There was now a fine view of Dinsley House to his right and, a little further on, Dinsley Airs.
Suddenly it came to him. “By God!” he said aloud. “He’s that actor fellow!”
This discovery seemed, naturally, much too good to keep to himself, so, after a certain time passed in harmless chat with Miss Bottomley-Pugh under the indulgent eye of Mr Bottomley-Pugh, Senior, in the rather awful Bottomley-Pugh red salon, instead of immediately proposing a stroll in the grounds with the young lady on his arm, he told them of it. As a very good joke.
The story did not meet with the rapturous reception the gallant naval captain had expected. Not even from young Mr Bottomley-Pugh, who had come in in time to hear it.
“Ar,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh as the silence lengthened.
“Er—look, I swear!” he said with a laugh. “I’m not making it up, y’know!”
“Ar.”
After several more moments had passed, Mr Vaughan Bottomley-Pugh said: “I suppose we could kidnap him.”
“Ar,” said his father, looking hard at Captain Cornwallis.
“Kidnap whom?” he said with a feeble laugh.
Miss Bottomley-Pugh had been sitting in a maidenly way on the sofa at his right. She now rose. “You,” she said calmly. “—It wouldn’t answer, Vaughan: his relatives must know he was coming this way. He may even have been seen entering our gates.”
Captain Cornwallis gave another feeble laugh. “My dear Miss Bottomley-Pugh! This is a joke, right?”
“No,” said her brother. He rose without haste, wandered over to a small occasional table, and under the Captain’s bulging eyes produced a small pistol from it. “Don’t move,” he said, pointing it at him.
“Now, look here—!” spluttered the Captain.
“I wouldn’t move, if I was you. Vaughan, ’ere, has this theory as a pistol what ain’t loaded ain’t worth having,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh. “Personally, I wouldn’t volunteer to find out if that one is. Only if you wants to cut short that distinguished naval career of yours, Captain, you make a move.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr Vaughan calmly.
“Have you all run mad? Is this some sort of obscure joke?” cried poor Captain Cornwallis.
“No: the thing is, sir, you’ve come to the wrong house,” said the young lady whom he had been until very lately considering as the epitome of all that was sensible as well as all that was charming, sweet and kind.
Leonard Cornwallis thought he saw. He turned very red and cried hastily: “Sir, I never for a moment cherished any thought towards your daughter that was not entirely proper!”
To his utter astonishment the stout merchant returned calmly: “Then I was mistook, and you must be a mouse, not a man.”
“Stop it, Pa,” said his daughter unsteadily.
“Well, it ain’t ’is fault as ’e’s put ’is foot in it good and proper, but there’s no need to take us for a pack of gapeseeds,” he said on a dispassionate note.
“Mr Bottomley-Pugh, I have never taken you for any such thing. And my intentions towards your daughter are entirely honourable,” said the Captain stiffly.
“Well, there’s some as maintains they ain’t, acos we’re nobodies and you’re a lord’s cousin or some such, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for the time being. It ain’t got nothing to do with Kate, so you can rest easy on that score.”
“Then what has it to do with?” he said, staring at Vaughan with the pistol.
“The Prince,” said that young man succinctly.
“Ar. You guessed roight about him. Thing is, you brung your news to the wrong ’ouse,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh flatly.
Captain Cornwallis gulped. “Oh. But—uh— So...”
“He’s entirely at sea,” said the lovely Miss Bottomley-Pugh in the same horridly dispassionate tone her father had been using.
Mr Bottomley-Pugh, Senior, collapsed in horrible sniggers. Mr Vaughan, though grinning and acknowledging: “That’s a good one,” kept the pistol remarkably steady.
“You are perfectly correct about the Prince: he is actually the actor, Roland Lefayne. You are right in saying he played Hamlet last year,” said Katerina calmly.
“Yes, well, don’t you see? An actor passing himself off to Mrs Marsh as a Russian prince? A huge engagement party, half the county invited to the wedd—” Captain Cornwallis broke off as a horrible thought struck him. “Oh, I say, she’s not a relation of yours, is she?” he gasped.
“Look, Kate, ’e won’t do,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh, producing an enormous handkerchief and blowing his nose hard.
Miss Bottomley-Pugh flushed up and said: “Don’t be unkind, Pa. It is so unlikely, after all. And that was not a bad guess.”
“Not a good one, either,” said young Mr Vaughan calmly. “If we were her relatives, we’d be likely to be mad as fire.”
“Yes. Just hold your noise, lad,” said his father unsteadily. He trumpeted into the handkerchief once more, and said without further preamble: “Thing is, ’e’s my brother. Lefayne’s ’is stage name. We sicced him onto the Marsh woman.”
Captain Cornwallis’s handsome jaw sagged. There was an appreciable pause, and then he croaked: “But why?”
“Well, that’s cutting straight to the heart of it, at all events,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh in tones of tempered approval. “Why do you imagine, sir?”
“Don’t, Pa,” murmured Katerina. “I don’t think anyone could guess.”
“Little Janey spotted it straight off!” he said indignantly.
“More or less. But Vaughan did his bit.”
“Eh? Oh, so ’e did. Well, all right, I’ll tell ’im, but you realise this is the end of it, don’t you?” he said glumly.
“I realised that the moment he started to tell us, Pa,” said Vaughan.
“Ar. Oh, well. We sicced him onto Mrs Marsh, Captain, acos we wanted to draw her off the Lard. The Earl of Sleyven, to you. And the reason we wanted to do that was acos we wanted to give little Miss Burden a chance with ’im.”
“We like her. She was very kind to our Ma,” said Vaughan succinctly.
“Ar. You could say so,” allowed Mr Bottomley-Pugh, scratching his chins slowly for the first time since the Captain had entered the room. “Or you could put it this way, see: Miss Burden was the only lady in this ’ere county as was lady enough to treat my poor late woife as a ’uman being, not to say as the lady what she wasn’t, poor Maggie. So when we learned that maybe the Lard’s eye ’ad fixed on her, but it wasn’t going too good, what with this Mrs Marsh a-turning up out of the blue and them ladies and gents what the county’s full of a-spreadin’ it all round as her little girl was his,”—he eyed him sardonically—“we decided we’d do our mite to get rid of one impediment. Acos what we thought, you see, was that just maybe Mrs Marsh had come into our county to get ’er ’ooks in the Lard again.”
“I—I am very sure you were not wrong in that,” said Captain Cornwallis numbly. “But this—this preposterous masquerade—?”
Mr Bottomley-Pugh shrugged heavily. “Whoy not?”
“It had to be someone attractive enough for her to fall for him with a thump,” explained Vaughan kindly. “But rich and important enough for her to—um—take him seriously.”
“He had to be prepared to offer her marriage, and, if not outrank an earl, at least appear as likely to afford her an elevated position in society, Captain,” said Katerina forthrightly.
“Er—yes,” he said numbly.
The Bottomley-Pughs just waited.
“But— How far did you intend it to go?” he asked limply.
“Not actual marriage,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh on a regretful note. “Thought we moight let ’er book the cathedral for it, though.”
“And send out the cards of invitation,” agreed Vaughan.
“She’s done that,” said the Captain feebly.
“Ar. So it is almost over.” Mr Bottomley-Pugh looked at him hard.
“I give you my word I won’t breathe a word, sir.”
“Ar. –That’s the second toime ’e’s called me ‘sir’ since ’e met me,” he said to the ambient air.
“Third, Pa,” corrected Mr Vaughan solemnly.
Once again Captain Cornwallis went very red. “I think I see what some of this is about. Mr Bottomley-Pugh, if at any time I’ve seemed lacking in respect for you, I can only assure you it is not so.”
“I’d probably say the same meself, if someone was holding a pistol to me ’ead,” he allowed, unmoved.
