The Indecorous Rescue of Clarinda Merwin Or, Reader, I Laid My Eggs In Him

Brenda W. Clough

A Regency maiden, a caddish suitor, and an innovative rescue!

Lord Octavius Binyon let his quizzing glass fall again to hang from its black silk riband, and seized her hand. “Your respected father has given me permission to pay my addresses, Miss Merwin,” he purred.

In a panic, Clarinda Merwin tugged at her captive hand. It might as well have been clamped in an iron shackle. Between the covers of circulating-library novels this kind of situation conveyed an appeal that quite failed to translate to real life. Hastily she bethought herself of what Pamela, in Mr. Richardson’s famous book, would have said. “My lord, you presume!”

Such lamentably conventional protests rolled right off my lord, who simply possessed himself of her other hand. As he leaned close Clarinda shrank away from the combined odors of brandy, horse sweat, cigar smoke, and amber which clung to Lord Binyon’s person. “A June wedding, I think,” he mused. “The nights are so warm in June.”

“That’s a very coarse thing to consider,” Clarinda flared. “And you merely assume I will accept you!”

“Of course you will accept me, my dear.” Between his bristly black side whiskers Lord Binyon smiled. “Your parents ardently wish it.”

“Mamma is a climber, and Papa a snob!” Clarinda wanted to retort, but before she could do so Lord Binyon applied his mouth to her own. His chin rasped against hers, and his arms cramped her ribs. When he released her she reeled back against the portieres.

“The engagement will be announced at the ball tonight,” Lord Binyon said. “I must go down to consult with your father and his butler about the wines. But I will return soon, to lead you out in the dancing.”

He smiled into her horrified eyes and then bowed himself out. Clarinda sank trembling into a chair and fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief. She wiped her mouth again and again to get rid of the taste of him, in vain. At last she dared to spit, into the fire of course. Mamma would have swooned, but she felt a little better.

Clarinda had no intention of marrying Lord Binyon, any more than she would jump over the moon. But to defy her parents’ fond wishes and anxious plans seemed only slightly less difficult. Fortunately Clarinda was a widely-read girl. She knew exactly what a female in her situation ought to do. With some difficulty, for the servants usually did the work, she opened the library window. Stripping off her long kid evening gloves, she stuffed them and the reticule behind a sofa. After dusting the windowsill with a cushion she perched on the sill and then, hitching up her straw-colored silk gown, swung her legs out.

To climb out a second-story window in a ball gown is not beyond the realm of human endeavor when one is fortified by a diet of romantic fiction. But to do so on the night of a ball is perhaps imprudent. Clarinda was annoyed to see that the street hummed with traffic, both horse and foot. Mrs. Merwin had invited every tonnish person of her acquaintance to witness her daughter’s triumph, not to notice her escape.

Clarinda counted of course on being noticed by one particular person. In the novels which formed her sole literary diet Clarinda knew that the heroine’s rescuer was invariably tall and handsome, well-born and well-heeled. “If only he’s fair,” she said to herself, as she shinnied down the ivy-cloaked wall. “After that odious Binyon creature I don’t think I could countenance a dark-haired man.”

So she felt no surprise when she glanced down and saw the shrubbery being pushed aside. “My hero!” she sighed, leaping lightly to the ground and turning to face her rescuer.

He was indeed fair. Alas, all the other attributes of a fictional hero — money, appearance, leg, station, even humanity — were totally lacking. A short round creature looked up at her from a large yellow eye set in the middle of its round head. Three lesser eyes were set at apparently random intervals in what passed for the face. Thin orange fur or hair covered its skin, and it wore natty trousers of silvery cloth.

Without further comment Clarinda fainted.

oOo

She came to herself rocking and swaying to a familiar motion. “A chaise,” she murmured dazedly. “I’ve been kidnapped!“ Surreptitiously she smoothed her ribbons. No doubt the startling orange monster was pet or servant to her captor, who would be a dashing rake. Nothing would be beyond such a one, certainly not carrying away a helpless maiden. She looked forward to reforming him by her sweet innocence and gentle manner.

She peeped cautiously from beneath her long brown eyelashes. Beyond the window tall trees and empty heath slid past, silvery in the moonlight. Evidently the chaise had left London. Then she turned her gaze to the other seat.

