A School for Brides (5 page)

“Miss Asquith!”
cried several members of the company in unison.

Mr. Arbuthnot had grown even more pale. “
Now
see what you've done,” murmured Miss Evans.

“Our Miss Asquith has a rather
wry
sense of humor, I am afraid,” said Miss Hopkins, while Miss Winthrop looked daggers at the culprit. “That will be
quite
enough, Miss Asquith.”

“Je suis désolée, Monsieur,”
murmured Miss Asquith, looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.

Mr. Arbuthnot regarded her warily. “Er . . .
Ce n'est pas grave, Mademoiselle.
”

“And now, please allow me to introduce you to the students at our school,” continued Miss Hopkins. “This young lady to my left is Miss Crump”—here she lowered her voice to a significant whisper—
“only child of Viscount Baggeshotte.”

Mr. Arbuthnot turned to greet Miss Crump with an air of relief, which changed to consternation as he realized that he could see almost nothing of her face. He craned his neck this way and that, rather as if endeavoring to view someone who had had the misfortune to fall into a well. “Charmed, I am sure,” he said, attempting a sketchy bow from his seated position. Miss Crump shrank back into her corner as though he had struck her. Staring at the floor, she murmured something indistinguishable and began to twist and pluck at her handkerchief.

Miss Winthrop sighed. It seemed dreadfully unfair that the most notable student in the school should be so timorous. Miss Winthrop was quite certain that, had
she
occupied Miss Crump's position in life, she would have proved an ornament to it, unlike the timid Miss Crump. While normally yielding to no one in her admiration of the workings of Providence, Miss Winthrop was of the opinion that it could use a few pointers on occasion.

Luckily, Miss Evans, next in order of precedence to be introduced, was a young lady of whom Miss Winthrop heartily approved. Handsome, healthy, of good family and fortune, intelligent without being the least bit intellectual, with irreproachable morals and a strong sense of her own place in society and the world, Miss Evans was a compendium of all the virtues that an English gentlewoman of the nineteenth century might safely claim.

The admiring glances directed toward Miss Evans by Mr. Arbuthnot seemed to suggest that he agreed, and once the rest of the introductions had been performed, Miss Hopkins sent one of the other girls sitting nearby off with a message for the cook. This allowed her to beckon Miss Evans to sit next to her, and therefore him.
She
behaved exactly as she ought, smiling and speaking just enough to let their visitor know that she was open to his attentions, all the while maintaining a decent reserve, and
he
, for his part, seemed well pleased.

Miss Briggs was sent to the pianoforte, being the most skilled performer, and instructed to play
very quietly
, so as not to disrupt. The elder three ladies took care to engage Mr. Arbuthnot in conversation, but also to allow the two young people a little time to speak with each other.

“How grieved you must be, to miss the Twelfth of August in Scotland on Lord Pauncefoot's grouse moor!” began Miss Hopkins, with some intent. “I know that you sporting gentlemen look forward to it all year.”

Mr. Arbuthnot agreed that this was true. He explained that the reason he was so far out of his proper path toward Hurley Hall was that he meant to fetch a fowling piece from Sunderland for one of the other guests—a task that now must be abandoned—and had therefore chosen to take the coastal road.

“I am certain that the members of the house party will miss you, as well. And your relatives—how concerned they will be about your accident! Ought I not to have sent messages to your family and friends in Kent, for instance, as well as Lord Pauncefoot?”

“No, indeed, it is quite unnecessary! My parents are dead, and my closest companions were to meet me at Hurley Hall. I am singularly alone in the world save for a few friends—good lads all, but not given to much fretting over a comrade. No hearts would be broken over me, I assure you, if I were to vanish from the earth tonight.”

The ladies, young and middle-aged alike, of course cried out against this dreadful idea, while in fact being pleased by its expression. And then, perceiving that he was tiring, Miss Quince called Robert to wheel Mr. Arbuthnot back to his room.

MR. ARBUTHNOT'S FRIENDS
loved him better than he knew; after only a few days of shooting grouse in the company of the beau monde at Hurley Hall, some of them proposed to quit this agreeable house party in order to cheer him on in his recuperation.

Miss Hopkins had, by some miracle of social connectivity, discovered that Mr. Arbuthnot's friend Mr. Hadley was an old schoolfellow of Miss Winthrop's brother-in-law Lord Boring of Gudgeon Park. Miss Winthrop hurried to the Park to make it quite clear to her sister the Baroness that it was her duty to offer hospitality to Mr. Hadley and to any other of Mr. Arbuthnot's friends who wished to visit.