“Pa, I really think that was beyond the pale,” said his daughter in a choked voice.
“Don’t laugh, then, Kate,” he returned stolidly.
“Look, put the damned pistol away, then!” shouted the Captain, at the end of his tether. “What do you expect, that I’ll run out of the house and immediately start blabbing?”
Mr Bottomley-Pugh eyed him drily. “It is what I’d expect from a fellow of your class, aye. Too good to keep to yourself, ain’t it?”
Captain Cornwallis took a deep breath. “No. Not now that I know you wish me not to mention it, Mr Bottomley-Pugh.”
Mr Bottomley-Pugh could see the Captain was now consciously avoiding calling him “sir.” His shrewd little eyes twinkled, but he merely said calmly “Well, we was goin’ to wind it up. Only we thought it’d be more artistic-loike, if she was to be left a-waitin’ at the church.”
“At the cathedral,” said Vaughan.
“Ar. –Go on, then, Vaughan, put that toy away,” he said heavily.
“Oh, should I? Oh, all right, then.” Grinning, Vaughan tossed the pistol up in the air. Captain Cornwallis gasped involuntarily as he caught it again with a negligent gesture.
“It ain’t neither cocked nor loaded, acos I ain’t a gent: I don’t believe in guns in the ’ouse,” said the elder Bottomley-Pugh on a grim note.
“No. It ain’t a pistol, neither,” said Vaughan, grinning. He cocked it, pointed it at his sister and said: “Shall I?”
“Go on, then,” Katerina agreed, biting her lip and glancing quickly at the Captain and away again.
Vaughan pulled the trigger. The top surface of the barrel flew upwards, to release a creased piece of cloth, and the pistol played a few notes of a tinkly little tune.
“Clockwork. I wasn’t sure it was fully wound,” said Vaughan, tossing it to the Captain.
“It’s supposed to be a flag,” said Katerina, clearing her throat, “and the tune is—er—a sea-shanty, I’m afraid.”
The Captain could now see that the creased piece of cloth was a miniature Union Jack. He bit his lip.
“German, they tell me,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh dispassionately. “Original, it had a foreign flag in it, only Kate, here, she thought that wasn’t patriotic enough in an Englishman’s home, so she stitched a little—” He stopped, the Captain had collapsed limply onto the sofa with it, and gone into a choking paroxysm. “He ain’t all bad,” he concluded.
“No,” said Katerina, biting her lip. “and I’m afraid we have been very, very mean to him.”
“You—have!” choked the Captain helplessly. “—Here, I say, it wasn’t all a joke, was it?”
“No! We did it for Miss Burden!” said Vaughan crossly.
“Yes. Roland Lefayne really is our Uncle Sid,” said Katerina.
Captain Cornwallis collapsed in renewed hysterics.
Some little time later, Mr Bottomley-Pugh having allowed him to take Miss Bottomley-Pugh into the garden, he said cautiously to her: “I can see that once you’d got started it was too good to let go of. But I confess, Miss Bottomley-Pugh, I find it hard to see just how you did get started. I mean,” he said, reddening, “that of course I understand that Miss Burden was kind to your late mamma—”
“Yes. It wasn’t only that. Poor Pa is in love with her himself.”
Leonard Cornwallis had been working round to asking if perhaps young Vaughan had conceived a hopeless passion in that direction. He gulped, and was incapable of speech. Though mentally thanking his lucky stars he hadn’t got as far as saying it.
“I suppose you think that is ludicrous!” she said, blinking back angry tears.
“What? No, of course not! I’d be the last fellow to— Please don’t be cross,” he said gently, as she tried to withdraw her hand from his arm. He put his hand softly over hers. “I understand perfectly. Miss Burden is both pretty and kind. And, as your father so correctly indicated, the only lady in the county worthy of the name. –All but one,” he said with a smile.
Katerina replied with dignity: “As I think today cannot have failed to bring home to you, Captain Cornwallis, I am not a lady.”
To her surprise he replied: “Mm... I’ve been thinking about it.” He wrinkled up his handsome nose. “The class thing made it all the more urgent, didn’t it?”
Katerina swallowed. “You are most acute, sir.”
“I’m not that, but I’m perhaps not as slow as your family seem to think,” he murmured.
“No. Um, that was the class thing, too, sir. I’m afraid we were ganging up on you,” she gulped.
“Yes, I quite realise that.” He looked down at her with a little smile in the forget-me-not eyes. “Don’t do it again, will you?”
“No.” said Katerina faintly, swallowing. “I’ll try not to.”
The Captain smiled, pressed her hand with his, and said no more.
... “Ar,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh slowly as their visitor’s horse’s hooves scattered gravel on the sweep. “Dessay he moight not let us down, after all.”
“I am sure he will not,” said Katerina, very flushed.
“Ar.” Mr Bottomley-Pugh didn’t say what he was thinking. But it was something along the lines of: Wait and see if his toffee-nosed relatives invite us to a family dinner, before we start counting our chickens.
The organ of Nettleford Cathedral played. Mr Golightly, who as he had himself confessed, would not have missed the ceremony for all the tea in China, rolled an enquiring eye at his mother. Determinedly Lady Judith avoided the eye.
... “She’s awfully late!” hissed Janey, eyes sparkling.
Miss Burden had not wished to accept the invitation to attend the wedding of Katherine Marsh, née Harrod, to His Serene Highness the Prince Alexei Alexandrovich Petrovsky, but as they were still in the country—Lady Caroline having declared Wynton House unfit for human habitation, regardless of the fact that the Earl was inhabiting it—she had been informed that people would talk if she did not attend, but it was entirely her own choice. Miss Burden, silently recognising this last to be but a social form, was perforce present. “Mm,” she murmured. “But so is he.”
Janey’s slender shoulders shook.
... The organ of Nettleford Cathedral played. Lady Ventnor adjusted her very new furs with a pettish gesture. It being a beautifully fine morning in the first week of October, still with scarce a hint of autumn in the air, there was very little excuse for the furs, but half the females in the Cathedral were similarly clad, so Sir William had not expressed this thought.
“Where is the damned fellow?” he muttered.
“Ssh!” she hissed, frowning.
... Mr Somerton sighed heavily, and recrossed his legs. Mrs Somerton frowned reprovingly at him, but pretty soon returned to her close scrutiny, within the limits of the architecture of the cathedral and the necessity of not being seen positively to peer, of the other ladies’ outfits.
Outside on the pavement, certain lesser lights had assembled. Mrs Newbiggin, looking artless, with a basket over her arm, had merely, she had explained to the innocent Miss Humphreys, stepped out to do a bit of marketing, when she’d been attracted by the sight of a crowd assembling. Miss Humphreys was accompanied by a grinning Colonel Langford, his hat pulled well down over his eyes. Fluttered introductions having been performed by the maiden lady, he explained frankly: “For myself, I’m here to stare, Mrs Newbiggin. I bumped into Miss Humphreys in the High Street and dragged her along with me, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Miss Humphreys faintly, not explaining what she’d been doing in the High Street in the first place.
Colonel Langford did not say that he had business in the town and had, in fact, had no intention of gawping at the Petrovsky-Marsh wedding until he’d spotted Miss Humphreys dithering on the pavement within sight of the cathedral. He merely grinned, adjusted his hat further over his nose, and said: “I say, she’s late, ain’t she?”
At this a thin little lady who had come up beside them and had for some time been looking as if she might burst with excitement hissed: “Yes, but the groom is not yet arrived, sir!”
Colonel Langford gave a startled snigger, and Mrs Newbiggin, vastly encouraged, at this introduced Miss Janet White to him. The Colonel accepting the introduction with every appearance of complaisance, they resumed their gawping.
