Chapter Twenty-Six
If there is nothing in Virtue, but decency, interest, or humour…when both pleasure and advantage are in the other Scale, they will certainly downweigh them.
Maria was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. She did not remember sitting down, but there she was now, with her legs straight out in front of her, and beside her sat Mrs. Marlow in the same posture, now moaning and weeping, while Miss Hancock hovered over them both.
“Maria, this is dreadful news, but I hardly thought it would strike you so hard,” murmured her friend.
“I can’t have fainted.”
“No, you didn’t. But you slid down the wall as if you were about to.”
“Oh.” Maria touched her forehead. She felt wretched, yes, a little overheated. But mostly it was that dagger in her breast again. “Rebecca—do you know who she has gone with?”
Helplessly, Miss Hancock shrugged. “I—I—I suppose it might be any of her admirers. Except Mr. Gleek and Mr. Hoppe, who just called. How she fooled us! I could have sworn she was utterly indifferent to the lot of them!”
Feebly, Mrs. Marlow pushed away the sal volatile Miss Hancock continued to wave.
“Whoever it is, she has deceived us greatly and brought shame upon the family. How will Mr. Marlow be able to hold up his head? Suppose he were to be relieved of his presidency as a result of this? And—why? She might have married any one of her suitors with our approval. With our blessing! There was no need for subterfuge, much less elopement and scandal.”
Unless—she and her lover could not be married, Maria thought. Not now and not ever, because something made it impossible.
“She says she will write to you again, madam, at some point,” Miss Hancock tried to comfort the older woman.
“Perhaps when they are married. And shame need not be the result. Not lasting shame, that is. If you will pardon me for mentioning it, Maria, your own marriage came about under—unexpected and not ideal circumstances—and you are…making the best of it. There was talk and such, but people will talk, and already it has died away, nearly—in Oxford, at least. Hasn’t it, Maria? ”
“Er—” uttered Maria.
“That’s as may be,” Mrs. Marlow retorted, now struggling to her feet and disdaining Miss Hancock’s assistance, “but even transitory disgrace—if you will forgive me for calling it such, Mrs. Ellsworth—cannot be depended on in Verity’s case.
For if she and this rogue are this minute en route to Gretna Green, intending to be married as soon as they may, then why does she say she will not write to me again until ‘far, far in the future’? ”
Grimacing, Miss Hancock again lifted her hands. For what possible answer could she make?
Despite having her own stone of stumbling alluded to twice in the space of a minute, Maria hardly felt it, distracted as she was by the far greater trouble taking shape in her mind.
“P-Perhaps they may still be intercepted,” she ventured, her heart racing, as if they might read her fears in her face.
“Because—the clerk at the Angel Inn—when I fetched your letter, Rebecca—he said I had only just missed her. He didn’t name Miss Allen, of course.
He referred to the writer of the letter.
He said she had only just climbed into the latest post coach. ”
Mrs. Marlow’s hand flew to her bosom as if to prevent her own heart’s escape. “Intercept her? Catch her?”
“And try to hush it up?” gasped Miss Hancock. “I-I suppose no one yet knows but we ourselves.”
Mrs. Marlow was thinking very hard. “True, Rebecca. Very true. No one yet but ourselves.”
“And I will never speak of it,” whispered Maria. Or perhaps she mouthed it. Neither Mrs. Marlow nor Miss Hancock was looking at her in any case—they had reached to clutch each other’s hands.
“But—whom could we send in pursuit?” Mrs. Marlow demanded. “Mr. Marlow could not possibly…at his age the news alone might kill him! Not that I can keep this from him long, but pursue them he certainly cannot!”
“Of course not,” agreed Miss Hancock. But perhaps—George might? His acquaintance with Verity is very slight—I could not even vouch that he would remember what she looks like, but he could be trusted not to tell anyone.”
Mrs. Marlow was shaking her head before Miss Hancock even finished her sentence.
“How can we send Mr. Denver running all over England if we cannot be certain he even knows what Verity looks like?” she despaired.
“He would have to ask questions of whomever he met with, which would only lead to talk. No, no—we must send someone who knows her better. Someone who will recognize her but who can himself be trusted not to reveal her elopement to the whole world. But who? Do you suppose any of the gentlemen who have been calling daily? They will talk, though, won’t they? ”
A hiccup-like squeak escaped Maria at this juncture.
She had been wrestling inwardly, gasping, trying to push down her suspicions as silently as she could, all the while thinking wildly, I must get out of here!
