Georgiana put up her brows. ‘A fresh-faced young man, with a shy smile? Does he walk with a limp?’
‘Yes, that’s he. Just give me your hand-or no! Where has Muker put my slippers?’
‘Then I fancy he is with Phoebe at this very moment,’ said Georgiana. ‘We met on the doorstep: I wondered who it could be!’
The Dowager sank back again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me so before?’ she demanded. ‘Ring the bell, Georgie! I’ll have him up here at once!’
Georgiana obeyed, but said, as she did so: ‘To be sure, ma’am-if you think it right to take him?’
‘Right? Why shouldn’t it be? It will do him good to see something of the world! Oh, are you thinking they might fall in love? No fear of that, I assure you-though why I should say fear I don’t know,’ added her ladyship bitterly. ‘After last night I should be thankful to see her married to anyone!’
Tom, entering the dressing room a few minutes later, was looking grave. He cast an awed glance at the battery of medicines and restoratives set out on the table beside the Dowager’s sofa, but was relieved to hear himself hailed in robust accents. When asked abruptly, however, if he would escort her ladyship and Miss Marlow to Paris he looked to be more appalled than pleased; and although, when the inducement of a week in Paris as her ladyship’s guest was held out to him, he stammered that he was much obliged, it was plain that this was a mere expression of civility.
‘Let me tell you, Tom, that foreign travel is a necessary part of every young man’s education!’ said the Dowager severely.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Tom. He added more hopefully: ‘Only I daresay my father would not wish me to go!’
‘Nonsense! Your father is a sensible man, and he told me he thought it time you got a little town bronze. Depend upon it, he can very well spare you for a week or two. I shall write him a letter, and you may take it to him. Now, boy, don’t be tiresome! If you don’t care to go on your own account you may do so on Phoebe’s.’
The matter being put thus to him Tom said that of course he was ready to do anything for Phoebe. Then he thought that this was not quite polite, so he added, blushing to the roots of his hair, that it was excessively kind of her la’ship, he was persuaded he would enjoy himself excessively, and his father would be excessively obliged to her. Only perhaps he ought to mention that he knew very little French, and had not before been out of England.
These trifling objections waved aside, the Dowager explained why she was so suddenly leaving London. She asked him if Phoebe had told him of the previous night’s happenings. That brought the grave look back into his face. He said: ‘Yes, she has, ma’am. It’s the very deuce of a business, I know, and I don’t mean to say that it wasn’t wrong of her to have written all that stuff about Salford, but it was just as wrong of him to have given her a trimming in public! I-I call it a dashed ungentlemanly thing to have done, because he must have meant to sink her to the ground! What’s more, I wouldn’t have thought it of him! I thought he was a first rate sort of a man-a regular Trojan! Oh lord, if only she had told him! I had meant to have visited him, too! I shan’t now, of course, for whatever she did I’m on Phoebe’s side, and so I should tell him!’
‘No, I shouldn’t visit him just yet,’ said Georgiana, regarding him with warm approval. ‘He is a Trojan, but I am afraid he may be in a black rage. He wouldn’t otherwise have behaved so improperly last night, you know. Poor Phoebe! Is she very much afflicted?’
‘Well, she was in the deuce of a way when I came,’ replied Tom. ‘Shaking like a blancmanger! She does, you see, when she’s been overset, but she’s better now, though pretty worn down. The thing is, Lady Ingham, she wants me to take her home!’
‘Wants you to take her home?’ exclaimed the Dowager. ‘Impossible! She cannot want that!’
‘Yes, but she does,’ Tom insisted. ‘She will have it she has disgraced you as well as herself. And she says she had rather face Lady Marlow than anyone in London, and at all events she won’t have to endure Austerby for long, because as soon as those publisher fellows hand over the blunt-I mean, as soon as they pay her!-she and Sibby will live together in a cottage somewhere. She means to write another novel immediately, because she has been offered a great deal of money for it already!’
The disclosure of this fell project acted alarmingly on the Dowager. To Tom’s dismay she uttered a moan, and fell back against her cushions with her eyes shut. Resuscitated by smelling salts waved under her nose, and eau-de-Cologne dabbed on her brow, she regained enough strength to tell Tom to fetch Phoebe to her instantly. Georgiana, catching the doubtful glance he cast at her, picked up her gloves and her reticule, and announced that she would take her leave. ‘I expect she feels she had rather not meet me, doesn’t she? I perfectly understand, but pray give her my love, Mr. Orde, and assure her that I am still her friend!’
The task of persuading Phoebe to view with anything less than revulsion the prospect of being transported from the fashionable world of London to that of Paris was no easy one. In vain did the Dowager assure her that if some ill-natured gossip should have written the story of her downfall to a friend in Paris it could be denied; in vain did she promise to present her to King Louis; in vain did she describe in the most glowing terms the charm and gaiety of French society: Phoebe shuddered at every treat held out to her. Tom, besought by the Dowager to try what he could achieve, was even less successful. Adopting a bracing note, he told Phoebe that she must shake off her blue devils, and try to come about again.
‘If only I might go home!’ she said wretchedly.
That, said Tom, was addlebrained, for she would only mope herself to death at Austerby. What she must do was to put the affair out of her head-though he thought she should perhaps write a civil letter of apology to Salford from Paris. After that she could be comfortable, for she would not be obliged to meet him again for months, if Lady Ingham hired a house in Paris, as she had some notion of doing.
But the only effect of this heartening speech was to send Phoebe out of the room in floods of tears.
It was left to the Squire to bring her to a more submissive frame of mind, which he did very simply, by telling her that she owed it to her grandmother, after causing her so much trouble, to cheer up and do as she wished. ‘For it’s my belief,’ said the Squire shrewdly, ‘that she wants to go as much for her own sake as yours. I must say I should like Tom to get a glimpse of foreign parts, too.’
That settled it: Phoebe would go to Paris for Grandmama’s sake, and try very hard to enjoy it. Her subsequent efforts to appear cheerful were heroic, and quite enough (said Tom) to throw the whole party into the dismals.
Between Phoebe’s brave front and Muker’s undisguised gloom the Dowager might well have abandoned the scheme had it not been for the support afforded her by young Mr. Orde. Having consented to go with her, Tom resigned himself with a good grace, and threw himself into all the business of departure with so much energy and good-humour that he soon began to rival Phoebe in the Dowager’s esteem. With a little assistance from the Squire, before that excellent man returned to Somerset, he grappled with passports, customs, and itineraries; ascertained on which days the mails were made up for France, and on which days the packets sailed; calculated how much money would be needed for the journey; and got by heart such French phrases as he thought would be most useful. A Road Book was his constant companion; and whenever he had occasion to pull out his pocket-book a shower of leaflets accompanied it.
It did not take him long to discover that the task of conveying Lady Ingham on a journey was no sinecure. She was exacting and she changed her mind almost hourly. No sooner had he gone off with her old coachman to inspect her travelling carriage (kept by her longsuffering son in his coach-house and occupying a great deal of space which he could ill spare) than she decided that it would be better to travel post. Off went Tom in a hack to arrange for the hire of a chaise, only to find on his return to Green Street that she had remembered that since Muker would occupy the forward seat they would be obliged to sit three behind her, which would be intolerable.