Whatever happened to mar.., p.39
Whatever Happened to Mary Bold, page 39
At this point we must go back a few hours to seven minutes past six o'clock, when the Barchester train came into the little station which served De Courcy Castle and the villages around it. Miss Eliza climbed down from the Barchester train and reached back in for a multitude of parcels and bundles. While her gown and her shoes were to be made, there had still been a number of smaller items to be procured, and Eliza had had to purchase a large market basket to contain the smaller ones, and the larger had been sent to the station by the shopkeepers and stowed in the compartment by a porter. Pritchard, the head groom (indeed, with the departure of William for the lesser glories of The Pines in Elderton, the only groom) had been on the lookout for her, and he and the half-grown lad who acted as porter duly retrieved all the parcels before the whistle blew and the little train ambled off westwards, some minutes behind time. When they were all loaded into the carriage, there was little room for Eliza herself, so she laughed and clambered up to sit beside Pritchard.
"You have had a busy day, seemingly, ma'am?" observed Pritchard.
"Busy enough," said Eliza. "And half of it still to be sent home."
She laughed, and the mare shyed a little.
"Really, ma'am?"
"Really and truly, Pritchard. Beside the gowns, and there are three of them besides the ... well, mum for that, there's a new habit to be made for me and a new coat and a waterproof cloak ,and I was measured for boots and three pairs of shoes and a hat and they are all still to come."
"Well, ma'am, you have been busy!"
Eliza nodded.
"I hate towns, Pritchard. If I've got to visit one I get all I've got to get all at one time. Then I needn't go back for a long, long time. Eh? Ha! Ha!"
The mare shyed again.
"Just as you say, ma'am. They was saying in the kitchen, there's to be a wedding. Is that right?"
"Quite right, Pritchard."
"I wishes you happy, Miss Liza, I do indeed."
"Thank you, Pritchard."
"And when is it to be, ma'am?"
"Oh, one of these days," said Eliza vaguely.
"They'll be wanting to drink your health in the Hall, Miss Eliza. We all wishes you happy."
"Now, that is kind of them," said Eliza. "I'll see to it that you all know when the time comes. And I dare say we might dub up a bottle or two ourselves."
"Why, thank you ma'am."
Pritchard was perfectly sincere in his thanks, but felt that if Simon was to be included in that 'we', perhaps some acknowledgement might have been made. Like the rest of the hall, he was devoured with curiosity: when had the question been popped and what sort of a bargain had been struck and would the proceeds be enough to pay his six month's overdue wages?
At this point, they drove up to the door, and Eliza descended without aid and began to carry in the parcels, piling them up in the hall. Pritchard came in with a high-piled armful, which prevented his seeing the entrance of Lord de Courcy, who screwed his eyeglass into his eye and stared at the growing heap, unaware of Pritchard’s approach. The groom walked right into his Lordship, his load of parcels scattered far and wide, and Lord de Courcy swore. Eliza laughed.
"What is this?" demanded the Earl.
"Some of my trousseau," said Eliza. "The rest will be sent home later."
"And when is the wedding to be?" demanded her uncle irritably. "Am I to be kept wholly in the dark? Or is Simon coming after this confounded concert-affair to make all the arrangements?"
"Oh, no," said Eliza and started to go upstairs with her ams full of parcels.
"Then when is the damned pup coming?"
"I expect he'll be over some time or another," Eliza replied from the half-landing. "He knows very well just what is due to you, I dare say."
Which was an edged remark in the circumstances, and her uncle knew it to be so. He snorted and retired into the library and made no further enquiries. Pritchard jerked his head at James, the new footman who had been hovering nervously during this exchange, and indicated the heap of packages.
"These are to be taken up to Miss's room," he said.
When James had divested himself somewhat breathlessly of the second load, Eliza had heaped her bed with the contents of the first load and was sorting them into heaps.
"Thank you ... James, is it?"
"No, Miss, that is, yes, Miss."
"Ah," said she. "And what is your real name?"