The Baroness, made more peevish and quarrelsome than usual by the approach of the birth of her first child, complained that it was dreadfully inconvenient and that she loathed having company when the weather was so hot and that sportsmen were, above all people in the world, the most tiresome. Her husband, for instance, was never to be found at home anymore, but was out with his dogs and his gun taking potshots at rabbits from morning until night, so that she barely ever saw him.

Not that she
wanted
to see him, of course; why would she, in her condition? Husbands were utterly selfish creatures, without the slightest comprehension of how much their wives suffered. Her dear sister Prudence had no idea how fortunate she was not to have attracted one.

Her dear sister Prudence eyed her thoughtfully.

“Well, since it would be such a burden to you, Charity, perhaps I ought to ask Althea if she would be willing to play hostess. I am sure—”

“Indeed you will not, Prudence!” exclaimed Lady Boring, sitting up, her complaint forgotten. “You know quite well that Althea is in precisely the same condition that I am. She would not be able to, any more than I!”

Althea Fredericks was their stepsister. As Mrs. Fredericks had married on almost the same date as the Baroness, the two ladies were now equally expecting a blessed event in a few months' time.

“And furthermore,” the Baroness added, “Crooked Castle is far too small to accommodate a large group of guests.”

“It has eighteen bedrooms,” Miss Winthrop observed.

“More than half of them are under construction!” Crooked Castle had suffered a collapse of one wing during a storm and was undergoing major renovations. “And last time we dined there, they gave us aged mutton and stewed crab apples. I cannot
think
why their cook is generally so highly praised.
I
have never had a meal at the Castle that was even passable.”

“‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith,'” quoth Miss Winthrop. “And I am sure Althea would love to entertain them as much as you should hate it, my dear. It would be disgraceful to have them staying at the inn—you know how dirty and ill-run the Blue Swan is—and our school is full to bursting. No, no, you must not concern yourself, Charity. I shall ask Althea, as you find it so disagreeable to entertain your husband's friends.”

“I never said such a thing, Prudence! You know quite well I did not! I am widely acknowledged as a
delightful
hostess, and I'll warrant there's not a woman in England more devoted to her husband's honor and happiness than I. Er . . .
how
many of them did you say there are?”

In fact, only two young men proposed to leave the amusements of a wealthy and sophisticated household in order to go sick-visiting. The fact that their friend lay ill in such an interesting locale as a school for young ladies was judged by the young ladies themselves to be of no importance; the saintliness of the gentlemen's characters was assumed and much exclaimed-over. The Honorable Mr. Crabbe, who was discovered by a brief inspection of Debrett's
Peerage
to be heir to a barony, and Mr. Hadley arrived by coach a few days after receiving a nearly gracious invitation to visit Gudgeon Park from Lady Boring, with an enthusiastic postscript from Lord Boring, who welcomed any dilution of his evening's
tête-à-tête
with her expectant Ladyship. Having dispatched fifty brace of grouse—or one hundred birds—between them, they arrived with great mounds of the little dead birds in wickerwork baskets strapped here and there over their coach and presented them to their hostess for her cook's use.

“Lord Pauncefoot's chef quite simply refused to accept them,” explained young Mr. Crabbe with a winsome smile. “Being French, you know, and sensitive that way. He says he has roasted and baked and fricasseed
les grouses
, and stuffed them and served them in aspic and in a pâté, and now he bursts into floods of tears and begins throwing pots and pans about if you bring any more into his kitchen. I believe that Lord Pauncefoot's guests brought down over five hundred brace last year, so perhaps the cuisine
is
growing a trifle repetitious. But I hope that you, dear Lady Boring, will not look so harshly upon our offering.”

Young Mr. Crabbe was
very
good-looking, of aristocratic stock, and possessed a pleasing address. Lady Boring smiled upon him most graciously and assured him that he, his friend, and their birds were entirely welcome.

Indeed, when on the following day the gentlemen wished to walk over to the school to visit their injured friend, with Lord Boring to show them the way, Lady Boring was quite put out, forgetting that they had not been especially invited to amuse her. She complained that she was far too weak and unwell to walk half so far, and that it was quite unkind of them to go off and leave her alone.

Her husband's brow darkened. “My mother would be glad of some company for a change,” he observed in a low voice. “Why don't you go over to the dower house and play a hand or two of faro with her? That's no more than a few steps away for you, and you know how she enjoys it.”

“Last time I ‘played a hand or two of faro' with your mother at the dower house,” replied her Ladyship in a furious whisper, “she won half the housekeeping money from me, and we had to live on salt pork and dried beans for a fortnight, as you very well know!”

Mr. Crabbe cast a beatific smile upon this muffled conjugal dispute.

“Oh, my dear Madam, it is so good of you to pretend you do not find us most terribly in the way! But I know what the life of a great lady is: you will be closeted with your cook and your housekeeper and your majordomo all the morning and into the afternoon, and have no time for a pair of inconvenient guests who have been wished upon you at short notice. No, you must
not
fret about us. We will not intrude ourselves until you have a bit more leisure—perhaps later this afternoon?”

