'Jane, I wish to leave'. 'To leave?' She sat bolt upright, hands behind her hips and stared. There is no comfort here. Do you find comfort here?', I asked, then voices sounded from below and I moved to the window and opened it with the same wan hope that one awaits the returning of a carriage late at night when a loved one is despaired of. Some madness in me asked if it were James or Papa, come with rescue ropes and mattresses to leap upon. 'Who? What?', asked Jane, and I thought her, in our sisterhood, to be of the same frame of mind, but one she would not bring herself to speak. I waved my hand and shushed her. Down below a gentleman of fair appearance stood, conversing with a gardener. 'Soor-why, yes-you goes along the same road as you took, turns left by Frencham's barn-stands on its own, it does-goes half a mile up there, and there you are, and Bob's yer uncle as they say, soor. Thankee, soor', the servant uttered, pocketing a coin, whereat the gendeman was about to turn away when I leaned out and called 'Hallo!' 'Madam?', he responded, and his eyes looked bright the moment he looked up. Jane tugged at me and giggled, but I would not yield. 'Are you going to the Hall?', I asked, making him to blink against the sky. 'The Hall? By jove, I am! Would you then come?' 'If you can accommodate my sister also, sir-yes, gladly. We have need of a conveyance. Can you wait upon us just five minutes?' 'Five will be splendid. Six would be eternity, from what I see of you'. 'Emily, we cannot!', Jane flustered as I drew the window to. “Then you may stay. I will not a pass a night within this house, nor would Mama allow you to, if she but knew'. 'Oh, Emily, but…' 'No buts, now, for I mean to go. Quick, get your reticule, your cloak. Our clothes will be sent on-they have to be'. 'Oh, Emily!' Her cry was such as made her seem my junior then, but with a flourish of uncertain eyes, wild hands, she went, and met me on the landing in a trice, cloak over arm and reticule tight held, as though it might be snatched. 'They will see us, Emily!'-and panic in her voice. 'What if they do? We are not prisoners, are we? May we not go out to greet an old friend passing by? Follow me quietly, dear, and make no sound'. Rustling of skirts! How loud they sound in circumstances such, though one has no consciousness of them otherwise. The hollow, armoured men stood waiting on a battle that would never come again. The door to the drawing room was but ajar. We heard the small, smug clink of china and then hastened to the far front door. It rattled as I opened it.
'See who that is', called Hilda's voice. 'Oh, God!', said Jane, and ran and ran with me along the gravel sidepath to the gentleman who stared in some surmise at our approach until I lightly touched his arm, and then he smiled. 'Someone is beckoning', he said. I turned and saw a maid who waved her arm uncertainly. 'She is inopportune', I said. I felt it my bon mot, and had my arm possessively clasped in turn. 'Are we not all!', he laughed. His eyes were in mine as he spoke, not at my bosom, nor my thighs. The maid squeaked something, like a nightjar that has lost its voice. I waved to her as though to say, 'Indeed! It is a good day, is it not?', then we walked on to where his carriage stood. Introductions were effected as we got within. His name was Harry Marminter. I judged him to be thirty-five or thereabouts. He had a jolly air on him, but yet beneath a strain of seriousness. He was beardless, with a small moustache, and as fair-looking as a man might be who does not swell his paunch with beer, nor carry a red nose for whisky's sake.
'You are to visit Aramintha?', he then asked. His wedding ring and the familiar tone he used indicated to me that she was his wife.
'She is well?', I responded. I had not, after all, said yes, and Jane sat frozen, with a frozen smile that did not, however, betoken an ill-ease but more dumbfoundedness. 'Indeed, but shy as ever. How extra-ordinary we three have not met before. Your carriages are in repair?' I caught a narrowing of his eyes, and laughed.
