A London Season (10 page)

“Yes. I don
’
t believe she feels any partiality for anyone as yet
—
though of course, the Wintringham connection would be most eligible, and one cannot but be gratified by Conington
’
s attentions to her. Not that there is the least necessity for Persephone to be rushing into an engagement at the beginning of her first Season. Especially now I have you to take all the troublesome part of her come-out off my hands!” added Isabella, with engagingly frank self-interest. “Still, it would be a very good marriage. You know, for the first time I begin to understand how mothers of growing daughters must feel, which is something I have never known in just that way before, on acccount of all the boys coming before Maria.”

And resting her cheek on her hand in a pretty pose, she fell to musing, well in advance, upon those scions of the aristocracy now bowling their hoops in the Park or throwing tantrums in the nursery, who might one day make eligible husbands for her treasured only daughter.

“I dare say,” she observed idly after a while, “that I should know more about little girls if only Catherine
’
s baby had lived, because she would be ten by now, and of course I should have seen a great deal of
her
.”

“Catherine?” asked Elinor, quite at sea.

“Edmund
’
s wife, my dear
—
didn
’
t you know he had been
married once?”

“No, indeed.”

“Poor Catherine! She was quite lovely, and died in childbed of a baby girl who died too.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” exclaimed Elinor, with ready sympathy. “How sad for you all!”

“Yes, for Catherine was the sweetest creature, just like a sister to me, and it
’
s my belief that Edmund has never truly recovered from her loss. He has not shown the least sign of wishing to marry again, as you might think he would, knowing that the baronetcy must come to him some day, and unless he has a son, of course, the line dies out with him. However, he does not seem to care for that, for I have never, in all this time, seen him pay serious attentions to any lady of the first respectability, although naturally he has had
—
well,
intimate
friends of the female sex!”

“Naturally,” echoed Elinor, surprising herself in a rather shocking sense of envy of those intimate friends, if by that term the delicately spoken Isabella meant what Elinor thought she did. Really, this will never do, she told herself, I may not
be
a lady of the first respectability, but I ought at least to make a push to
behave
like one!

“But there!” said Isabella, recalling her thoughts to the present. “I should dearly have liked to have a niece, but it is Persephone I must be thinking of now, and I will say this: I shall be very well pleased if, in the end, she does make a match of it with Conington.”

“He is certainly a most agreeable young man,” Elinor agreed. “But to be honest, I do
not
think she likes him above the rest.”

“Perhaps it is just that she does not seem to?” suggested Lady Yoxford optimistically. “Which is a very good thing, for nothing gives a gentleman such a disgust of a girl as for her to be seen dangling after him. Yes, I have hopes that something may come of it.”

Indeed, all things considered, the advent of Persephone had turned out much better than Lady Yoxford had expected, and if there were anything at all disquieting in Miss Grafton
’
s lack of interest in the gentlemen who surrounded her, it troubled no one but Elinor.
She
did wonder uneasily, from time to time, if the memory of the young man who had gone walking in Wales were really dying the natural death she had anticipated and hoped for.

And her doubts were strengthened when Charley brought a Cambridge friend of his to Yoxford House. Lord Conington was already there in the Grey Saloon, calling upon the ladies of the family. Elinor was coming to like him a great deal; he was a tall, well set up young man with easy and engaging manners, and if he could win Persephone
’
s heart she felt, with Isabella, that he would make her an excellent husband. He was talking to her now in one of the window embrasures, while
Mr.
Hargrave introduced his friend to his mother and Miss Radley. The friend
’
s surname was Smith, but his parents had plainly thought to compensate their son for its commonplace nature by christening him Zachary. “Call him Zack
—
everybody does so!” Charley counselled his mother. “Said he wanted to come here. Don
’
t know why.”

Mr.
Smith seemed so painfully shy as to be incapable of speaking for himself, apart from muttering a confused but civil greeting to Lady Yoxford, but his reason for wishing to come to Upper Brook Street was plain for anyone to see. Elinor recollected meeting him at a rout two nights before. He had been conspicuous there both for his inarticulacy and his negligently romantic attire, had spent most of the evening staring spellbound at Miss Grafton and seemed ready to resume this occupation now. Elinor charitably beckoned Persephone over to meet
Mr.
Smith, but as he was still unable to bring out a word, Conington was soon able to reclaim her attention without incivility.

