A Mystery Of Errors

“Is he not utterly charming?” said her mother, with a smile Elizabeth could have sworn had a malicious touch. “So well spoken, and so handsome, too! Is he not everything you could have hoped for?”

Utterly confused, Elizabeth looked from her mother to Gresham and back again. “Mother, you speak as if Mr. Gresham and I had never met.”

“Oh, do I?” her mother replied, innocently. “You mean to say you have?”

“I am quite certain I would have remembered, madame,” Gresham said, with a smile.

Elizabeth frowned. This was not making any sense at all. She could not understand why her mother was acting as if the events of the previous day had never happened. Or why Gresham was acting that way, for that matter. She had no idea what he was up to, but she was not going to have any of it.

“Then you must have an exceedingly short memory, Mr. Gresham,” she replied, stiffly.

Now Gresham frowned, infuriatingly. “I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I am fairly certain that we have never met. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?”

She stared at him with disbelief. “We were at the Theatre only yesterday,” she said. “Could you have forgotten that already?”

Gresham stared at her with incomprehension. He glanced at her mother, as if seeking confirmation of Elizabeth ’s assertion.

“ Elizabeth is having her little jest,” Edwina Darcie said, with a smile.

“Ah,” said Gresham, as if he understood, though clearly, he did not understand at all. He still looked faintly puzzled.

“Jest?” said Elizabeth. “Mother, whatever do you mean? There is no jest. You were right here when Mr. Gresham’s invitation arrived yesterday by messenger!”

Now Gresham looked thoroughly confused. “Invitation? Messenger?” He shook his head, looking bewildered. “Am I missing something? I sent no messenger, nor invitation.”

Elizabeth ’s mouth opened, but no sounds would come out. She was simply too stunned to speak.

“Now, you see, Elizabeth?” her mother said, with a smug tone. “This is what happens when you dissemble. You have been caught out. As the saying goes, oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

“I fear that I do not understand any of this at all,” said Gresham, looking lost.

“ Elizabeth concocted a bit of a tale for us yesterday,” her mother said. “A drama, as it were. And a most complex little enterprise it was, too, even to the hiring of a messenger and coach! My goodness! Such an elaborate deception! Her father will be quite taken aback when he finds out. It seems he was completely taken in. As, indeed, was I. You see, she was having a bit of fun with her parents, Mr. Gresham. Her very gullible parents.”

Elizabeth caught her breath. “Mother! You think that I…?” She could not even go on.

“You see, Mr. Gresham,” her mother continued, “ Elizabeth is quite a clever girl, with a most sprightly, irrepressible, and independent spirit.” Her mother, to Elizabeth ’s chagrin, actually simpered. “She gets it from her mother, I suppose. Oh, the apple truly does not fall far from the tree, as they say. She had some foolish notion that she did not wish to subject herself to the most honorable and eminently sensible tradition of an arranged marriage, you see. In this regard, I must accept part of the blame, I fear, in that I… out of all the best intentions, you understand… had prevailed upon her father to engage for Elizabeth a tutor to instruct her in the finer points of appreciation of the arts. The young man we had engaged seemed most erudite and capable, but apparently he somewhat exceeded his commission and filled our daughter’s head with all sorts of romantic nonsense from the sensualist poets… why, I blush even to say it!”

“I quite understand, madame,” Gresham replied, nodding. “I know the sort of thing of which you speak. These poets are quite the fashion now amongst the glittering gentlemen at court. They all go about enraptured over their productions. ‘Tis rubbish, really. Utter rubbish.”

“I see that you are a discerning gentleman, Mr. Gresham,” Edwina Darcie said. “So then, perhaps you will understand how, being young and impressionable, Elizabeth came away from her instruction with the notion that a proper marriage was not one in which the practical considerations of estate and family and mutual suitability prevailed, but one in which the woman was swept away by the passions of romantic love! And so, when she discovered that our families had agreed upon a match of eminent sensibility and benefit for all concerned, she devised, it seems, a little stratagem to make her father and myself believe that you, her prospective husband, did not desire the marriage to take place, because you had found her totally unsuitable! Can you imagine such a thing?”

“Mother!” Elizabeth said, with shock. “Are you accusing me of having made the whole thing up?”