“Oh!” The orange thing was here! Perching or squatting or whatever, right across from her! Having shed her pose of unconsciousness Clarinda sat up, seething. “What are you?” she cried. “What are you about?”

A pursed little mouth like that of a goldfish protruded from the rusty fur. With some halts and stammering the creature said, “Se habla espanol? Efharisto! Nee ho ma?”

Clarinda ground her pretty teeth. A foreign monster, not even a decent British one! Beside her in the chaise’s side pocket she felt something hard. Quickly she reached in and took it out. It ought to be a gun, she told herself — an ivory-mounted hair-trigger dueling pistol.

Instead she held a white tube, preternaturally smooth and crimped across one end. If this was a weapon she didn’t know how to use it. Enraged, Clarinda flung it at the creature, who caught it neatly in a hairy three-fingered paw. It held the open end of the tube to its spoutlike mouth and sipped vigorously.

“Ooh!” it lisped. “Much better!”

“You speak English!” Clarinda exclaimed. “Then you owe me an explanation, sir or madam! I am Miss Clarinda Merwin, and I am not accustomed to riding in a closed carriage unchaperoned!”

“I chaperon you,” the creature said. “Madam is right, Madam Rii you shall call me. And you too are female?”

“Yes — you don’t mean you ...” Clarinda sank back against the cushions. Females, even orange ones, ought to wear more than a skimpy pair of silver breeches! She considered fainting again, in justice to her sense of decency. But then it occurred to her that the vapours would tremendously retard the necessary exchange of information. Though her Mamma had inculcated habits of perhaps an exaggerated delicacy, Clarinda still possessed some remnant of common sense. So she demanded, “And what is your business with me?”

“Student,” Mme. Rii said. “From, ooh, a planet of the star Vega. I research a report on Exosociology.”

These last phrases meant nothing to Clarinda. “A bluestocking.”

“My, ooh, colleagues in the biology division beg me to bring back a specimen,” Mme. Rii whistled. “Finding you lying in the bushes, I hoped you were discarded and deceased.”

“I am not either discarded,” Clarinda retorted, outraged. “I have only eighteen years, that’s not on the shelf yet! Besides, I’m the one rejecting Lord Binyon.”

“Please to explain.”

Clarinda’s favorite confidante, Miss Lizzie Haynes, had last week gone with her mamma to take the waters at Bath. So Clarinda found it something of a relief to pour out her story — how, having made his fortune in stocking mills, Papa meant to lever the family into the highest social circles; how rumor of an immense marriage settlement attracted the rakish and indigent but well-born Lord Binyon’s interest; how Mamma and Papa were set on her becoming Lady Binyon and sister-in-law to the Duke of Haverness. By the time she had gone into details about Lord Binyon’s evil smile and clammy encroaching hands, Clarinda hardly remarked the oddity of her companion.

“So, what should I do?” she concluded. “What would you do, dear Mme. Rii, were you I?”

Mme. Rii closed two of her lesser eyes thoughtfully, and licked the pause button on her mini-recorder. “In my country males supply no such difficulty,” she fluted. “Why do you not kill him?”

“Is that really what you would do?” Clarinda asked, much impressed.

“Surely. Break his neck, and then mate with him. And then lay your eggs. That’s what, ooh, respectable females in my country do.”

“I don’t think that would quite serve the purpose,” Clarinda said, freezing briefly again. Then she giggled. “I do wish some of the ladies in the books would try it, though!”

“Books? Please, explain!” Mme Rii said with eager interest, and released the pause button.

“Well, I just finished The Maiden’s Treasure,” Clarinda recalled. “It was so thrilling! About a beautiful but poor girl who makes a marriage of convenience with an old earl. At least, he wasn’t old, but almost thirty. And she learns how to play whist and gambles away lots of money. And then he fights a duel with her chief creditor ...”

Time passed, whiled away very pleasantly by summaries of The Rake’s Reform, Mistress Anna’s Revenge, and The Castle at Silver Rock. At last Mme. Rii sighed. “My dearest wish, ooh, is to read some of these knowledgeable and erudite texts.”