"Joe, Miss. But Mrs. Pringle she said it ain't suitable for a footman."
Eliza nodded. She was perfectly familiar with the peculiar custom of altering the names of servants to suit the notions of the employers.
"I like it better than James. My cousin in the Guards is called James and a silly great noddie he is. Would you ask someone to help you fetch down my trunk, Joe? I want to start my packing."
"You leaving us, Miss?"
"No, Joe. Not right away, but there is a great deal of stuff here that I shan't need while I am here and it might as well be packed as lie around under my feet."
Joe blushed, recalling that Mr. Bassett had informed him that very morning that footmen did what they were told without enquiry, and departed to discover where Miss's trunk was bestowed.
At dinner that night, both the Earl and his Lady did their best to discover, first, when Simon had finally asked for her hand, and secondly, when the wedding was to take place. In neither object were they successful: Lady de Courcy's delicate probings were ignored, being perhaps too delicate to impinge upon Eliza, sharp set after a strenuous day and making inroads into a game pie. The Earl's straight question,
"When did you see Simon?" was answered:
"This morning, Uncle."
It happened to be true. She had seen him, though she had not spoken to him. He had come running through Orfeather Street, as it was the nearest way between the Bethel and the Assembly Rooms. Mrs. Smith, in the process of pinning a cotton maquette on to a lightly clad Eliza, had pointed him out. The net curtains which veiled the windows permitted the inmates to see what was outside but deterred those outside from observing what went on inside. Eliza broke away, trailing white cotton, and went to peer out.
"Oh, so it is. I would hardly have known him, he has changed so much. Such a pleasant, well-mannered boy, he was, and how he came to be so, brought up with Uncle’s brood, Lord knows."
An answer which had puzzled that lady very much.
"He is very much liked in the city," she had observed.
"I expect he must be," Eliza had replied indifferently. "Are all the young ladies in love with him? He is handsome enough."
Catching a glimpse of Mrs. Smith's startled expression, she had laughed uproariously, and her new friend had driven a pin into her hand and squeaked with dismay.
This exchange she did not recount to her uncle, who had to be satisfied with her having met her putative groom.
"And did you decide upon a date?" he asked.
"A date for what?"
"For the wedding," returned her exasperated uncle.
"No," she said in reply and filled her mouth so full of game pie as to make the answering of further questions impossible.
Earl de Courcy gave up. His Lady, however, waited until she had obliged Eliza to abandon the desserts and accompany her to the drawing room.
"Have you and dear Simon decided upon a date for your wedding?"
Eliza, shook her head.
"No."
"I have to admit," said her aunt with a tinkle of laughter, "I fail to understand when you can have come to an agreement. When he came here, you were absent. Did you meet him on the road to Plumstead?"
"No. I was nowhere near the Plumstead Road that day."
Driven to extremes, her Ladyship asked a direct question.
"Then when did you come to an agreement?"
"With Simon?"
"Of course, with Simon."
Eliza laughed, and the china shepherdesses in the cabinet shook.
"Hard to say," she said at last. "These things aren't always so cut and dried, you know. Simon knows quite well what you require of him. And why," she added with a certain malice.
Lady de Courcy was conscious of a desire to hurl one of the shepherdesses at her niece by marriage, but she refrained. She could not be certain either of hitting her or, should she achieve this, that Eliza would not hurl it back and with a much better aim.
A few minutes later, Eliza excused herself.
"I have some packing to do," she said. "I asked Joe to bring down my trunk before dinner and I see he has done so."
"Packing?"
Lady de Courcy's voice was normally low and she might have been said to have cultivated a fashionable drawl, but when she uttered this startled query her voice sounded unusually high and sharp.
"Is the wedding to be so soon, then?"
"Oh, no, Aunt. Not immediately. I have bought a number of things which I will not need till I go and I wish to pack them away. That is all. You will not be rid of me as easily as that, I assure you."