“Zack
’
s a poet,” offered Charley. Elinor supposed that accounted for the young man
’
s careless dress and the drooping lock of hair over his brow. It was to be hoped that he had more facility of expression on paper than in person!

“Mind, I don
’
t understand a word of his stuff myself
—
but Ellingham does: he
’
s up at Trinity with us and as clever as can be, and
he
says it
’
s not a patch on Byron
’
s verses!”

Goaded into speech at last by this slighting comparison with the late, famous poet,
Mr.
Smith glowered at his friend and said loftily, though with a pronounced stammer, that he did not
as yet
aspire to genius of that high order. Having found his tongue, and discovering that Miss Radley was both friendly and unalarming, he allowed her to draw him into conversation, and disclosed that he was engaged upon a major work on a very new subject, which would be quite out of the common way.

“It
’
s
—
it
’
s an Ode on the W-wonders of Steam,” he confided, and went on to impart to Elinor a number of interesting facts concerning such modern marvels as Trevithick
’
s steam engines, and the very recently opened Stockton and Darlington mineral railway, engineered by
Mr.
George Stephenson, which
Mr.
Smith fancied had never yet featured in literature. Such was his enthusiasm for his subject matter that Miss Radley ventured to wonder whether he might not do well to direct it towards the Wonders of Steam themselves, rather than celebrating them in verse (for the few lines of his poem which he recited to her were not especially felicitous). But it appeared that although such mechanisms did interest him a great deal, steam power was not the kind of thing one could study at Cambridge. “H-however, m-my Ode will show the world a thing or t-two, Miss Radley!” said the poet earnestly. “B-believe me, it w-will astonish you!”

“Never fear, old chap, we
’
ll believe you.” Charley assured him, not very kindly. He could not have looked very closely at his friend earlier that day, for he now scrutinized
Mr.
Smith
’
s neckcloth and said, with some irritation, “Dash it all, Zack, you ask me to make you known to my people, and you ain
’
t even wearing a proper cravat!”

Mr.
Smith, who favoured a loosely knotted neckerchief instead, retorted with spirit, “W-wouldn
’
t be seen d-dead in a confection like that th-thing you
’
re wearing, Charley! W-what is it?”

“Variation of my own on the Mathematical Tie,” said Charley grandly.
“I
’l
l teach it to you, if you like. Mind, I don
’
t guarantee you could ever master the trick of it.”

“I
’
ve g-got b-better things to do,” returned the poet.

“Of course he has!” said Persephone, taking up the cudgels on
Mr.
Smith
’
s behalf, to his intense gratification. “As if anyone in his senses would
want
to prop his chin on a great starched edifice like that, Charley! Or wear such a waistcoat either!” she added, gratuitously.

The waistcoat
Mr.
Hargrave was sporting was the gem of his extensive collection, being made of black velvet with little stars sewn all over it, and he was excessively proud of it. He therefore replied, in kind, “Well, and
I
never saw anything half as ridiculous as those sleeves you have on!” They were certainly striking: made of fine muslin and extremely full from shoulder to wrist, where they were gathered in and tied.

“Let me tell you,” Persephone informed her cousin, “that they are the very latest thing! What was it Mademoiselle Hortense said the style is called?” she appealed to Elinor. “Oh, I remember
—
the Imbecile Sleeve.”

At this Charley laughed immoderately, and said, “Imbecile, eh? That
’
s a good
‘
un, ain
’
t it, Zack?”

However,
Mr.
Smith was not disposed to agree with him, and nor was Lord Conington, who put an end to this juvenile altercation by telling Persephone that on her at least they looked charmingly. She smiled very kindly at his lordship, and
Mr.
Smith, jealousy overcoming his awed shyness of her, plucked up courage to say that he had several lyrics, besides his work on Steam, which he would like, with Miss Grafton
’
s permission, to dedicate to her. “One of them I b-began to compose only t-two days ago,” he offered, blushing slightly. “It isn
’
t quite f-finished yet, b-but I shall address
you
in it, M-Miss Grafton! It opens:
As fair
D-Diana, b-breaking through the c-clouds
...”