... The organ of Nettleford Cathedral played. Captain Cornwallis, who had declared his intention of not missing the Petrovsky-Marsh wedding for all the tea in China, greeting with indifference the news that his host and hostess would not be in residence at the time, was attending in the company of the Bottomley-Pughs. Mr Bottomley-Pugh had explained to him with horrid explicitness that Mrs Marsh had not intended to send them an invitation, considering she might well drop the acquaintance of a mere merchant, but that Sid had pointed out she might yet need to fall back on Vaughan for little Jenny.
The Captain cleared his throat and murmured: “Late, is he not?”
Forthwith Vaughan collapsed in muffled sniggers. No-one in their party found it in their hearts to condemn him.
... The organ of Nettleford Cathedral played.
“Look, here’s David!” hissed Lady Frayn as the Dean appeared.
“Must mean action?” suggested Mr Golightly, raising an eyebrow.
His aunt nodded eagerly. They looked expectantly at their relative. The Dean. looking simultaneously official and neutral, glanced round the cathedral.
“Oops!” said Corinna with a smothered giggle as he disappeared again.
Mr Golightly’s eye lit up. “I say, Aunt Corinna, do you think he’s goin’ to leave her standin’ at the altar?”
“I would say I hope so, dear boy, but I don’t think she’s here yet, herself!” she hissed, slender shoulders shaking.
Mr Golightly grinned, and leaning back in the Deanery pew, crossed both his arms and his legs. As of one prepared for a long wait...
Sighing, Sir William produced his pocket watch.
“William!” hissed his spouse.
“Well, but where is the fellow?” he muttered.
Lady Ventnor glared.
Sighing, Sir William returned the watch to his pocket.
… “I can hear something!” hissed Polly, eyes lighting up.
There appeared to be some sort of rumpus going on near the main door, certainly. “Let’s hope it’s him, then, or even her. One of them,” said Dr Golightly on a grim note.
Polly bit her lip. She had begun to wish she hadn’t insisted on coming: Arthur was so bored. And worse than that: he hadn’t said so, but he obviously found the whole thing distasteful. She herself had blinked, on entering the big, shadowy building, to find candelabra blazing on every pillar and the end of every pew bedecked with giant bunches of flowers. White, purple and yellow. When one looked closely it was apparent that some of the blooms were silk. The foliage had all been painted silver or gold, the whole being tied with trailing gold, white, silver and purple ribands. She had ventured the thought that purple was the Prince’s colour. Her spouse’s expression of distaste had not changed.
Outside on the pavement, there had been a great stir of excitement. Two carriages had drawn up, each drawn by four horses. The first had four glossy bays, and the second four greys, but the harness of both teams was equally gleaming in purple and gold, as the ecstatic Colonel Langford noted. Two footmen in a livery of cream velvet and white satin had jumped down from the front carriage, and the steps had been let down. After a moment two young girls, looking very uncertain, had emerged. The knowledgeable amongst the crowd had identified them as “’Er daughters.” Colonel Langford had pretended he hadn’t noticed Mrs Newbiggin’s elbow connecting with Miss Janet’s thin side, or her hiss of: “That’s the one!” Or grasped its meaning.
The older of the girls looked pale and strained; she was in a froth of over-elaborate pale blue silk, which did not become her and which was, Mrs Newbiggin did not fail to note, in disapproving and not particularly quiet accents: “Not near warm enough for this toime o’ year!” The younger girl was red-eyed and chastened-looking, in a similar outfit in pink. It did not become her, either.
There was some sort of stir in the doorway of the cathedral and the crowd turned its heads expectantly. Miss Harrod, looking agitated, rushed out. There was an agitated consultation by the steps of the leading carriage. Then young Mr Marsh, also looking agitated, rushed out. More consultation. More agitation. From the cathedral the organ swelled.
After this had gone on for some time the window of the second coach was let down noisily. Major Harrod’s head, looking very well brushed but also very red and annoyed, poked out, and he was heard to shout: “What the Devil’s the matter now?”
Young Mr Marsh and Miss Harrod rushed over to the bridal coach, there was more agitated consultation, and eventually the Major, leaning out further and looking very annoyed indeed, waved his hand vigorously at the coachman on the box of the leading coach and shouted: “Go round again! Go round again!”
The bridesmaids got back into their conveyance and the two coaches set off again, to the accompaniment of loud shouting from inside the second one. Not all proceeding from the Major, unless his voice had suddenly cracked. The Colonel rubbed his hands together and said genially: “Well! It’s good, isn’t it?”
Mrs Newbiggin, reduced to shaking red jelly, could only nod helplessly. Miss Janet, also nodding, emitted a series of helpless squeaks. Miss Humphreys, looking very puzzled, smiled gamely and said: “Well, yes, I’m afraid it is!”
Miss Janet, recovering herself, then produced a paper of sweetmeats. These were passed, and the Colonel’s party stuffed its gobs and got on with its gawping.
In the cathedral Miss Burden rolled a horrified eye as her maidenly companion produced a paper of sweetmeats and insouciantly offered them.
“I fear we shall be here for some time,” Janey whispered. “Go on!”
It was a considerable time since they had broken their fast, but still... “Janey, there’ll be the wedding breakfast!” she hissed.
Janey gave her a very dry look. “If I were you, I would take one.”
Midge looked at her uncertainly, but since Lady Caroline was not present and their humble selves were not, she calculated, visible from the Deanery pew, took one.
... The organ played. A cathedral functionary appeared, unsuccessfully attempting to look both official and neutral, looked round the cathedral—to no avail: there were, as the congregation had had plenty of time to ascertain, no bridegrooms lurking in what shadows had been left by the candelabra—and disappeared again. Sir William sighed heavily and consulted his pocket watch again. This time Lady Ventnor did not reprove him. Mr Somerton sighed, recrossed his legs, leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Mrs Somerton looked annoyed but did nothing. In the Deanery pew Simon appeared to be asleep and Corinna was reading the Prayer Book.
“Something’s gone wrong!” gurgled Lady Paula Cunningham.
Her husband looked bored. “Rats.”
“No, but did you not hear the fuss by the door some time since?”
“The bride turnin’ up: so?” he said in a bored voice.
“Exactly! The groom is nearly an hour late, Michael!” she hissed.
“Probably a Russian custom,” he said, looking bored.
... The organ played. The musical amongst the congregation silently recognized that the organist had already played that piece at least five times.
Lady Frayn got up, looking determined.
Lady Judith came to with a start. “Corinna! What are you—”
“I’m going to talk to Millicent and Janey: weading the pwayer book has palled. And I will lay you fifty to one in guineas,” she said with a naughty twinkle, “that he has jilted her.”
“Oh, rubbish. And sit down: I dare say he’ll be here any minute!” she hissed.
“Pooh.” Lady Frayn adjusted her magnificent sable set, and rustled off, looking unconcerned.
... “What it is,” decided Mr Somerton, looking sour, “the fortune proved not enough icing on such a stale cake, after all.”
Lacey collapsed in helpless giggles.
“Lacey! –Mr Somerton. I am ashamed of you!” hissed Mrs Somerton, turning scarlet.
Mr Somerton merely smirked. He thought it was not half bad. And considering they’d been waiting here well over an hour, he did not give a damn if she put him on boiled mutton for a week! He made a mental note to repeat it to Ventnor. And Cornwallis: dared say he’d appreciate it!
On the groom’s side—where Mr Bottomley-Pugh had firmly directed the usher to seat them, ignoring the fact that his son had turned mottled scarlet and their guest had suddenly looked as if he was about to explode—Mr Vaughan noted placidly: “They’re getting restive.”
“Aye.” Mr Bottomley-Pugh peered. “That’s that little Lady Whatsit, Lady Judith’s sister, wandering about visiting. Dare say they’ll all be at it in a moment. –Good, ain’t it?” he noted.