This very instant! She had even managed to creep backward two steps before the tiny, fatal noise returned Mrs. Marlow's attention to her with a snap.
“Why—Mrs. Ellsworth,” she said slowly, the pieces coming together before Maria’s very eyes. “Mrs. Ellsworth—”
“Mm?” grunted Maria, retreating another step, only to have the woman seize her by the elbow.
“Mrs. Ellsworth, what about your husband? He knows Verity! What would you think of asking him—asking Mr. Benjamin Ellsworth—to go in search of her? He is far better acquainted with her than Mr. Denver.”
“Oh—I don’t know about that,” began Maria, but Mrs. Marlow spoke right over her demurral.
“He knows what she looks like,” she insisted, “and-and-and he's a tall, strong young man, in case this—other person—should resist giving her up and need to be overpowered.”
“Oh, madam!”
“—And he can be trusted. He's a-a fine, respectful and respectable young man—again, the circumstances leading to your sudden marriage notwithstanding. (Begging your pardon once more.) Mrs. Ellsworth, I entreat you! Would you possibly ask him?”
Blanching, Maria continued to flounder, “Oh, madam, I-I-I—”
Then, to her horror and Miss Hancock’s astonishment, Mrs. Marlow humbled herself still further, clasping Maria’s hand and lifting pleading eyes to her.
“I know it is too much to ask,” she murmured.
“An inconvenience—nay!—an imposition. Only, you and Mr. Ellsworth of all people can surely understand and sympathize with Verity’s reckless conduct…
? And every moment counts! Every moment the post coach carries them farther and farther away!
Might we not run over to New College at once and simply ask his opinion? ”
Thus driven into a corner, Maria could no longer avoid saying what she would rather not have said. “I’m very sorry, but Mr. Ellsworth is not in Oxford at present. He himself has gone on a trip.”
Mrs. Marlow’s face fell, but Miss Hancock kept her head.
“Did he go to London? Even if Verity and—this person—are bound for Scotland, they doubtless will change coaches in London, if they intend to travel with any haste.” Taking up a newspaper, she scanned the advertisement on the front page.
“Let me see…if she caught the coach shortly before you arrived at the Angel Inn, that must have been—here—Bickham’s Post Coach from Cheltenham, which would carry them to St. Clements.
Maria, do you suppose you might write to Mr. Ellsworth and ask him to make inquiries at the nearest coaching inns?
He might discover where the coaches for Scotland depart from, and that would be a start. ”
Maria winced. “Truthfully, I do not know if Benjamin went to London.”
“You don’t know?” repeated Mrs. Marlow.
“I—no, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Then—you cannot write to him?”
Maria shook her head.
“He must be returning soon, then,” supplied Miss Hancock quickly, “if he did not think it necessary to give you his direction.”
“Yes. He said he would return in a few days.”
“My goodness. Then he must have gone directly after your mother-in-law left you. Poor Maria!” cried her friend. “I am sorry I have not been to call on you. It must be very quiet in Pembroke Street.”
For an eyeblink Maria considered simply nodding and agreeing with Miss Hancock, but the urge passed. She had had enough of secrets—her own, Benjamin’s, anyone’s.
Steeling herself, she said once more, “He said he would return in a few days. But—he has not been gone long. Not at all, Rebecca. That is, in fact, he has only been gone a few hours.”
“Hours?” echoed her companions in astonishment.
Maria managed a feeble smile. “Yes. Hours. I mean to say—he went only this morning.”
There.
It was admitted.
Because why shouldn’t it be known? Benjamin’s departure on the same day as Miss Allen’s was pure coincidence. Probably—indeed, certainly—their contemporaneous departures meant absolutely nothing at all, and Maria was being silly. She was being needlessly mistrustful.
But to her dismay, Mrs. Marlow and Miss Hancock here exchanged a look, and in it Maria read the association of ideas in Mrs. Marlow’s countenance and the misgiving (quickly hidden) in Miss Hancock’s.
Mrs. Marlow sank into the nearest chair. “Mr. Ellsworth gone as well, you say? And…at the same time as Verity? Without telling you where or when he would return? How—remarkable.”
“It isn’t remarkable,” returned Miss Hancock stoutly. “Not a bit. Oxford boasts multiple coaching inns with multiple coaches leaving daily because Oxonians travel regularly all about the kingdom.”