“
My cousin
’
s name ain
’
t Diana,” objected
Mr.
Hargrave.

“
Mr.
Smith means the moon, and I shall be
happy
for him to dedicate it to me,” said Persephone warmly.

The poet, overcome with delight, plunged on somewhat incoherently into an account of a passage from the Ode in which he also wished, so far as anyone could make out, to address Miss Grafton as
Presiding Goddess of that mighty power
,
Whose amiable beaming eyes have shone
,
Upon the wonders of th
e
hydraulic wheels,
whereupon Charley, listening with growing incredulity, begged him not to make more of a fool of himself than he could help.

“Time you were off, anyway!” he added, glancing at the clock.

It was true that
Mr.
Smith had now overstepped the half-hour which was the correct length of time to be spent on a formal call, but as formality was not a feature of the household in Upper Brook Street, and Lord Conington, who had arrived before him, showed no sign of being about to take
his
leave or even of feeling that it was expected of him, this was rather hard on the poet. However, Charley
’
s reminder evidently cut off his conversational powers as effectively as if it had been a valve in one of his steam engines, and he stammeringly made his farewells to Lady Yoxford and Elinor. He then turned to Persephone, and uttered, in one last burst of painful eloquence, “W-when f-first I saw you, M-Miss Grafton, I th-thought of
...
of
that f-fair field of Enna
,
where Proserpin g-gathering f-flowers, herself a f-fairer flower
...
b-but I must go!”

“I should just about think so, too!” said the bewildered Charley, as his friend left the room without deigning to spare him a glance. “Told you his poetry was sad stuff! Did you ever hear such fustian?”

Surprisingly, Persephone rounded on her cousin quite fiercely. “
I
think it was a very pretty compliment!”

“I fancy that was not
Mr.
Smith
’
s own verse, but was written by the poet Milton,” remarked Elinor.

“Yes, and what
’
s more, it was very well thought of, because Proserpina
is
my name,” Persephone added.

Mr.
Hargrave sighed. “No, it ain
’
t! Females! Don
’
t you even know your own name? First there
’
s Zack calling you Diana, now you say you
’
re called P
—
Proser
—
what the deuce was it?”

“Proserpina,” put in Lord Conington, amused. “The Latin version of the Greek name Persephone
—
am I right, Miss Grafton? To the ancients, the goddess of the underworld.”

“Oh, well, the
ancients
’
.” said
Mr.
Hargrave, with the profound scorn of one who, while supposed to be devoting himself to the study of those worthies at the university, would never, as the son of a viscount and thus eligible to be termed a Nobleman while at Cambridge, be called upon to take the examination which conferred a degree, but would gain that distinction regardless of merit. Not for him the spirit of emulation which had led Lord Palmerston in his youth to petition (unsuccessfully) that he should be subject to the Tripos examinations, though Elinor suspected that Lord Conington, a young man of parts, might well have shared Palmerston
’
s sentiments.

“Yes, that
’
s it,” said Persephone, with a warmer smile than she usually bestowed upon Conington. “And it is not really a very
cheerful
name, is it? But I can
’
t help that!”

“I dare say the recipient of a given name is never quite satisfied with it,” said Elinor, steering the conversation into less poetic channels, and deploring her own commonplace name which, she said, she had always been used to wish were romantically spelt
Elena
, in the Italian fashion. Lord Conington contributed some humorous remarks on the trials of bearing a family name which was passed on from generation to generation, he himself being burdened with the name of Hadstock, like his father and grandfather before him. “It has always suggested fish to my mind; I must be thinking of haddock, or stockfish, or both! And I suppose any firstborn son of mine will be saddled with it too, since it
takes determination to break with such a tradition.”

“But surely
you
have determination, Lord Conington?” asked Elinor absently, with a sudden concerned glance at Persephone, whose cheerfulness all seemed to have melted away. She had gone back to the window and was looking out, her back turned to them, with an uncharacteristic droop to her shoulders.