She laughed, and the shepherdesses tinkled in their cabinet. And with that she left the room and Lady de Courcy was no wiser than she had been when they entered it.
In the Rural Deanery at Silverbridge, the parents of Holly Oakrhynd were in a somewhat similar state of uncertainty. They had been informed, somewhat indirectly, which is to say by Mrs. Blythe who had heard it from the housemaid who had heard it from the gardener's wife who had heard it from the groom who had heard it from a crony of his at The Feathers in Silverbridge, that Miss Holly had been taken to Barchester in a very smart carriage with two horses driven by a very handsome gentleman; he had held up the Oakrhynd carriage at the Smithy corner, so the tale ran, and Miss Holly had jumped down and gone with him as blithe as a hound pup. This sounded somewhat hopeful, but there was as yet no answer to Dr. Oakrhynd's letter and they could not be sure that the smart chaise had not been the scene of a farewell. They could not enquire of either Mrs. Diana or Philip Hardy what had been said on that occasion, for they were to stay in Barchester until the concerts were ended, and Philip was to leave Barchester as soon as the concerts were over. Mr. and Mrs.Oakrhynd had purchased tickets only for the Friday performance. An enquiry at the Deanery, where Holly and Diana were to stay for those four nights, was mooted by Mrs. Oakrhynd but vetoed by her husband as smacking of ....he could not express exactly of what, but he was clearly understood by his wife.
"A morning visit?" she suggested. "Surely you must have some matters which you would like to discuss with the Dean?"
"As to that..." he demurred, "no, not this morning. It is too soon... best wait upon events. One must not appear too...too..."
And so it was decided that they would pay a morning visit to the Deanery on the Wednesday morning.
My readers must not suppose that in the excitement of the concerts I have completely lost sight of Mr. Stanhope and Mademoiselle Henriette. They were there, and it would be difficult for anyone not sand-blind to lose sight of Mademoiselle Henriette. She impinged upon the view like a new building, an indubitable part of the landscape, but new, and if not entirely unwelcome, hardly accepted yet by those accustomed to an earlier view. She had appeared without a bidding at various rehearsals, and had listened with an air of condescension and a barely-restrained wish to redirect.
Once, while attending a rehearsal of the choir, she had made a tentative suggestion that she might possibly take part in the Friday concert. Simon, with a shudder running down his spine at the thought of having to rearrange his intricately designed programme, had looked gratified and shown her the piano in the Assembly Room from which, in the absence of the orchestra, he directed the choir. She had seated herself, fussed mightily over the height of the stool and then essayed a broadside of arpeggios on the astonished instrument.
This instrument, as my readers may recall, was not a modern pianoforte: it had been the gift of an elderly prebendary. He had heard that the Committee was desirous of buying a pianoforte for the Assembly rooms when the idea for the concerts was first mooted. He had told his friend the Archdeacon that they might have the instrument in his parlour, and it had been accepted with acclamation and thanks. However, as I have already said, the prebendary was elderly and the pianoforte, indeed it might almost have been described as a fortepiano, had been the property of his wife and the property of her mother before her, so that it dated from the earliest days of such instruments. It was none the worse for this, for it had a pleasant tone and made an ideal instrument for accompaniment, but it did not sound. Pianists these days wish to make the instrument sound and to shake the rafters. Mademoiselle Henriette certainly wished to do so, and she found the gentle singing tone of the instrument not to her liking. She ceased her hammering with a moue of distaste, closed the lid and said to Simon,
"Never could I myself justice do upon an instrument as that. No. Never. Is there no other?"
Simon had shaken his head.
"Then you must all idea of my recital abandon. No time is there an instrument to find."
It was very much to Simon's relief that the idea of a recital must be given up but, of course, he could not say so. He suggested to her that there was a move afoot to make such concerts an annual event, and perhaps next year...
"I know not where I am," was her answer and she lapsed into German. "An artiste of my calibre has calls upon her which she cannot withstand. I cannot disappoint my public. Never could I do so! I cannot promise, but should there be a reasonable instrument and I have a gap in my engagements, who can say... who can say?"