'They are-but we are not', I riposted and fell to talking of the weather, and all nonsense such, with such relief upon me as the poor folk of Lucknow must have felt, for I sensed a ring of honesty in him that nowadays is rare to come by even in the Shires. 'How did you know-about the Hall, I mean?', Jane whispered to me urgently when we arrived. The house was quite a small one by our standards, had the look of an old Vicarage. 'Know what? I say, forgive my rudeness, but you both intrigue me much. Two pretty sisters without chaperone are not too often seen-I do regret', said Harry. 'Sir, I must confess to you… But pray, no, let us come in first, if enter still we may. We are but fugitives of overwrought desire', I told him as the entrance door came near. 'A guess, you fool. It had to be a Manor or a Hall', I whispered to my sister, who then looked contrite. The hallway had a bareness to it in comparison with the baronial manor we had left: rush matting on the parquet floor, an ornate coatstand, a deer's head with dusty antlers, an oval, gilded mirror-that was all. A maid, a young girl, scuttled from a side room, wiped her hands upon her apron, and then curtseyed to the master, which was rare, and so I thought him of high station. 'Mistress is in her boudoir, sir'.
'We shall attend upon her then. Bring wine up for our guests'.
'The red or white, sir?' 'Both, you ninnikins! Come, ladies, let us greet the Mistress of the house-then shall your tale be told. I trust it is diverting. Both of us have quite a taste for the unusual.
Aramintha! I bring orphans from the storm!', he bellowed up the stairs, but in such good humour that I took much more to him. The stairs were thinly carpeted. Our footsteps sounded as we went, and the staircase was a fairly narrow one, so we three went in file, with Jane behind me, and he leading up. 'Orphans? Females, I trust?'
The languid and soft voice came from a bedroom just along the corridor above. Entering, we found a lady on the bed of much the same age as our host. She wore a pale blue peignoir and her stockings showed together with the bows and frills of a chemise. Her hair was corngold, her eyes were beautiful. Upon our entrance she leaned up and cast aside a book, yawning and covering her mouth as though to say, 'I did not mean to yawn'. 'My dears!', she said, but made no move to rise until, it seemed, she had absorbed us fully with her eyes, came to herself and gasped, 'I am not dressed for visitors! Harry, pray entertain them in the drawing room'. 'Of course, my pet'. We were again led out-a quite bizarre occasion, as I thought and descended as might ones who had come to the wrong house, though Harry-being courteous-annulled our obvious dismay. 'You know how shy she is-or perhaps you do not?', he enquired, we meeting the maid upon the stairs and she then turning round, descending in her turn, and all our actions as might have graced a farce. 'It is we, sir, who have explanations to make. I am a fleeing bride', said I, whereat his eyebrows raised, and then he laughed. 'Most that I know hasten only to their marital beds to take their pleasure, Miss, Mrs…' 'You may call me Emily'. Not wishing to betray Papa-and Jane with slightly worried, warning looks at me, I gave him hints of my past treatment, veiling much, but quite unable to dissemble all. Before I had finished my halting narrative, Aramintha joined us, bearing not a little of mystery herself. 'He finds me always-always finds me-don't you, Harry? Picking up my trail here, there. It is a game we play, you know. This is my aunt's house; she is absent for the season. The poor dear has scarce a thousand sovereigns to rub together, so I pay her rent. Which reminds me, dearest, that you owe me fifty. Your rings are nice, my dear. May I, too, call you by your Christian names? I heard from up above; I could not help.
Marriage is such a bore. I know not why I married Harry. Look-he blushes!' And to my surprise, he did. 'We master each other-taking turns, in fact; that is the trick of it. Being of equal strength of mind, we have no problem as to that. Married this morning and already fleeing, Emily? I envy you your courage! Of course, my own circumstances were quite other. My dear Harry. But before she could continue there was a loud knocking at the door, at which I started, as did Jane. 'Your new-found kin?', asked Harry. He got up, went to a cabinet and thence drew out sword and flourished it and made the light from its fine blade to flash, causing my sister and I considerable astonishment.- 'One never opens one's front door to unknown visitors in such secluded areas', he said, 'without a weapon in one's hand'. 'Particularly if it is a lady, and then he bares his own', laughed Aramintha, but even as she said it covered up her mouth with the prettiest of gestures. While Harry strode into the hall, I wished that the floor would swallow me, as well did Jane.