The Nonesuch

“Yes, so it will be almost true. Only, you must say that I went off to the dressmaker, and you waited, and waited, but I didn’t return, and though you looked all over for me you couldn’t find me, and you hadn’t the least notion what had happened to me!”

“So I drove back to Broom Hall—just taking a look-in at Staples, to tell Miss Trent I’d lost you in Leeds!”

“Yes,” she agreed happily. “For by that time I shall be out of reach. I’ve quite made up my mind to go by the Mail, and I know precisely what to do about paying for the ticket: I’ll sell my pearls—or do you think it would be better to pawn them? I know all about that, because when I was at school, in Bath, Mostyn Garrowby, who was my first beau, though much too young, pawned his watch to take me to a fête in the Sydney Gardens one evening!”

“You don’t mean to tell me you was allowed to go to fêtes?” said Laurence, incredulously.

“Oh, no! I had to wait until everyone had gone to bed, of course! Miss Climping never knew.”

This artless confidence struck dismay into Laurence’s soul. He perceived that Miss Wield was made of bolder stuff than he had guessed; and any hopes he might have cherished of convincing her that her projected journey to London would be fraught with too much impropriety to be undertaken vanished. Such a consideration could not be expected to weigh with a girl audacious enough to steal away from school at dead of night to attend a public fête in the company of a roly-poly youth without a feather to fly with.

“What do you advise?” enquired Tiffany, unclasping the single row of pearls she wore round her neck.

He had been pulling uncertainly at his underlip, but as she turned to the door, shrugging her shoulders, he said: “Here, give ’em to me! If you must go to London, I’ll pawn ’em for you!”

She paused, eyeing him suspiciously. “I think I’ll do it myself—thank you!”

“No, you dashed well won’t!” he said, incensed. “You don’t suppose I’m going to make off with your pearls, do you?”

“No, but—Well, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you went galloping back to Staples! Though I must own that if I could trust you—_:—Oh, I know! I’ll come with you to the pawnbroker! And then we must discover where to find the Mail, and when it leaves Leeds, and—”

“Very well! You come—but don’t blame me if we walk smash into someone who knows you!”

The change in her expression was almost ludicrous. She exclaimed: “Oh, no! No, no, surely not?”

“Nothing more likely,” he said. “Seems to me the tabbies spend the better part of their time jauntering into Leeds to do some shopping. Not that I care—except that I should be glad if we did meet the Squire’s wife, or Mrs Banningham, or—”

She flung up protesting hands. “Oh, how odious you are! You—you would positively like to betray me!”

“Well, if that’s not the outside of enough!” he said. “When I’ve warned you—!”

Still rampantly suspicious, she said: “If I let you go alone, and you met one of those horrid creatures, you’d tell them!”

“Give you my word I wouldn’t!” he replied promptly.

She was obliged to be satisfied, but it was with obvious reluctance that she dropped her string of pearls into his outstretched hand. He pocketed them, and picked up his hat. “I’ll be off, then. You stay here, and don’t get into a pucker, mind! I daresay it will take me some little time to arrange matters. I’ll tell ’em to send up a nuncheon to you.”

He then departed, returning nearly an hour later to find Miss Wield so sick with apprehension that she burst into tears at sight of him. However, when he handed her a ticket, and informed her that he had obtained a seat for her on the next Mail coach bound for London, her tears ceased, and her volatile spirits soared again. They were slightly damped by the news that it was not due to arrive in Leeds, coming from Thirsk, for another two hours, but agreeably diverted by the restoration to her of her pearls. “Thought it best to spout my watch instead,” explained Laurence briefly.

She accepted them gratefully, saying, as she clasped them round her neck again: “I am very much obliged to you! Only, if I must wait so long for the Mail, perhaps I should travel on the stage, after all.”

“Not a seat to be had!” responded Laurence, shaking his head. “Way-bills all made up! Besides, the Mail will overtake the stage—no question about that! You’ll be set down at the Bull and Mouth, in St Martin’s Lane, by the bye. Plenty of hacks to be had there: nothing for you to do but to give the jarvey your uncle’s direction.”

“No,” she agreed. “But I do wish—Where must I go to meet the Mail?”

“Golden Lion: no need to tease yourself over that! I’ll take you there.”

The anxious furrow vanished from her brow. “You don’t mean to leave me here alone? Then I am most truly obliged to you! I misjudged you, Mr Calver!”

He cast her a slightly harried glance. “No, no! That is, told you at the outset I’d have nothing to do with it!”

“Oh, yes, but now everything will be right!” she said blithely.