His party nodded vigorously, with shining morning faces.
... “’Ere she comes again!” hissed Mrs Newbiggin.
Miss Janet White gave a muffled squeak, and collapsed in helpless giggles.
The pantomime of coach doors opening, steps being let down, appearance of Miss Harrod and young Teddy, appearance of Major Harrod’s head, et al., was all gone through again. And Miss Janet, giggling, passed the sweetmeats again.
... “Was that—?” said Simon, opening his eyes with a jerk.
“It was something, certainly,” conceded Lady Judith.
He peered. “Can’t see a thing. Well, I can see a church full of people. Whispering, mostly. Some of the men are looking at their watches. Can’t see nothing that looks like a Russian groom!”
After a moment Lady Judith said in a weak voice: “What is the time?”
Meantime Lady Frayn and Lady Paula, having joined forces, were discussing other Society weddings they had known. Mainly, other disastrous Society weddings they had known. Young Mrs Golightly, looking defiant, had come over to the Cunninghams’ pew and joined them. Michael Cunningham had merely sighed and closed his eyes.
... The organ of Nettleford Cathedral stopped suddenly.
“The music’s stopped!” gasped Midge, bolt upright in her seat. Janey nodded round the last sweetmeat, twinkling.
... “Oops, it’s started up again,” said Katerina sadly.
Captain Cornwallis collapsed in helpless sniggers.
... “Here she comes again,” said Miss Humphreys on a weak note.
They watched while the pantomime of coach doors opening, steps being let down, appearance of Miss Harrod and young Teddy, appearance of Major Harrod’s head, et al., was gone through again. And while the coaches disappeared round the corner again.
The rest of the crowd murmured in mingled enjoyment and consternation. In their little group there was a short silence.
Mrs Newbiggin delved in her basket. “’Ere. ’Ave a sandwich,” she said hospitably.
... “Here’s the Dean!” hissed Mrs Somerton, jabbing her spouse in the ribs.
Mr Somerton woke up with a start. “Eh?”
“Something’s happening, Papa!” hissed Lacey.
Mr Somerton rose and unashamedly peered both ways, up and down the aisle. He resumed his seat, looking bland.
“Well?” hissed Mrs Somerton crossly.
“You’re right: the Dean’s up there.”
... The coaches came round again.
The now expected pantomime of coach doors opening, steps being let down, appearance of Miss Harrod and Teddy, appearance of Major Harrod’s head, duly took place. This time they all heard quite clearly Mrs Marsh shriek from the second coach as it set off again: “Where IS he? DO something, George!”
... “Papa-in-law’s gone again!” hissed Polly.
Lady Paula and Lady Frayn collapsed in helpless giggles. Lady Paula’s husband smiled faintly.
“It’s going to be a fiasco, isn’t it?” said Polly hopefully.
The two Society ladies, clutching each other, nodded fervently.
“Ooh!” said Polly. “How wonderful!”
... The coaches came round again.
This time Major Harrod’s head poked out before any steps were let down and he shouted: “WELL?”
“NO!” shouted Teddy Marsh.
The coaches drove off again.
… “Nearly two hours,” said Captain Cornwallis, consulting his pocket watch gravely.
“Oh, dear, where can the groom be?” wondered Vaughan loudly.
This was not particularly brilliant, but nevertheless his entire party, his progenitor not excluded, collapsed in horrible sniggers.
... “He has jilted her, y’know,” said Simon in a sort of awe.
“Be silent,” said Lady Judith, frowning.
... The coaches came round again.
The coach doors were opened and the steps let down. The bridesmaids peered from their coach. Major Harrod leapt out of his coach, and dashed up to the doorway to confer with Teddy, Miss Harrod and a cathedral official.
Mrs Newbiggin sighed deeply. “’Ave another sandwich, Colonel.”
... “Where’s Papa?” said Simon, peering. “Can’t see him.”
“Sit down!” said Lady Judith angrily, pulling at his coattails.
... “Shabbed off. Lost his bottle,” decided Sir William.
“Nonsense, William,” said Lady Ventnor without conviction. “Something must have happened. An accident, possibly.”
“Rats, me dear. Shabbed off. Lost his bottle.” He heaved himself up.
“Where are you going?” she said faintly.
“Have a word with Somerton,” he grunted, going.
... The coaches set off again, this time leaving Major Harrod behind.
“Oh, dear, I do hope there has not been a horrid accident!” quavered Miss Humphreys.
“Doubt it,” said the Colonel, eyeing Mrs Newbiggin thoughtfully.
That dame merely said placidly: “Take another sandwich, Miss Humphreys. Calming to the nerves, a boite is.”
... Sir William leaned an arm on the back of the pew in front of the Somertons’. “Shabbed off. Lost his bottle,” he pronounced.
Mr Somerton winked. “Aye. The fortune proved not enough icing on such a stale cake, after all!”
Sir William collapsed in horrible sniggers.
... The coaches appeared again. Major Harrod hurried over to confer at the window of the second one.
“I can see orange blossoms,” said Mrs Newbiggin, peering. “Silk, I dessay.”
“Cream velvet?” suggested Miss Janet, tip-toeing.
“Ar, I heard as it were to be cream velvet sleeves,” she allowed.
“A cream velvet gown, open over cream satin, with heavy white lace on the underskirt, I had heard,” said Miss Humphreys faintly.
“Ar.”
Their group was silent for a short period. During it Major Harrod’s voice could be heard, though unfortunately not his words.
“She would not permit poor Miss Harrod to be an attendant!” burst out Miss Humphreys.
Mrs Newbiggin sniffed slightly. “Ar. Serves ’er roight, then, dunnit?”
No-one had to ask what served whom right.
... “It is possible,” said Dr Golightly heavily, as his excited wife returned to his side, “that some accident has befallen the Prince.”
“Oh, pooh, Arthur! And you heard with your own ears your Aunt Corinna say he could not possibly be any such thing, he is unknown at the Embassy! I am persuaded he is a merchant from Tomsk, and has been leading her up the garden path!”
Arthur Golightly sighed. “To what end, Polly?”
Mrs Golightly did not attempt to argue logically, she merely laughed and squeezed his arm. “You’ll see!”
... “There goes the Dean!” hissed Janey excitedly, as Dr Golightly, Senior, vestments flapping, strode briskly down the aisle, to disappear, as the craning necks duly ascertained, in the direction of the main door.
“Let us hope,” said Mrs Somerton with a sigh, sitting down beside Lady Ventnor, “that the dear Dean will make a decision.”
“Yes, indeed; these pews are so uncomfortable,” sighed the squire’s wife.
“Shocking.”
There was a pause.
“My dear Lady Ventnor, do you think—”
Since similar scenes were taking place in almost every pew, the cathedral by this time might have been said with some truth to have been buzzing with speculation.
Colonel Langford eyed the clerical figure in the doorway of the great edifice. “I think that’s the Dean himself. I fancy next time round should finish it.”
As he spoke, the coaches appeared again. From amongst the crowd, which over the last two hours had dwindled, then mysteriously grown again, there came an ironic cheer. Colonel Langford fancied he recognised the stentorian tones of ex-Corporal Jim Hutton. He smiled to himself.
The coaches drew up. Miss Marsh descended, looking distressed. Her brother hurried up to her. The crowd distinctly heard her say: “We must persuade Mamma to make an end of it. Whether there has been an accident or not, he is clearly not coming.”
From the crowd a stentorian voice called: “Dinsley Airs is empty, Missy!”
Miss Marsh jumped, and dropped her blue silk reticule.
Her brother picked it up for her, and urged her back into the coach. She got in and he closed the door after her. Just as the crowd was concluding with some regret that that part of the entertainment was all over, her little sister’s head poked out of the window and Jenny cried loudly: “See? I said they’d all gone, and they have! Great big waggons at dawn this morning! And I am NOT a liar!”
