A School for Brides Read online

  “Not much,” said Miss Evans, who would bring twenty thousand pounds and a respected family name to her marriage, and therefore rated her own worth pretty high.

  “I agree with Miss Pffolliott,” said Miss Asquith. “One could do worse, and I expect I shall. I have quite given my heart to Robert.”

  2

  ROBERT THE FOOTMAN stood in the doorway, beaming with pleasure at having a message to deliver that he knew would be so satisfactory to his hearers. “Miss Quince says that Annie and I are to assist you in taking off your backboards, as she is anxious to have everyone take a walk before the rains move in,” he said.

  “Hooray!” cried Miss Asquith. “Robert, Annie, you are angels of mercy. Do get this Procrustean device off me, won’t you?”

  “Really, Miss Asquith!” protested Miss Evans. Miss Evans was quite firm about enforcing the rights of seniority, being the eldest student at the school. “I believe I should go before you.”

  “Actually, Miss Crump takes precedence, doesn’t she? As the daughter of a viscount, I mean?” Miss Asquith inquired.

  Urgent murmurs could be heard from underneath Miss Crump’s massive bonnet, the substance of which appeared to be that she did not wish to be first, and that no one should mind her in the least.

  Miss Evans frowned. “Miss Asquith, you know perfectly well . . .” She halted, being unable to claim that a senior student occupied a higher rank than the daughter of a viscount.

  Annie looked at Robert, waiting for instructions. As Miss Crump seemed distressed by the attention, he, being a natural gentleman, directed his assistant to set about releasing Miss Evans, who chafed her wrists and elbows gratefully.

  “Sorry, Miss,” said Robert to Miss Asquith, who was impatiently dancing about him, causing her near neighbors to remove themselves to a safe distance. “I don’t know what a Procrusty device is, but it’d be easier for Annie to help you, Miss, if you could hold a bit more still.”

  Miss Franklin, a young lady with an alarming degree of scholarship, stifled a short bark of scornful laughter.

  “Procrustes was a perfectly dreadful ogre,” Miss Asquith explained as Annie attempted to remove the device, “who captured travelers and either stretched them to make them taller or chopped their limbs off to make them shorter, so they would fit in his bed.”

  Struck by this bizarre behavior, Robert frowned and paused in untangling the straps of Miss Evans’s discarded backboard. “Is that so, Miss? In his bed, you say?”

  “Oh, do hurry, Annie!” Miss Asquith gyrated wildly in her agitation.

  “Yes, Miss,” said Annie, struggling to catch hold of the apparatus as it and its wearer whirled by.

  “Why do you suppose he would do a thing like that, Miss?” asked Robert, his face wrinkled in puzzlement. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Never mind, Robert,” said Miss Evans repressively. “There is no need for you to speculate about Greek mythology.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Miss Asquith murmured and, satisfied, Robert began putting the room to rights and restoring the backboards to their usual cupboard.

  Not only Miss Asquith had noticed the charms of Robert the footman. Mrs. Fredericks of nearby Crooked Castle, besides being stepsister to Miss Winthrop, was Miss Mainwaring’s aunt by marriage. As she and her husband had been persuaded to invest in the school—which had the happy result of removing Miss Winthrop from their household—she considered that she had a right to an opinion on its domestic arrangements. She had, in addition, consented to send her niece as a day student. True, she felt a twinge of guilt at thus throwing the poor girl to the lions (in the person of Miss Winthrop). However, she considered it quite probable that her niece would learn something from Miss Quince, and also that the experience would at least serve as a distraction from her troubles.

  “Engaging that boy Robert was a mistake, tho’ he is a harmless enough creature,” Mrs. Fredericks said. “Why on earth Miss Hopkins and my stepsister require a footman is quite beyond me. And introducing an ornamental young man like that into a girls’ school, when there are no other suitable objects for their fancy to light upon!”

