Fifteen #3
‘No, that would be impossible,’ said Arabella seriously.
‘In fact – I do not know very much about such things, but I cannot but feel that it will be excessively difficult for me to escape from Park Street without anyone’s knowing!
For I must carry a valise with me, at least, besides my dressing-case, and how may it be contrived?
Unless I crept out at dead of night, of course, but it would have to be very late indeed, for the porter always waits up for Lord Bridlington to come in.
And I might fall asleep,’ she added candidly.
‘I have a constitutional dislike of eloping at dead of night,’ said Mr Beaumaris firmly. ‘Such exploits entail the use of rope-ladders, I am credibly informed, and the thought of being surprised perhaps by the Watch in the very act of throwing this up to your window I find singularly unnerving.’
‘Nothing,’ said Arabella, ‘would prevail upon me to climb down a rope-ladder! Besides, my bedroom is at the back of the house.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘you had better leave me to make the necessary arrangements.’
‘Oh, yes!’ responded Arabella gratefully. ‘I am sure you will know just how it should be contrived!’
This reflection upon his past career Mr Beaumaris bore with an unmoved countenance. ‘Just so, Miss Tallant,’ he said gravely. ‘Now, it occurs to me that, tomorrow being Wednesday, there will be a gala night at Vauxhall Gardens.’
‘Yes, Lady Bridlington thought at one time of taking me to it,’ agreed Arabella. ‘But then, you know, she recalled that it is the night of the party at Uxbridge House.’
‘A very dull affair, I have no doubt. I shall invite Lady Bridlington – and Bridlington, I suppose – to do me the honour of joining my party at Vauxhall. You will naturally be included in this invitation, and at a convenient moment during the course of the evening, we shall slip away together to the street entrance, where my chaise will be awaiting us.’
Arabella considered this proposition, and discovered two objections to it. ‘Yes, but how very odd it would seem to Lady Bridlington if you were to go away in the middle of your own party!’
The reflection that Lady Bridlington might well deem this eccentricity the least odd feature of the affair Mr Beaumaris kept to himself. He said: ‘Very true. A note shall be delivered to her after our departure.’
‘Well, I suppose that would be better than nothing,’ Arabella conceded.
‘Oh, will she ever forgive me for treating her so?’ This involuntary exclamation seemed to escape her without her knowledge.
She raised the second of her objections.
‘And in any event it will not answer, because I cannot take a valise to Vauxhall!’
‘That you will also leave to me,’ said Mr Beaumaris.
‘But you cannot call in Park Street to fetch it!’ she pointed out.
‘Certainly not.’
‘And I will not elope without a change of clothes, or my hairbrushes, or my tooth-powder!’ declared Arabella.
‘Most improper,’ agreed Mr Beaumaris. ‘All these things shall be forthcoming.’
‘You cannot buy such things for me!’ gasped Arabella, shocked.
‘I assure you I should enjoy doing it.’
She stared at him, and then exclaimed wretchedly: ‘How dreadful it all is! I never, never thought I should come to this! I daresay it seems the merest commonplace to you, but to me – But I see that it is of no use to cavil!’
The tell-tale muscle at the corner of Mr Beaumaris’s mouth quivered, and was sternly repressed.
‘Well, perhaps not precisely commonplace,’ he said.
‘It so happens that I have not previously eloped with anyone. However, to a man of ordinary ingenuity the affair should not prove impossible to achieve creditably, I trust. I perceive Mrs Penkridge, who is hoping to catch either your eye or mine. We shall permit her to do so, and while she asks you to say if you do not think Nollekens’s bust over there most like, I shall go in search of Lady Bridlington, and engage her to bring you to Vauxhall tomorrow evening. ’
‘Oh, pray do not! I dislike Mrs Penkridge excessively!’ she whispered.
‘Yes, an odious woman, but impossible to avoid,’ he returned.
Seeing him rise to his feet, Mrs Penkridge bore down upon him, her acidulated smile on her lips. Mr Beaumaris greeted her with his smooth civility, stayed for perhaps a minute, and then, to Arabella’s indignation, made his bow, and went off in the direction of the next room.
Either Lady Bridlington proved hard to find, or he must have fallen a victim of her garrulity, Arabella thought, for it seemed a very long time before she set eyes on him again.
When he did reappear, Lady Bridlington was walking beside him, wreathed in smiles.
Arabella made her excuses to Mrs Penkridge, and went across to her godmother, who greeted her with the cheerful intelligence that Mr Beaumaris had formed the most delightful scheme for an evening at Vauxhall.
‘I did not scruple to accept, my love, for I knew you would like it of all things!’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Arabella, feeling that she was now committed to an irrevocable and reprehensible course which she would no doubt regret her life long. ‘I mean, oh yes! how very agreeable!’