Much mollified, Lady Boring admitted that there
were
a number of matters she needed to speak to the cook and housekeeper about, especially with guests in the house. Not that they were not the most excellent servants, she explained, as otherwise she would not employ them, but . . .

“I understand, Madam, and approve,” said Mr. Crabbe. “The hand and eye of the discerning mistress; only these can create the perfect domestic felicity that I observe here at Gudgeon Park. Nothing can replace
that
, and we would be ashamed to disturb you whilst you work your magic.”

Lord Boring looked positively mutinous at this description of his often tempest-tossed and erratically managed home, and even Mr. Crabbe's companion, who knew of old his friend's skill in managing irascible countesses and difficult debutantes, looked uneasy at this fulsome praise. However, their hostess seemed to swallow everything without the least difficulty; they were not only allowed to leave without further complaint, but Lady Boring stood at the front steps and waved them on their way with a pleasant smile.

Once away from his Baroness, Lord Boring became more cheerful and began to point out, as they walked along, good places for surprising a hare or a quail in season. “I cannot offer you as fine sport as Lord Pauncefoot can, of course, but if you care for some rough shooting I'd be glad to join you, if only the cursed rains will hold off for a few hours,” he said, waving his walking stick in a discontented manner at the streamers of fog blowing in from the sea.

At the school, the imminent arrival of not one but two more young men had aroused a good deal of excitement. The students were fidgety, paying no mind to their lessons and changing their attire repeatedly. The invalid had been installed in the front parlor where he might greet his friends, a light repast of fruit, cheese, and bread had been laid out, and the ladies of the house arranged themselves as artistically as possible around him.

Once the lengthy business of introductions was completed and Mr. Arbuthnot's health had been inquired into, conversation became general. The young gentlemen eyed the ladies with interest, and the young ladies eyed them, rather more surreptitiously, in return.

Mr. Arbuthnot abruptly turned to Miss Evans and offered to help her wind up her skein of yarn. Miss Evans had no need whatever to have her yarn wound, but she accurately interpreted this as a way of making clear to Mr. Arbuthnot's friends that
he
possessed a prior interest in her company. She obligingly dropped her tidy skein on the floor, blocking the action with her skirts, and then began to rewind it on the proffered hands of her admirer.

“I must make myself useful,” he observed. “These ladies have been far kinder to me than I can ever repay, and, as you can see, one might as well lean for support on a broken reed as on me at present.”

“Perhaps we can make good your deficiency, Arbuthnot,” said Mr. Crabbe. “No doubt you are not yet capable of escorting them on their walks or running any little errands that might be required, but
we
should be honored to do so.”

“Yes,” put in Mr. Hadley, “and if the ladies wished an excursion to some local beauty spot—I suppose there must be one around here,” he said doubtfully, looking out on the dismal scene observable through the windows, “we should be delighted to convey them.”

“Or a little dance?” suggested Mr. Crabbe. “I am sure it would do you good, Arbuthnot, even tho' you could not participate.”

The young ladies agreed to each and every suggestion, until Miss Quince pointed out that this was a school, and that lessons must be taught, long division comprehended, verbs memorized, and flowers arranged. Parties and outings with visitors, no matter how pleasant, must take second place in importance to the education their relations had sent them there to acquire.

“But, Miss Quince!” protested Miss Asquith. She smiled at the young men and continued with an innocence so wide-eyed that it struck misgivings into the hearts of several members of her audience. “
Surely
the fundamental reason our relations sent us to this institution of learning was—”

“To strive to become a source of pride and satisfaction to them, no doubt,” interposed Miss Quince hastily.

“To gain household skills that will prove of use when you return home,” added Miss Hopkins.

“To be virtuous, industrious and, above all,
silent
when your opinion is uncalled for,” finished Miss Winthrop with a glint of steel in her eye.

“Oh, of course!” Miss Asquith blushed. “I merely meant to say that, beyond those admirable goals, our relations wish us to acquire some polish in company and learn to move with ease in the greater world. And I cannot imagine how we could better achieve that than in the companionship of three such accomplished and well-mannered members of good society as these gentlemen. Only think, Miss Winthrop,” she added, “you'll not need to pay Mr. Cruikshank to drill us on our dance steps if we are to be provided with proper partners at an actual dance!”

“Hmmp!” said Miss Winthrop.

Later, when Miss Asquith had moved away, Mr. Arbuthnot confided to his friends in a low tone, “That young lady
seems
all right, most of the time, and I daresay there's no real harm in her. But she's a humorist, I fear; a lady with an alarming wit.” And he shook his head.