  Footmen were rather an extravagance; the government had levied a special luxury tax on male servants, as if Robert were a bolt of hand-painted silk or a thoroughbred horse. They were generally chosen for a handsome face and a shapely leg, and Robert possessed both. He had been a page at Yellering Hall, petted and made much of by Lady Throstletwist, and taught to read and write by the butler. As a result, he spoke with a much more refined accent than most of the local residents, and in general presented a genteel appearance. Miss Hopkins and Miss Winthrop felt he lent a fine air of distinction to the establishment, which he did, in the sense that wearing a diamond tiara lends distinction to a donkey. He wore (and took great pride in) a fine suit of livery in yellow silk, a powdered wig, and white silk stockings. He looked very elegant and very out of place handing the young ladies into the roomy old black coach that served them as a conveyance.

  In short, he was more the sort of servant who should be employed at a nobleman’s seat, not in a school in a remote village in Yorkshire. Between their specially designed backboards and their footman, the ladies considered their school the equal of any in London, or, if not quite that, then at least of any in York.

  Luckily, Robert was a naïve young man, ignorant of his own value, having never ventured out of Lesser Hoo since birth. He delighted in his new position, opening and closing doors with a flourish and enthusiastically handing round the fish and fowl at dinner, and he regarded his wages of ten pounds per year as a treasure trove of unimaginable wealth.

  As he was the only indoor manservant and the most presentable male for miles around, Robert’s presence had a beneficial effect upon the behavior and personal grooming of the students. His cheerful, smiling face seemed to demand a smile in return, so the young ladies of the Winthrop Hopkins Academy returned his respectful bows and salutations with great cordiality and arranged their dress and their hair with much more care than they might have done at an entirely female institution.

  “Could he not be a prince in disguise?” Miss Asquith wondered aloud as they donned cloaks and bonnets for their walk. “Hidden here by his royal parents for fear of schemers and poisoners at court? Perhaps he could rule over a tiny little kingdom on the shores of the Mediterranean, where they have palm trees and the winters are warm and sunny, instead of alternately raining or snowing as in Yorkshire.”

  Most of the other girls applauded this happy invention and supposed it quite likely to be true, if only because he was so handsome and agreeable. His one disqualification as the hero of a romantic story was his contentment with his lot.

  “He was a foundling,” observed Miss Briggs who, unlike the others, was a local girl, born and brought up in Lesser Hoo. “The vicar found him on his front step in a basket, and he gave the baby to the cook and butler at Yellering Hall to bring up.”

  “There! You see?” said Miss Asquith.

  Miss Evans, who was sensible and not at all romantic, discouraged this sort of talk. “What I see is that his mother was no better than she ought to have been and his father even worse, for all we know to the contrary. He is lucky to have achieved his position here, given such a disgraceful background. And if you go encouraging anybody here to fall in love with him, Miss Asquith, you will do him no favors. Why, he could be dismissed if any of you begin mooning over him.”

  The girls sighed at this unsatisfactory conclusion, but admitted it to be just, so any admiration of Robert had henceforth to be indulged in private, or at least out of hearing of the hard-hearted Miss Evans.

  They filed out of the house under the watchful eye of Miss Quince and prepared to enjoy themselves as much as they could on an overcast August day. Neat and tidy in a dove-gray dress and pelisse, Miss Quince led the way, followed by four pairs in an orderly line. Their small company present
ed a pleasing aspect; none were beautiful, but several were very good-looking, and all were strong and healthy (save perhaps for small, thin Miss Crump, who, shrouded as she was, might have had any sort of appearance).

  As usual, Miss Quince sought to combine exercise with instruction, and was quizzing her pupils on the nomenclature of local plant life in French. “Dites-moi, quel est le nom de ces arbres?” she inquired, gesturing at some stunted-looking pine trees.

  “Ce sont des pins, Mademoiselle!” responded the entire group in unison.

  “Et ces buissons?” Here she thrust her walking stick into a thick mass of bramble bushes.

  “Buissons de—” the girls began, but were interrupted by an agitated cry.

  “Oh, I say, that hurt!” objected the bramble bushes. “Er, I mean, pardonnez-moi, Mesdames . . . er, pourriez-vous me dire . . . Oh, bother it all! Have I somehow been transported to the Continent? I mean, French! It’s a bit much, on top of everything else!”

  The younger ladies hastily removed themselves from the immediate area of the bramble bushes, while Miss Quince stirred them once again with her stick, more gently this time. A white and scratched face, topped by disheveled black hair, peered out through the leafy gap.