“That’s right, Missy! Bag and baggage!” cried the voice from the crowd.
The Colonel raised his eyebrows very high, what time Mrs Newbiggin abruptly broke down in splutters, turning alarmingly purple and bashing herself on her substantial chest.
To the crowd’s regret Mr Marsh, after a few obviously pithy but unfortunately inaudible words to his little sister, had the coach window put up again. Jenny’s face, however, remained flattened against the glass, glaring, though with something of horrible triumph about it. The Colonel reflected with a wince that she looked just like Jarvis when he’d got upon his damned high horse, maddened all who knew him, and then been proven right about whatever-it-was.
Young Mr Marsh meanwhile approached the other coach. And appeared to remonstrate with its occupant.
There came a shout of: “NO!” and a shriek of: “Get out of the way and let me out, you STUPID boy!” And the coach door was flung back violently—the bystanders perceiving with a variety of emotions ranging through awe to delight to frank horror, that the interior was fully lined in cream velvet—and the bride sprang out. There was silken orange blossom, all right. Garlands, nay festoons of it. Lace, too. And cream velvet whatsits for miles.
“Leave it! LEAVE IT!” she screeched as the hapless Teddy attempted to gather up the yards of velvet train for her. She scooped up her skirts in both hands, affording the bystanders more than a glimpse of leg, and dashed up to the doorway of the cathedral.
The Dean was heard to say: “My dear Mrs Marsh, I really think it would be best to—” And then his voice was drowned in the screeching and stamping and sobbing that broke out.
The Langfords’ connections and Miss Humphreys had, urged by the Colonel, adjourned to Kendlewood Place after those who had been immured in the cathedral for two hours had refreshed themselves, at his insistence, at a convenient hostelry. He had thought he might have to have an argument with the hospitable Mrs Newbiggin over exactly who should entertain whom, and where; but somewhat to his surprise she and little Miss Janet had quietly disappeared. He thought he saw them with the Bottomley-Pughs in the mêlée as the congregation surged out, but could not have sworn to it.
“It was wonderful,” he summed up frankly.
Polly collapsed in ecstatic giggles, gasping: “Oh, I wish I had been out there with you!”
“It was pretty good, inside,” admitted Midge.
Dr Golightly smiled reluctantly. “Mm.”
“But Charles, how did it end?” gasped Mrs Langford.
“She shrieked at the top of her lungs: ‘I’ll KILL him!’—accent on the ‘kill’,” he said unnecessarily: Dr Golightly choked; “and then went into hysterics. Screaming and sobbing,” he elaborated unnecessarily. “Harrod and young Teddy tried to carry her to the coach—thrashing about like nobody’s business. Hutton came forward and helped them; just as well he was there. Then they all drove off, and that was the last we saw of ’em.”
Mrs Langford sighed deeply.
“You should have come, Mamma!” said Polly. “It was thrilling: there was the most tremendous frisson in the cathedral when Papa-in-law announced the ceremony was cancelled! Though I admit it was very boring waiting for so long, was it not, Arthur?”
“Er—well, yes. Say, rather, a mélange of boredom and—er—”
“Horrid excitement,” said Midge, grinning. “As, you understand, it gradually began to dawn that perhaps the Prince wasn’t coming.”
Mrs Langford sighed deeply again.
“Of course, there is always the thought that the poor man may have met with an accident or been taken ill: I suppose we must not condemn him too soon,” Midge allowed.
Colonel Langford and Miss Humphreys exchanged glances. “Er—no, Miss Burden,” she murmured.
“Charles, do you know something more? I insist upon knowing, on pain of not feeding you!” cried Mrs Langford.
“Little Jenny—who was suspiciously red-eyed right from the word ‘go’, I should have guessed something might be up—shouted out something to the effect of the household at Dinsley Airs having cleared out before dawn this morning in a load of waggons,” he explained.
“Good gracious!” gasped Lettice.
“Help,” gulped Midge, her jaw sagging.
“Yes!” said Miss Humphreys, nodding pleasedly. “So!”
“But that means— Ooh!” gasped Polly.
“I apologise sincerely, my love,” said Dr Golightly, taking her hand, “for ever having doubted your claim that the fellow was leading her up the garden path.”
“Yes! Not back home to Tomsk!” squeaked Polly, collapsing again.
“Exact,” he said, grinning. Though not unaware that the Colonel was endeavouring to catch his eye.
Later, Mrs Langford having condescended to feed them after all, he noted, as the two gentlemen blew a comfortable post-prandial cloud in the garden: “Of course it was dashed amusing, sir. But why should a fortune-hunter from Tomsk, or from anywhere, go to all the trouble of getting her to the altar, and then leave her at it?”
“Quite!”
“I don’t think it’s struck the women, yet,” murmured Dr Golightly.
“It will, though,” said the Colonel. He pulled his ear slowly with his good hand. “Look here, Arthur, the more one thinks about it, the more damned smoky it becomes! As you say, why would a fortune-hunter desert the goose that was about to lay the golden egg?”
“Mm. I would venture to suggest that he can’t have been a fortune-hunter at all.”
“Y— N— Dammit!” said the Colonel in exasperation. “But then, why? What was it all about? And—and who the Hell was he?”
“Who, indeed?” said Dr Golightly thoughtfully.
Speculation upon this interesting point did not become rife for a little while. Appetites for the more direct sensation of Mrs Marsh’s spectacular jilting had to be satisfied, first. Though it was certainly true that the story got about with remarkable rapidity—remarkable.
“Droves and droves of cold pressed chicken going to waste, Miss Burden!” lamented Hawkins.
“Oh, dear: yes, I suppose—”
“And ultimate towers of blancmangers, all colours of the spectacle!”
“Yes,” said Midge feebly.
“But,” she said with horrid significance: “the Russian cakes what was promised from Dinsley Airs never come! Now!”
Midge stared at her.
“Ar,” she said with huge satisfaction.
In the village Mrs Fred leaned on her counter, breathing hard. “Ar! You don’t say, Miss Humphreys!”
Miss Humphreys nodded hard. “At crack of dawn, Mrs Fred!”
“Well, I never! ’Ere, wonder what it were as put ’im orf?” she said with a muffled snigger.
Miss Humphreys’s brain, not so agile as that of the shrewd village shopkeeper, had not yet got this far. “Er, well, I— Oh, dear! One does wonder, doesn’t one?” she discovered. “Er—well, I cannot say... Though I, for one, have found that I was mistaken in my first estimate of her character, Mrs Fred: very sadly mistaken!”
“Go on,” said Mrs Fred, leaning heavily on the counter and breathing a strong odour of onions all over her.
It was not absolutely clear whether this was an exhortation or an exclamation. But Miss Humphreys went on anyway.
Further details were gradually being gleaned, here and there. Mr Lumley scratched his head. “We-ell, not left in the lurch, Miss Burden, no. Not as you moight say, left in the lurch.”
Miss Burden and Mr Lumley were not discussing Mrs Marsh’s marital situation, but another matter of almost equal importance.
“Good gracious! Then she paid you in advance?” she gasped.
“On delivery is what you mean, Miss Burden. But she didn’t—no.”
“But dear Mr Lumley, then you must be out of pocket!” she cried in distress. “Six whole pigs and two dozen capons, and twelve dozen eggs? And all that fresh cream!”
“No, acos the foreign gent, ’e sent the money ’imself, the day afore. Ar, and a message to say the cream wouldn’t be wanted after all.”
“He— But the groom does not pay for the wedding feast!”
“Ar. We thought it were funny, at the toime,” he said mendaciously.
“And—and cancelling the cream? Mr Lumley, this must mean that that he knew in advance that—that—”
“That ’e were going to shab orf? Ar, seems loike it.” He eyed her blandly.
