His One Woman. Paula Marshall
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warned Alan,’ remarked Jack when the formalities were over, ‘that by the time we arrived we should find all the best bargains will have gone—and so they have. But that stern goddess Duty called us. Even if I might have frivolously declined to obey her on the grounds that I had a previous engagement, Alan, who is made of sterner stuff, would never have allowed such a consideration to move him.’
Duty again—and from Jack this time! Sophie pouted at him, and it was left to Marietta to say to him, ‘I see that you think of duty as a woman, Jack. Do you have any authority for assuming any such thing?’
Jack put on a puzzled face, and it was left to Aunt Percival to inform them, ‘Mr Jack, even if he does not know it, has the best authority for what he said—was it not Wordsworth who called duty, “stern daughter of the voice of God”?’
‘Bravo!’ said the three men together, while Sophie stared at Aunt Percival. One might have guessed that she would remember such a useless piece of knowledge—and by boring old Wordsworth, too. She had unhappy memories of being asked to learn his Lucy poems by heart.
She was about to say something when Alan leaned forward, looked into her eyes, and half-whispered to her, ‘I’m sure that Miss Sophie likes poetry which has a softer touch. For example…’ And he began to quote Byron to her in a voice which was so soulfully melodious that even Jack stared at him.
She walks in beauty like the night;
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that’s best of dark and light
Meets in her aspect and her eyes…
The admiring look which he sent her on ending gave Sophie the notion—totally unfounded—that, smitten by her charms, he had been left with no alternative but to celebrate them.
‘Oh, Mr Dilhorne,’ she simpered at him. ‘You flatter me.’
‘Oh, no,’ he returned. ‘Most apt, wouldn’t you agree, Charles?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said that gentleman, trying to keep his face straight.
Jack said nothing, but smiled a lot. Aunt Percival looked bemused. She detected a false note somewhere but, since no one said anything, she thought that she must be mistaken. Unlike Charles Stanton, she was not aware of how ruthless the handsome Mr Dilhorne could be.
‘When we have all finished showing off our learning,’ Jack said, ‘I should like to enjoy some bodily, rather than mental, sustenance—it must be hours since I last ate or drank. Miss Percival spoke a moment ago of a tea-room. I wonder if you would like to accompany me there, Marietta?’
‘Oh, no,’ wailed Sophie. ‘Why can’t I take you? Marietta has only just returned from it.’
‘Splendid,’ said Jack. ‘Then she’ll be sure to know how to find it, won’t she?’
He had decided earlier on that day that he wanted to see more of Marietta Hope without having to share her with either Alan and Charles or with Sophie and Aunt Percival. This seemed an ideal occasion to discover whether she was quite as remarkable as he was beginning to suspect she was.
So far he had no sexual interest in her, or so he told himself. In the past his taste in women had always run in the direction of either pretty young blondes who looked adoringly at him and talked of nothing, or their more experienced sisters with whom he could have a jolly good time with no fear of any unwanted consequences.
His father, the Patriarch, as all his descendants called him, had despaired of Jack ever finding anyone sensible with whom he could settle down for life. ‘Feather-headed and feather-brained, the lot of them,’ he had once grumbled to Jack’s mother, Hester, about the women Jack fancied. ‘Will he never take up with anyone I might like to have for a daughter-in-law? Someone like Eleanor or Kirsteen?’
‘You’re not in a position to complain about him, Tom Dilhorne,’ Hester had said. ‘It took you long enough to sow your wild oats and settle down.’
Now what could a man say to that? Other than, resignedly, ‘I might have hoped he’d be more sensible than his old father—although perhaps I ought to remember that if I’d settled down earlier we should never have married!’
On hearing Marietta’s immediate offer to stand down in Sophie’s favour, Alan, who was well aware of his brother’s wish to be alone with the plain Miss Hope rather than the pretty one, answered for him.
‘Now, Miss Sophie,’ he said. ‘Later on you may have the honour of taking tea with me—but only after you have sold me that pretty brooch whose price seems to have been above most buyers’ touch. I should like to take it home to give to my wife as a memory of a happy afternoon. I should be sure not to tell her of the charming young thing whose stall I bought it from.’
Since this came out in Alan’s most seductive voice, Sophie tossed her head, saying, ‘Very well,’ although she jealously watched Marietta take Jack away, leaving her with a middle-aged married man and Charles Stanton, whose manner to her was cool in the extreme—and Aunt Percival, who didn’t count.
‘I should really have let Sophie take over,’ Marietta told Jack in a worried voice. ‘I’ve just had a cup of tea with Charles.’
‘Ah, but did you have anything to eat?’ asked Jack, who could be as cunning as his brother. ‘I really can’t be expected to partake of a solitary meal. Besides, after the waitress has taken our order, you can enlighten me on the current situation in the States vis-à-vis the proper conduct for a young unmarried gentleman who wishes to get to know an unmarried lady better.’
So all this gallant attention to her, Marietta thought glumly, was simply to discover how best to approach Sophie! How could she have expected that Jack might be any different from all the other young men who had fluttered around the beautiful Hope cousins while ignoring the plain one—or using her to get to know the prettier ones better?
‘It’s very much as I expect it is in England. You may not be alone with an eligible young woman—other than in the kind of situation we find ourselves in at the moment—in an acceptable semi-public place. You may go anywhere with her so long as a chaperon accompanies you—although I believe that we allow a freer life for our young gentlewomen than is allowed to yours.’
‘As I thought,’ said Jack. ‘In a ballroom at home I am allowed to escort the favoured fair one to a table where refreshments are laid out—which I suppose equates to this. So, I suppose that if I asked you and Sophie to go riding with me—I ought, perhaps, to say us, for Alan and Charles would be sure to wish to accompany me—I might safely invite you?’
So that I can act as chaperon for Sophie, I suppose, and that was another dismal thought.
‘Yes, or, on occasions where riding is not required, then Aunt Percival can act as chaperon.’
‘And having got that out of the way,’ said Jack, ‘we can now talk of graver things. We in England think that Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, has been a great cause of friction between North and South. It has even been suggested that if there is a war it will have been a major cause of it. What, I wonder, is your opinion?’
One good thing, perhaps, thought Marietta, while giving him a reasoned answer, was that Jack would not have been likely to ask Sophie such a serious question. On the other hand, did she, Marietta, secretly wish him to talk to her in the same flighty way in which all the men who met her talked to Sophie? After all, wasn’t he behaving with her in exactly the same way in which young men conducted themselves with the duennas of pretty young things, hoping to get them to favour their suit over everyone else’s. Another dismal thought.
The only surprising thing was that Jack appeared to be genuinely interested in what she was saying to him. They went on to discuss Mr John Brown’s failed insurrection at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 and all the other incidents which had brought the United States to the verge of war. She couldn’t believe he would have wished to discuss any of that with Sophie, either.