  “Parlez-vous anglais?” it inquired pitiably.

  Miss Quince drew herself up. “Young man, come out of there at once! What do you mean by frightening us like that?”

  “Oh, so you do speak English, Madame! Or, er, Mademoiselle? I say, can you see my horse anywhere?”

  “I do not see a horse, sir,” said Miss Quince.

  The young man uttered some sort of an exclamation that he promptly smothered, as it was undoubtedly profane. “Beg pardon, Madame! Only hope she’s not injured. She’s a fine piece of horseflesh, tho’ a mite high-spirited, and I should hate to lose her.”

  “Will you kindly show yourself, sir?” Miss Quince said. “Please, stand up and get out of that bramble bush.” Her earlier fright was making her irritable.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Madame . . . By the by, please allow me to compliment you on your excellent English. One would not know you for a Frenchwoman.”

  The pupils of the Winthrop Hopkins Academy giggled. The gentleman in the bramble bush acknowledged them by doffing an imaginary hat and inclining his head. “Mademoiselles,” he murmured.

  “I am not a Frenchwoman,” said Miss Quince with decision. “Nor are my pupils. But we are ladies, and as such you have no business sprawling in front of us on the ground in this way. Pray get to your feet.”

  “My leg . . . Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Madame, er . . . Madam,” the gentleman said, “I think my leg is pretty well broken in half.” And he fainted.

  “Oh!”

  Miss Briggs, being a local girl, was sent off to fetch a surgeon, while Miss Asquith volunteered to go get Robert and Jim the groom to transport the wounded gentleman to the house. Soon enough, the men appeared with blankets, which they fashioned into a stretcher. Unfortunately, the young man had become entangled with the prickle bush, and he was roused from his merciful stupor as he was torn from its embrace. Miss Quince gathered her charges together and began to herd them away. They obeyed, but not soon enough to avoid hearing a cry of pain as the men jarred his broken leg whilst lifting him onto the blankets. The expected rain began to fall, which further reconciled them to a rapid return to the house.

  Not until the young ladies sat down to their simple repast at eight o’clock in the evening did they learn anything more. The surgeon had come and, after a lengthy interval closeted first with the patient and then with the principals of the school, had left. Miss Quince had refused to discuss the situation, but instead produced a great deal of plain mending for them to work on, and proceeded to read A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life to a restless and agitated audience.

  “Robert!” Miss Asquith whispered as they at last filed into the dining hall, “How is the young gentleman?”

  Robert looked at the older ladies, but they were occupied with finding their own seats, so he whispered back, “As well as can be expected, Miss Asquith. ’Twas a compound fracture, tho’ not a grave one, and he’s suffering from fever.”

  “Oh! And what is his name?”

  Unfortunately, at this very moment Miss Winthrop turned her basilisk stare upon them. Ducking his head, Robert sidled away and began to fiddle with the dishes on the sideboard.

  At last, when everyone was seated, Miss Winthrop said coldly, “Kindly recall that your family has sent you to our school to learn to be a lady, not a kitchen maid, Miss Asquith. And now, you will wish to know the name and condition of our accidental guest. He is a Mr. Arbuthnot from Maidstone, in Kent. We have no doubt he is of a respectable family—certainly his air and appearance are those of a gentleman—but he was too ill to question closely. Mr. Busby insists that we must not move him for the present, and of course we would not dream of it.” Mr. Busby was the surgeon.

  From Kent! The young ladies looked at one another. Kent was a world away, farther even than London. What could he be doing, passing through Lesser Hoo in the wilds of Yorkshire?

  Miss Hopkins was not as immune to the romance of the situation as her friend. “I believe he was traveling to Scotland for the grouse hunting season,” she announced, unable to retain a dignified silence. “He said something about Lord Pauncefoot. Of Hurley Hall, you know.” She looked around the table with a significant smile and was rewarded by the awed murmur her revelation produced. Even these young girls living so removed from the fashionable world knew of Lord Pauncefoot.