The wife of Maunsleigh’s agent was of course well able to keep her finger on the pulse of commercial life in the district. “And no wines and spirits were ordered up!” concluded Mrs Shelby triumphantly.
Mrs Hunter, Mrs Kinwell, and Miss Platt gave gasps of mingled horror and delight. That must prove it.
After a moment Mrs Kinwell said cautiously: “My dear, are you sure?”
“Oh, absolutely! For the Prince’s major-domo in person told Kenneth weeks earlier that they dealt with Sprigg and Livesey in Nettleford, and Mr Sprigg, Junior, confirmed it: you would not believe what was spent on champagne for the engagement party!” She made sure they wouldn’t, by naming the exact sum. “And,” she added significantly, nodding: “not a thing was found in the house! It was as if they’d never lived there!”
Possibly this did not positively prove that the Prince had intended all along to jilt Mrs Marsh, but the elderly cousins certainly accepted it in the spirit in which it was meant.
Meantime, the social consequences of the aborted wedding were, rather naturally, exercising the minds of the ladies of the neighbourhood. Lady Ventnor sipped tea. “For myself,” she sighed, putting down the cup, “I shall not call. I cannot feel it would be convenient, at such a time.”
Mrs Somerton was torn between the desire to call on Mrs Marsh and find out exactly what that lady’s sentiments were on being left so spectacularly at the altar—not to say so expensively, the flowers alone must have cost a small fortune—and the desire to have nothing more to do with the woman. “Yes, I feel you are right, Lady Ventnor,” she said regretfully.
For her part, Lady Judith had not wished to set eyes on the woman ever again, but she admitted to the ladies assembled in her smaller sitting-room: “I did call. I felt that as the Dean’s wife, I should—er—express my sympathy.”
Most of the ladies looked at her eagerly, but Miss Burden looked at her with unalloyed horror which she did not manage to dissemble.
“And?” gasped Lady Paula.
“How was she?” added her friend Mrs William Saville, somewhat feebly.
Lady Judith looked dry. “As to that, I can only hazard a guess. I said that I called, I did not say I was admitted.”
The fine ladies gasped.
Miss Burden offered on a weak note. “Mayhap she was prostrated?”
“She was not that, for she could be heard in the downstairs salon, ordering the hangings to be taken down and cleaned,” said Lady Judith, passing cake. “However, I confess I found it understandable that she should not wish to receive visitors.”
“But dear Lady Judith, nosey neighbours might be one thing,” cried Lady Paula, “but hardly yourself!”
“After you’d driven all the way from Nettleford, too,” said Janey in a sort of awe.
“Perhaps the embarrassment of it was too much for her,” offered Mrs William Saville, very weakly indeed.
“No doubt that was the case,” agreed Lady Judith on a note of finality.
Lady Judith’s notes notwithstanding, that was not, of course, the end of it.
… “Impudence!” decided the elder Mrs Saville as her daughter-in-law concluded her report.
“Indeed. I venture to suggest, however,” said the Bishop’s wife with a sort of cold glee in her eye, “that she will not refuse to receive Me.”
Her lady informant sent up a short, brief prayer. Though as it was not a particularly Christian sentiment she was expressing to her Maker, she did not expect it to be answered.
… “That was really the height of bad manners,” said Mrs Langford limply, as the latest tidbid reached Kendlewood Place. “However disturbed she may have been... To make it so obvious that she was at home, and—and not laid down!”
Janey nodded pleasedly. “I thought a true lady would say that, dear Mrs Langford!”
… Lacey choked. “She snubbed the Dean’s wife?”
“Not to mention Lord Sleyven’s cousin and the sister of the last Earl; yes,” said Janey on a dreamy note. “All rolled into one.”
The girls collapsed ecstatically, clutching each other.
… “My dearest Pamela,” wrote Lady Paula Cunningham to one of her many sisters, “You will wish to hear the latest in the Mrs M. Saga, so I write post-haste! The Creature has committed the very grave tactical error of snubbing Lady J.!! She drove all the way over, I dare say it is two hours’ drive...”
This sister lived at Richmond, so the news was not long in arriving. Other sisters lived in other parts of the country, of course...
Mrs Marsh might have denied the Dean’s lady admission to her house but she had not been idle, as the district was soon to learn. Mr Hutton chewed stolidly. Midge and Janey watched him expectantly. “A tasty bite,” he approved, swallowing. “Aye, well, Miss Burden, they say she’s sent to London to bring the Runners down.”
“Good Heavens. I should think she’d rather just drop it,” said Midge faintly.
“Mm. Well, she ain’t your sort,” he said, eyeing her with undisguised approval.
Janey clapped her hands. “Isn’t it thrilling!” She flicked Mr Hutton a glance from under her lashes.
“’Tis that, Missy,” he agreed stolidly.
Laughing, Captain Cornwallis shook Sid Bottomley’s hand. “Delighted to meet you!”
“Likewise, Captain,” replied Sid sedately.
“Roight, well, now that we’re all ’ere,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh with relish, “sit you down, Captain, and we’ll hear the latest. That’s roight, Kate, me love, just ring for the tea-tray.”
“Is it beef and horseradish sandwiches?” asked Mr Vaughan on a hopeful note.
To the astonishment of most of the company, his progenitor went into an alarming wheezing fit at this.
The tea was brought in at once, and with it came a little old woman in a plain black woollen gown. Captain Cornwallis got hastily to his feet.
“Our aunt, Mrs Cumbridge,” explained Vaughan, leaping up, as his father was still wheezing faintly and wiping his eyes. “This is Captain Cornwallis, Aunty, but you know that, of course.”
The Captain’s handsome jaw had now had time to drop. “Honoured, ma’am,” he croaked.
Graciously Mrs Cumbridge allowed him to bow over her hard, wrinkled little hand. “And mushy dushyer to you, too, Captain.”
Captain Cornwallis thereupon disgraced himself before the assembled company by going into choking hysterics.
“Well,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh, when they were all over it, and Mrs Cumbridge was seated beside the Captain on a sofa, explaining, somewhat redundantly, that it had been a wig, and Katerina was pouring the tea, “there is news, so that was my excuse for asking you all to come.”
“You don’t need an excuse, Joe Bottomley-Pugh!” said Mrs Newbiggin energetically, shaking her new autumn bonnet at him. –Very fine, a steel-blue silk, garnished with many feathers in dark shades of blue, bronzy green, and deep emerald, ably supported by a profusion of dark blue velvet bows, puffs, and ruchings.
The grinning Mr Bottomley-Pugh duly embarked on his news. “You’ve all ’eard she packed Major Harrod orf to get the Runners, I suppose?” They all had, yes. “Ar. Well, they come.”
The company nodded eagerly.
“Well, one feller did,” he amended temperately. Captain Cornwallis choked slightly.
“Ar, well, that’s just it: if she ’adn’t been a nob, with connections and so forth, they wouldn’ta bothered. But she got ’er lawyer onto ’em, you see. So she tells the Runner feller as ’ow the Russians got on to Dinsley Airs through me, in the first instance, so ’e comes round ’ere.”
Those of the company to whom this was news gasped. But Miss Lattersby said, smiling very much: “Wait, Captain Cornwallis. You will see: Mr Bottomley-Pugh is equal to anything!”
“That’s quite roight, Miss Lattersby!” squeaked Miss Janet White, nodding her severe black bonnet hard. Both the Miss Whites had been able to be present, it being early closing day. Mr Hutton was also present. No-one was asking precisely how and from whom he’d got the full story, but there was no doubt that he had it. If Captain Cornwallis had experienced any surprise at being introduced to these worthies, he had concealed it nobly.