But having seized upon the idea, not even for courtesy’s sake could Mrs. Marlow abandon it on Miss Hancock’s say-so.
Unfolding the letter again (with such violence it nearly tore), she read it a second time under her breath: “‘…My secrecy of recent weeks’ and so, so, so—‘How many times we declared to each other that it could not be’— ‘He says he could never forget me, no matter how he tried or how duty to family weighed upon him.’ Duty to family. Duty.”
She raised an accusing gaze to Maria, under which Maria felt herself sink as she had never before sunk.
It made no sense—how could Mrs. Marlow’s unspoken suspicions possibly be harder to bear than Mrs. Markham Dere’s condemnation at the Bolt in Tun?
And yet they were. At the Bolt in Tun, both Maria and her soon-to-be husband had been as innocent as two people caught in flagrante delicto could possibly be. But now—on this occasion—
But I am still innocent, Maria told herself. As innocent of wrongdoing this time as I was at the Bolt in Tun, whatever Benjamin may have done.
Whatever he may still be doing.
“I have done nothing,” she heard someone declare in ringing tones, before she realized she had spoken aloud. “And as—Mr. Ellsworth—cannot be of assistance to you, I will be going now.”
“He cannot be of assistance because he may be the very villain who kidnapped her!” gasped Mrs. Marlow, leaping to her feet again and swiping—actually swiping!—a hand out to catch at her! Maria evaded her clutch, backing away, but it was Miss Hancock who prevented Mrs. Marlow from pursuing her.
“Mrs. Marlow, please,” she begged, plucking at the woman’s skirts. “I ask you to moderate your language!”
“I retract nothing!” pronounced Mrs. Marlow.
For a person of ordinary height, she drew herself up to awesome proportions.
“I know your ‘husband’ once paid attentions to my niece, Mrs. Ellsworth, before he was forced into marriage with you. Verity told me herself, after you called here for the first time, and now that person has persuaded her to abandon everything! Family, morals, reputation! Well, if he cannot make an honest woman of her, neither can he touch her money. Heaven only knows what will become of her, poor creature, when he tires of her and abandons her—”
Mercifully these predictions went unheard by Maria, however, because she had fled as soon as her fingers, made clumsy by her distress, succeeded in operating the door handle and liberating her from the room.
“I don’t believe it,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she slid and slipped along St. Giles Street, having not taken the time to put her pattens on again. Indeed, she had no idea where she had left them. Outside the Marlows’ apartments? Within the passage? It didn’t matter.
She walked even faster. “I won’t believe it.
Because it can’t be. He may not love me yet, but he likes me—he cannot be so consummate an actor.
He likes me and likes kissing me—though perhaps all men like to kiss when presented with the opportunity—but no—even if he didn’t mean anything by his kisses, he would never do something so dishonorable as to run away with Miss Allen, even if he still had feelings for her!
” She veered to avoid a clutch of undergraduates whooping and capering and steadied herself against the walls of Balliol.
She knew she should work out her thoughts inside her head, but she couldn’t. She needed the relief of speaking, if only to herself.
“It’s utterly impossible,” she declared, hurrying onward.
“Because if Benjamin were that sort of person—heartless, shameless, base, wife-abandoning—he would never have married me when he compromised me! He would have run off there and then, or paid Lord Dere off, or-or-or something. The time to elope with Miss Allen was before he was saddled with me, not after! After makes no sense, because now he can never marry her, nor ever avail himself of her money—not to mention his mother would murder him if he did this! No. No, no, no.” (Stamping her foot with each “no” and narrowly avoiding ending on her backside when she hit a frosty patch of pavement.) “I won’t believe it until he writes to me himself to say he will never return. I won’t believe it. I simply don’t.”
Nevertheless, despite this show of spirit and despite her determined faith in his character, Maria felt perilously close to tears.
The thought of the empty rooms at Pembroke Street—the thought of sitting there alone, by herself, until—what?
Until when? Sitting there alone and suffering Rundell’s looks and sniffs and sotto-voce comments on the state of the Ellsworth marriage…
Nor was she expected back at the Cheneys’ until the following week, though, in her agitation, she thought she never wanted to go back at all.
No. She did not want to return to the Cheneys. Nor did she want to return to the solitude of Pembroke Street.
There was only one place Maria wanted to be in her distress, and at the Carfax she did not hesitate. Gathering the folds of her cloak in her gloved hands, she turned into the High Street and headed for Iffley.
For Iffley Cottage.
For home.