She then informed him, still in German of which he had but a very limited command, how she would have arranged such a concert, what pieces she would have included and which excluded, "...for they are without doubt fort ennuyeux and all will yawn...so...behind the hands..." However, she wished him well, for it was much too late to rearrange the programme which she as an artiste fullly understood, and notwithstanding its faults the programme might well please such an audience as Barchester might provide. And with that she swept across to where Signor Panzarotti was waiting and swept him off to sup at the Old Guild Hall, a procedure which did not go unnoticed. Glances were exchanged, and it was whispered that Mr. Stanhope had best keep a wary eye on his wife: everyone knew what such foreigners were like. However, a few, especially among the baritones and basses, who frequented the Packhorse, said among themselves that it was she who had best watch him.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
'The Service will be fully choral. '
On Friday, the day of the last concert, the Dragon was astir very early indeed: the Supper Room beside the concert-room was swept and dusted and polished: the tables and chairs were taken away and stacked elsewhere: a long table of boards and trestles was erected across the door to the inn and linen cloths spread over it which disguised its workaday form. Over the cloths, Mrs. Grant looped garlands of ivy and hung little pots on the garlands, which would later contain posies of flowers. On the table were ranked glasses polished to a high shine and great white chinaware chargers which would later be laden with savouries now being prepared in the Dragon's kitchen, and little cakes now waiting to be iced by the pastry cook from the Barchester cake-shop, due to arrive with his bowls and piping bags at any moment. Chairs with cushioned seats were brought down from the large sitting room on the first floor and set round the walls. In other words, preparations were being made for the reception which would precede the last concert of the series, the reception at which Barchester would greet the Duke of Omnium.
Mr. Grant remarked to his wife when they were discussing an early breakfast that he hoped that no one would come to blows during this event.
"Why ever should they?" she asked.
"Well," said he, "there's folk coming that are at loggerheads: there's yon Purser, for one,"
Mr. Grant habitually referred to his Honour the Mayor in this dismissive fashion.
"Surely he won't quarrel with anyone, not with the election so soon."
"He'd quarrel with his foot if there was nothing else," said Grant gloomily, "and there'll be plenty there to quarrel with. There's Mr. Thorne, for one..."
"Oh, I do like him. Such a pleasant gentleman..."
"But he is standing against yon Purser," said her husband, "and likely to beat him, if I'm any judge. He's maybe the Duke's man, but the Duke's made a good choice, for it's clear to me the man's got a mind of his own. If Purser's just barely civil to him, it's the best we can hope. If he's primed with a brandy or two, we can't even hope for that."
"You could tell Jim in the bar not to serve him," said his wife.
"That would have the place in an uproar before the reception even started. And that would be a tale for the man Clarke to put in the Echo. And fine he'd like to do it, if I'm a judge, for he has no liking for Purser and Purser has less for him after yon piece in the paper about the New Town Hall. And forbye the Archdeacon'll be there, and he it was told Clarke about the echo and the warning he got from the architect, and I warrant you, Jeanie, that Purser knows just where the tale came from."
His wife laughed.
"The old Archdeacon won't be bothered," she said, "not he. He's one to go his own way and take no heed of anyone."
"Just so," said Mr. Grant gloomily.
"Och, don't you worry," she said rising to collect the plates and cups. "They'll all be minding their P and Qs with the Duke there...even the old Archdeacon."
"And the Bishop," said Mr. Grant. "For years there's hardly a word spoken between the Palace and the Close until this Hospital affair started, and now they're thick as thieves, but who's to say whether they won't fall out again?... Especially when he's going to..."
"Hush for that," she said sternly. "There's been no announcement made, nothing but whispers. I hope it's true, indeed I do, but we don't know. "
"I can't see that uppish Mrs. Grantly approving," said her husband. "She's as High as her husband, if not Higher. And Mrs. Arabin, Higher than either. Suppose he tells them there and then?"