  3

  LORD PAUNCEFOOT, THAT stupendously wealthy and hospitable Scottish peer, was well-known for his shooting parties celebrating the Glorious Twelfth of August, the first day of grouse season. As the current date was August second, it seemed reasonable to believe that Mr. Arbuthnot had received one of the much-coveted invitations to Hurley Hall, Lord Pauncefoot’s hunting lodge on the northern moors. Since Lesser Hoo was not precisely on the road from Kent to Scotland—it was not precisely on the road to anywhere—it might be deduced that the young man’s journey had involved a side excursion along the way. And as for the fact that he traveled on horseback instead of in greater comfort in a coach and four on such a long ride, why, a man of spirit, with sufficient leisure to stop frequently to rest his horse, might easily do it, and send his guns and sporting kit ahead of him by mail coach.

  The Pauncefoot connection meant that Mr. Arbuthnot was not merely a gentleman, but one of the elect. The Prince Regent and his brother, the Duke of York, regularly visited Hurley Hall, along with a veritable galaxy of the brightest lights of high society.

  The ladies, both young and old, regarded one another with a sense of new worlds opening before them. A guest of Lord Pauncefoot, here in Lesser Hoo!

  “Mr. Arbuthnot . . . Mister Arbuthnot, from Maidstone, in Kent,” mused Miss Hopkins. “What a pity he comes from so far away—it will be difficult to ascertain details of his family without seeming to be . . . inquisitive. Now, if it had been Lord So-and-So, or even Sir So-and-So, we should know where we were, but Mister—it’s difficult to judge.”

  “The great thing,” observed Miss Asquith, “is to prevent him from dying before we can make inquiries.”

  While the Misses Hopkins and Winthrop disliked being given advice by Miss Asquith, they had to admit that this was sound. They began to bestir themselves, wondering what potions and tisanes they had in their storeroom that might be efficacious in such an extremity.

  “For myself, I always insist upon being bled when I am ill from any cause. I find it soothing—cleansing, you know. Perhaps we ought to call the physician and ask him to bring his lancets and his jar of leeches?” said Miss Hopkins.

  “I have heard that in cases of fever it is an excellent practice to douse the patient with very cold water,” offered Miss Winthrop. “Then one must lay great pieces of ice on h
is body and all round his head.”

  “All good ideas, no doubt,” said Miss Quince, “but Mr. Busby, who I am sure is a fine surgeon, said nothing about such measures. And you know, in the event that the young man should die from his fever, perhaps his family will be inclined to blame us for being a little too zealous. My suggestions are rather more moderate. I would recommend some calves’ foot jelly and beef tea, with perhaps a little wine, rather than resorting to such heroic efforts.”

  The other two ladies were offended at having their common-sense methods dismissed in this way. Indeed, each had been about to propose some rather more daring and unconventional treatments, imagining themselves at some future date being hailed by his family as an angel of mercy who had snatched their son and heir away from the jaws of death.

  “I believe that Mr. Busby has given him laudanum,” pointed out Miss Quince. “It is best to let him sleep. Only think if we were to drown the young man while he was unconscious.”

  The Misses Winthrop and Hopkins grumbled a bit, but soon subsided.

  Miss Quince said that she would sit beside the young man’s bedside overnight, to cool his brow with wet cloths and administer calves’ foot jelly and beef tea in the event he was able to take it. The offer was immediately accepted, as neither of the other two were prepared to go so far as to lose a night’s sleep over the matter.

  “I believe that Mr. Arbuthnot is substantially improved,” said Miss Quince when she took her seat at the breakfast table the following morning. “His fever has broken, and he has taken some nourishment. He is asleep again”—raising her voice as her colleagues rose with the obvious intent of visiting the invalid— “so we must allow him to rest, undisturbed, until the doctor arrives. I have taken the liberty of sending the kitchen boy to Dr. Haxhamptonshire’s”—(Miss Quince correctly pronounced this as Dr. Hamster’s)—“and requested he look in on Mr. Arbuthnot this morning. I have also determined, through conversation with the house staff, that a lame horse has been found wandering about in the village streets. No doubt it belongs to Mr. Arbuthnot. I am told,” she said, “that it is an exceptionally fine mare, a thoroughbred.”