“Ar,” said Mr Bottomley-Pugh, twinkling. “Thank you for the compliment, ladies. ’Ad ’im shown into this very room, didn’t I, Vaughan?”
“That’s right, Pa!” he grinned.
“Ar. I can see the feller thinks ’e’s on a woild-goose chase, and it’s a warmish day, and ’e’s ’ad to ride over from Nettleford to Dinsley House, and then all the way over ’ere, acos she ain’t giving him house-room, you see. And take it for all in all, I felt it wouldn’t come amiss, if a spot of refreshment were offered.”
“English ale. Beef and horseradish sandwiches,” said Mr Vaughan.
“It were something loike that,” he acknowledged amiably. “Something solid. After which the feller opens up to us amazing, don’t ’e, Vaughan?”
“Aye!” he choked.
“Seems she’s in a terrible state. Shouting and screaming and threatening. –Breach of promises and all,” he said to his brother. Sid merely grinned.
“But this is rather frightful,” said Janey.
“Indeed,” agreed Miss White nervously.
“No!” returned Vaughan scornfully.
“No, it ain’t, neither,” conceded his progenitor. “Acos the Runner feller admits they’re only lookin’ into it acos the lady and her lawyer insisted, but Bow Street ain’t interested: no fraud involved. Then he says as he’d better ask what ’e’s come to ask, or his superiors’ll be down on him like a ton of bricks: seems she’s been onto the Lord Lieutenant.”
“This’d be after snubbing ’is lady in public, would it?” asked Mrs Newbiggin with interest.
Mr Bottomley-Pugh winked solemnly, and she gave a smothered snigger.
“Ar,” he said. “Well, cheek o’ the Devil. This Runner, ’e outs with a little black book—”
“An Occurrence Book!” gasped Janey.
“Eh? Well, I dessay, me dear: yes. ’E outs with it, though whether ’e can spell more’n cat I wouldn’t loike to say, and says did a Russian feller call some toime last spring and ask if Dinsley Airs were to let? So I says, far’s I can remember, it were something like that, and it was houses to let for the summer as was discussed, aye. So he asks had I seen him afore. Which out o’ course I hadn’t,” he said, eyeing them blandly.
“No!” choked Vaughan.
Mr Bottomley-Pugh eyed the now giggling Miss Whites indulgently. “Ar. And then ’e wants to know what we can tell ’im about the feller, but we can’t tell ’im nothing, except he had a foreign accent; only ’ow would we know if it was Russian or not? Which was only dropped into the conversation as a sort of—you know.”
“Red ’erring?” gasped Miss White.
“A bonbon,” drawled Sid.
“Lure,” said Captain Cornwallis, eyeing him drily.
Mr Bottomley-Pugh looked airy. “Something loike that, maybe.”
“Given that you were both cozening him and indulging in a fishing expedition, Joe, I should think it damn’ well would be, saving the ladies’ presences!” said Sid roundly. “Get on with it, do!”
“Aye, do, acos we’ll be ’ere till supper-toime, else,” noted Mrs Cumbridge.
“Well, he says ’e don’t moind telling us that they’ve got grave suspicions about these so-called Russians, acos on Madam’s orders they’ve been on to the Russian Embassy, and they ’aven’t never ’eard of them!” He took a triumphant breath.
“We did know that, Pa,” murmured Katerina.
“Eh? –Yes, of course! No, my point is, it’s more than just gossip at Maunsleigh or the Deanery, it’s official, now.”
“That is a point,” admitted Mrs Newbiggin.
“So it is,” said Katerina, smiling at him. “Go on, Pa.”
“Well, that’s it, really. Mr Runner’s pretty happy, and goes orf, telling us confidential-loike that it’s Lombard Street to a China orange they weren’t no more Russian than his boot.”
Mr Hutton at this point was heard to gulp.
“No, they wasn’t Russian boots, Mr Hutton,” said his host kindly.
“Russia leather?” drawled Sid on an acid note.
Captain Cornwallis choked.
“No, don’t think that’s used for boots, Sid.”
“Well, that’s news, all roight!” said Mrs Newbiggin hastily.
“It is that,” allowed Mr Hutton.
“Yes: people so far seem to be only at the point of wondering exactly why the Prince jilted her: though the consensus seems to be he could not face what Mr Somerton describes as ‘stale cake’, not even for the icing of the fortune!” gurgled Janey. She waited until the company were over that, and continued: “But now, it will be all round the county that they weren’t Russians after all! Won’t Mrs Marsh look silly!”
“Sillier,” grinned Mr Vaughan.
“Yes: sillier!” she squeaked.
“Yes, but is it not becoming dangerous for Mr Sid?” asked Miss White nervously.
“Oh, don’t worry, dear ladies: it was not I,” Sid assured them. “My esteemed colleague and I spent the summer with a relative of his on the coast near Whitby.”
“He’ll get a hundred guineas,” noted Mr Bottomley-Pugh. “Though it don’t look like it’ll get that far. If he was a prince, Mrs M. moight press on with a breach of promise action, but it won’t be worth her whoile: Sid ain’t worth nothing. And Bow Street ain’t interested, that’s clear, because no money nor nothing changed hands. She ain’t suffered but in ’er proide,” he concluded with a slight shrug.
The company eyed him in some awe, silently acknowledging that for all his geniality he was, in fact, a very hard man.
“Not Russian?” said Mr Humphreys.
Mr Somerton sniggered and nodded, and repeated his now-famous joke.
Mr Humphreys laughed obligingly, though this was the fifth time he had heard it, and the third from its originator.
… “You, of course, are closer to her than any of us, I suppose,” said Miss Humphreys timidly.
Lady Ventnor gave her an amazed look but Miss Humphreys merely looked meek. Her Ladyship concluded she was sincere, after all. “Well, only through the Rennwood connexion, Miss Humphreys.” She ate a sweetmeat and passed the box.
Miss Humphreys took one quickly: they were delicious and so far, in her vague, lazy way, Lady Ventnor had managed to consume half the box, while only offering it twice. “So she has given you no hint that he might not have been a Russian at all?”
“Er—well, I have not called. Naturally I wrote her a little note— Not a Russian at all?”
Miss Humphreys merely looked meekly expectant.
“Er—I confess I do not understand how he could not have been a Russian, Miss Humphreys. The—the house was just so... And his mother!”
“Yes. And all the servants,” said Miss Humphreys dubiously. “Though Mrs Livesey from Nettleford—you may not know her, Lady Ventnor, she is the wine merchant’s wife—she maintains that his major-domo spoke excellent English, when he ordered up supplies for the household.”
Lady Ventnor thought of that first visit of hers, and the major-domo’s very strange accent. Especially when he pronounced Harry Pryce-Cavell’s name. Her mouth opened slowly and the sweetmeat which had only got a quarter of the way to it fell to the carpet.
… “Oh, but he must have been Russian!” protested old Mrs Hunter.
“Surely!” agreed old Mrs Kinwell.
“That is not what I heard!” said Lacey, eyes sparkling.
“Well, no: Lady Caroline Grey and Lady Frayn do not think so,” said naughty Janey, “and they, you know, are acquainted with the Russian Ambassador and his lady!”
The two old cousins looked at each other in amazed speculation.
… “Dearest Sarah,” wrote the indefatigable Lady Paula Cunningham to yet another of her sisters.—This one lived in Oxfordshire. Though very often coming up to town for the Season.—“You will never guess! It now appears that the Marsh female was taken in, not by a fortune-hunting Russian Prince, who lost his nerve at the last moment, the which would be humiliating enough, but by a mere nobody of a fortune hunter, masquerading as a Russian Prince!”
… Mr Shelby broke down in horrible sniggers. “Said ’e was a Polish tradesman!” he wheezed, slapping his knee.
