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Trix was not to appear at the ball either. The Viscount had told her that with all the will in the world to do so he was unable at present to find the funds which would enable his mama to launch her into society; and Lady Allerton’s sense of propriety was too nice to allow of her consenting to let her daughter attend a ball of such importance before she was out.
Trix bore her disappointment surprisingly well, neither arguing with Alan nor reproaching him. Touched by her restraint, he promised her a magnificent début the following spring, if he had to sell every available acre to achieve it. She thanked him, and said that she had made up her mind to help him in his difficulties.
Such unprecedented docility ought to have alarmed Henrietta, but Henrietta was too much occupied with her own affairs to notice it. It was not until the very evening of the ball, when Trix helped her, in the most selfless way, to array herself in all the elegance of primrose satin and pale green gauze, that it occurred to her that this saintly conduct was as suspicious as it was unusual. But Trix, looking the picture of hurt innocence, assured her that she had no intention of perpetrating some shocking practical joke, and she was obliged to be satisfied. Trix embraced her with great fondness, and she went away to join Lady Allerton feeling that she had misjudged her wayward cousin.
In this belief she continued until midnight, when she suffered a rude disillusionment.
4
MR ALLERTON, SEIZING a respite from his conscientious labours on the floor, stood in the doorway of the ballroom, and delicately wiped his brow. The May night was very warm, and although the long windows stood open scarcely a breath of wind stirred the curtains which masked them, and the heat from the hundreds of wax candles burning in the wall-sconces and in the huge crystal chandelier which hung from the ceiling was making not only the flowers wilt, but every gentleman’s starched shirt-points as well. But this was a small matter. Mr Allerton, a captious critic, was well-satisfied with the success of the ball. Every domestic detail had been perfectly arranged; his mother did him the greatest credit in a robe of sapphire satin lavishly trimmed with broad lace; his cousin was in quite her best looks; and even his brother, although dressed by a military tailor, did not disgrace him. The Grandduchess was in high good humour; besides the flower of the ton, two of the Royal Dukes were lending lustre to the evening; and, to set the final cachet upon a brilliant function, the great Mr Brummell himself was present.
These agreeable reflections were interrupted. A hand grasped Mr Allerton’s wrist, and his cousin’s voice said urgently in his ear: ‘Timothy, come quickly to my aunt’s dressing-room! I must speak to you alone!’
A horrible premonition that the champagne had run out and the ice melted away seized Mr Allerton. But the news which Henrietta had to impart to him had nothing to do with domestic arrangements. She was clutching in one hand a sheet of writing-paper, with part of the wafer that had sealed it still sticking to its edge, and this she dumbly proffered. Mr Allerton took it, and mechanically lifted his quizzing-glass to his eye. ‘What the deuce –?’ he demanded. ‘Lord, I can’t read this scrawl! What is it?’
‘Trix!’ she uttered, in a strangled voice.
‘Well, that settles it,’ he said, giving the letter back to her. ‘Never been able to make head or tail of her writing! You’d better tell me what it is.’
‘Timothy, it is the most terrible thing! She has eloped with Jack Boynton!’
‘What?’ gasped Timothy. ‘No, hang it, Hetty! Must be bamming you!’
‘No, no, it is the truth! She is not in the house, and she left this note for me. Dawson has this instant given it to me!’
‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Timothy. ‘Jack Boynton? Y’know, Hetty, I wouldn’t have thought it of him!’
Too well accustomed to Mr Allerton’s mental processes to be exasperated, Henrietta replied: ‘No, indeed! She must have persuaded him to do it: he is so very young! I never dreamed – Good God, I thought that affair had ended months ago! How could she have been so sly? But I might have guessed how it would be! If I had not been so selfishly taken up with my own troub – I mean, pleasures! – it could never have happened! Timothy, I must act immediately, and you must help me!’
He blinked at her. ‘Dash it, can’t do anything in the middle of m’mother’s party!’
‘We can, and we must! They have fled to Gretna Green, and they must be overtaken!’
‘Gretna Green?’ echoed Mr Allerton, revolted. ‘No, really, Hetty! Can’t have!’
‘She makes no secret of it. Besides, where else could they be married, two children under age? She supposed, of course, that I should not receive her letter until too late, but Dawson, good, faithful soul, thought it right to give it to me as soon as she might, and it is not too late! You and I may slip away, and it can’t signify to anyone if our absence is noticed. I have thought it all out, and I have the greatest hope of overtaking them before morning! I am persuaded that boy cannot have scraped together enough money to pay for the hire of more than a pair of horses. You and I may hire four, and change them at every stage. The moon is at the full; we shall come up with them before they have gone thirty miles beyond London! Then we may bring Trix home, and no one need know what happened, not even my poor aunt, for I can trust Dawson to keep the secret, and ten to one my aunt won’t leave her room until noon tomorrow!’
‘Seems to me we’d do better to tell Alan,’ objected Timothy.
‘Upon no
consideration! The Grandduchess is still here, and Sussex too! He at least cannot leave the house! Besides, Trix trusts me not to betray her to him, and however dreadfully she may have behaved I could not do so! He would be so angry! Oh, dear, it is all his fault for having postponed her coming-out! I warned him how it would be! Timothy, you must know where we can hire a post-chaise and four good horses!’
He admitted it, but entered a caveat. ‘Thing is, dare say you’re right about Boynton, but I ain’t got the ready to pay for a chaise and four either!’
‘No, but I have! I drew quite a large sum only yesterday, and I will give it to you,’ said Henrietta. ‘I will fetch my cloak, and instruct Dawson in what she must say if she should be questioned, and then we may be off. Do not tell Helmsley to call up a hackney! We will creep out by the door into the yard, and find one for ourselves directly!’
‘But, Hetty!’ protested Mr Allerton. ‘Can’t go driving about the countryside in evening-dress! Must change!’
But long acquaintance with her cousin had made Henrietta too familiar with the exigencies of his toilet to allow him this indulgence. Assuring him that his swallow-tailed coat and satin knee-breeches would be hidden by a driving-cloak, she so admonished and hustled him that within a very few minutes he found himself being smuggled out of the house by way of the back stairs and a door leading from the nether regions into the stable-yard.
5
‘NO,’ SAID MR Allerton, some five hours later. ‘I won’t tell ’em to drive on to the Norman Cross inn! And it ain’t a bit of use arguing with me, Hetty, because I’m not going to go another mile on a dashed wild-goose chase, and so I tell you! If you want to go on jolting over a devilish bad road, asking questions at every pike of a set of gapeseeds who wouldn’t be able to tell you whether Cinderella had driven by in a dashed great pumpkin, let alone Trix in a chaise, you do it! We’ve come a cool seventy miles, and never had so much as a whiff of Trix, and I want my breakfast! What’s more, when I’ve had it I’m going back to town! She’s hoaxing you; told you so at the outset!’
Miss Clitheroe, who had been ushered by an astonished waiter into one of the private parlours of the Talbot Inn, in Stilton, untied the strings of her cloak and pushed back its hood from her dishevelled curls. Pressing her hands to her tired eyes, she said wretchedly: ‘She would not do such a thing! I know she plays shocking pranks, but she would never do this, only for mischief!’
‘If I know Trix,’ said Timothy, ‘very likely told you she was off to Gretna Green to set you on a false scent!’