Mrs Shelby had not expected her news to be received thus rapturously. In fact, in general Kenneth tended to reprove her for gossiping. She eyed him dubiously. “Mm. Well, definitely not a Russian, it appears, Kenneth.”
Mr Shelby wiped his eyes. “Actually, old Newbiggin from Nettleford has hold of a story he was naught but a grocer from Bristol.”
Rather naturally, in view of the various theories bandied about at Maunsleigh over the summer, Mrs Shelby had been expecting “from Hungary” or some such. She gulped. “Bristol?”
“Strikes as factual, don’t it?” he grinned.
“Y— But Kenneth, what was he doing here, then?” she cried.
“Passing himself off as a gent. Well, as a prince, hey? Dare say he may not have come into the county with the Marsh hag’s fortune in mind. Probably thought it too good to pass up when it come under his nose.”
Mrs Shelby thought it over. “Yes. And then—”
“Lost his bottle, as the Squire would say!”
“Er—yes,” she said with a guilty giggle. “Quite!”
Somewhat less than a week went by, and speculation remained on about this level. The consensus was that if he wasn’t a Russian—and opinions were still divided—then he had simply been a fortune-hunter. As to Mrs Marsh herself: there was a consensus there, too. “Pride goes before a fall” more or less summed it up. Both sexes, alas, found the gentleman’s having lost his nerve a very convincing explanation for his fugue, Russian or not. Even Dr Golightly conceded that that was the most likely explanation—and, if the cream story the Colonel had hold of and the similar story about the wines for the wedding breakfast never having been ordered at all that he himself had heard in the town were true, the fellow had got cold feet rather earlier than most people had assumed. The Colonel had conceded that no man could be blamed for that! Forthwith repeating Mr Somerton’s bon mot.
Bow Street, though this was less generally known, had come to the same conclusion. Mr Bottomley-Pugh knew it for a fact: he had had the inspiration that possibly Mrs Marsh would let a gent in where she had closed her door to all the ladies.
He was shown into the pink salon. The hangings were down; it looked as if she was about to clear out. There was a considerable wait. Then Kitty, in dark green silk lavishly frilled and trimmed with green and white striped ribbons, her hair in artless disarray under the merest wisp of lace, rushed in like a whirlwind, gasping: “Oh, Mr Bottomley-Pugh! How very, very kind!” Forthwith hurling herself against his substantial chest.
He managed to sustain this assault with fortitude, got her seated on a sofa, and rang for assistance. Firmly ordering the footman to send Miss Harrod in, deaf to Mrs Marsh’s protests that she didn’t need her and Addie was being so unsympathetic.
“I have been,” she explained when she had calmed down to the point of sitting up and sipping a brandy, “most monstrously betrayed!”
“Aye. Shocking behaviour. Would never have believed it of royalty: not even Russky royalty,” said the cunning Mr Bottomley-Pugh.
“Royalty! But that is just it! The monster is not even a Russian! He is unknown at the Embassy, they have no record that the title ever existed, and he has disappeared into thin air!”
Actually, he was probably trouncing Vaughan at billiards in the Nettleford House games room as they spoke. “Ar. That’s bad, Mrs Marsh, terrible bad. Could you get the law down on a feller for a thing loike that?” he wondered innocently.
“No, because those horrible persons at Bow Street have said that it is not a legal affair, and that while a breach of promise suit might be brought, it is a civil matter! And nothing was stolen and—and nothing signed over to him, and I have no claim against him! And they have been beasts to me: beasts!” she cried, bursting into renewed sobs.
“Beasts,” agreed Miss Harrod faintly.
“And they have not even a general!” cried Kitty angrily, with another burst of sobs.
“Eh?” he said limply.
Miss Harrod explained weakly: “When a nasty man in India was horrid to her, Kitty went straight to the general. But he was an officer, of course. It—it isn’t the same.”
“Uh—no,” he allowed. And managed eventually to get himself out of the house with only one more episode of Mrs Marsh plastering herself to his chest, recognising silently that he had got off damned lightly. But it had not been at all an unsuccessful fishing expedition and he returned home very pleased with himself.
“Well,” concluded Sid with a grin, “maybe I’ll get off scot-free, yet!”
“Ar. Well, Cornwallis has held his tongue, I’ll give him that. I don’t think that Bow Street will take action if she does foind out who you are, Sid. She moight bring a civil suit, though: get you clapped up for breach of promise, since you can’t pay her nothing.”
“In that case I’ll definitely have been on the farm with Harold all summer.”
“Aye. Well, it looks as if she’s set to clear on out of it. I think we’ll come off all roight and toight.”
Sid grinned, and nodded.
But it was not to be long at all before his disguise was to be definitively penetrated.
Lady Frayn choked, and hurriedly set down her teacup. “Oh, good gwacious! I’ve wemembered!” she gasped.
Lady Caroline attempted to give her a minatory look, but Corinna was not looking at her.
“Remembered what, Lady Frayn?” asked Lady Paula Cunningham politely.
“Who he is!” said Corinna excitedly. “The soi-disant Wussian, Lady Paula! He isn’t a Wussian at all, he’s an actor! I have seen him at Dwu’wy Lane I know not how many times! Judith, you must wecall him: when we went with Julia when you were in town last year: he played David Dauntless in The Piwate’s Wevenge!”
“D— But he was a much younger—”
“He gave the appea’wance of a much younger man, yes; and he wore a very curled yellow pe’wiwig, yes; but of course it was he! I saw him in Hamlet last year: he was wather dweadful, but at the same time, completely iwwesistible!” she said with her trill of laughter. “I know not how I failed to wecognize him immediately! Woland Lefayne, Judith!” she urged. “That voice!”
“Oh, good Heavens,” said Lady Judith numbly.
“Is she right?” gasped Lady Paula.
“Yes,” said Lady Judith limply.
“An actor?” gasped Miss Burden.
Janey had gone very red, but fortunately the ladies at the tea-party were all so engrossed in the drama that they did not remark her. “Oh, that cannot possibly be!” she cried. “Why, he was so—so princely: regal!”
Corinna collapsed in giggles, nodding helplessly. “Yes!” she gasped. “He was pwincely—in Hamlet—too!”
“There’s good news and not so good,” announced Mr Bottomley-Pugh.
Sid was getting up in his next part on a sofa in the smaller salon: he yawned. “Don’t tell me the cat’s out of the bag, Joe, I’ve already heard it from at least six people.”
“No! It’s definite. She’s off to Italy.”
“Italy’s welcome to her. What’s the not so good bit?”
“Dumping the girls and Miss Harrod. Won’t keep on Dinsley House for them: sending them to a lodging-house by the sea.” He sniffed. “Cheap rates, this toime o’ year.”
After a moment Sid said: “What about the boy?”
“He ain’t my son. If ’e was, it wouldn’t ’appen. But if ’e was, and ’e didn’t do something about them girls, ’e’d get a boot up ’is bum, I can tell you! No, well, he ain’t twenty-one, yet. Almost, only not quite. His money’ll be in trust, dessay he can’t touch it.”
Sid got up and walked over to the window. “I was actually starting to feel sorry for her.”
“You and one or two others in the county. This’ll change their moinds, good an’ proper.”
“Yes,” Sid agreed, smiling. “Well, Joe, the Earl’s been saved for your precious Miss Burden.”
“Ar.” After a minute he said: “Thanks, Sid.”
Sid gave him his most blinding smile. “It was my pleasure, start to finish! There’s only one thing I regret.”
“What?” said his brother on a nervous note.
The former Alexei Alexandrovich Petrovsky looked wistful. “Never did manage to get any leg-oversky.”
And Mr Bottomley-Pugh, well and truly caught out, went into a prolonged choking fit.
Next chapter:
https://thepatchworkparasol.blogspot.com/2022/11/london-that-great-sea.html
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