“Why, I’d be happy to let you have mine,” Clarinda said. “One never rereads romances, you know.”

“You do not study them, memorize?” Mme. Rii said, astonished. “Ooh! But I must hasten to accept your kind offer!”

“By all means,” Clarinda said. “You have been so understanding. And Mamma is forever begging me to clear some of them out! She disparages my tastes in reading as rather low, but I don’t agree at all. I live for my romances!”

The carriage turned around, and since their journey had been through Hyde Park and not the outlying London suburbs the horses soon drew up at Merwin House again. The ball had begun some hours ago, and the street thronged with carriages. Mme. Rii’s chaise fitted in very well among them. To avoid comment Clarinda led her friend through the shrubbery to the library window.

“Oh dear,” she said, looking up at the second-story casement. “I don’t think I can climb back up. As it is, my gown is soiled. Yellow is flattering to my coloring, but it shows the dirt so.”

“Worry not,” Mme. Rii lisped. She fiddled with her belt, which shone like a parure with bits of glass and crystal. Clarinda felt a peculiarly tense buzzy sensation, as may oppress the air before a thunderstorm. Her skin crawled. She looked down and saw her feet parting company with the ground. Before she could marshal the resources to scream or faint Mme. Rii floated up beside her. They soared like birds right through the open window.

“Dear me!” Clarinda said, breathless. Glancing into the mirror over the fireplace she smoothed her tumbled brown curls. “The next time we do that I must wear a hat!”

“The books?” Mme. Rii whistled longingly.

Clarinda dragged them off the library shelves. “All those leather ones are dull, Aristotle and Petrarch and such. Papa bought them by the yard, just like ribbon, can you imagine? But all these lower ones, where one can’t easily read the titles, are mine.” She stacked the volumes up on the sideboard beside the door, while Mme. Rii eagerly turned the pages to gaze with uncomprehending awe at an engraved portrait of Mr. Horace Walpole.

“You are so kind, ooh!” she said. “I will do you a favor too, Miss Merwin, one day.”

No sooner had she fluted this generous wish than the little orange alien was flung back by the door as it was pushed open. “There you are!” Lord Binyon hissed. “Minx! Where have you been hiding? Come with me. Mr. Merwin will make the announcement in ten minutes.”

“Oh, no!” Clarinda wailed, retreating.

Binyon seized her wrist and twisted it slightly. “Don’t trouble to put on these missish airs,” he said. “Your ‘no’ will change to ‘yes’ soon enough.”

“No!” Clarinda shouted. “Mme. Rii, help!”

The door slammed shut as Mme. Rii bounced out from behind it. She leaped to Lord Binyon’s head and hugged it. There was a muffled cracking noise as the alien pivoted around his shoulders, turning Lord Binyon’s head much further around than nature had designed it to turn. With a sigh Lord Binyon collapsed to the carpet.

“Oh, my goodness,” Clarinda whispered. “Is he — ?”

“Dead, of course,” Mme. Rii said. “But, how odd! Decease does not increase his readiness for mating at all!”

“Englishmen don’t do things like that,” Clarinda explained rather hopelessly. “What shall we do with his body? Push it out the window? Or – no, I know! Dear Mme. Rii, did you not speak of a search for a specimen?”

Mme Rii twined her six fingers together in ecstasy. “Do you say you will give me your mate also? Ooh, Miss Merwin, it is too much! I shall mention you in my thesis. You shall be immortalized in the scholarly tomes of Arretizil University!”

“No, no, the pleasure is mine,” Clarinda said.

She helped Mme. Rii to stack the books on and around the late Lord Binyon. After a few adjustments to her belt Mme. Rii found no difficulty in levitating the awkward load out the window.

“I make my adieux, dear Miss Merwin,” the stout little alien said. “My perpetual thanks!”

“Not at all,” Clarinda said. Greatly daring, she bent and planted a kiss on the fuzzy orange head. All four yellow eyes blinked in surprise. Then Mme. Rii soared out the window and down to her carriage. Clarinda dragged out her hidden reticule and took the handkerchief out again. Slightly ashamed, but on the whole obedient to her fastidious upbringing, she wiped her lips.

Copyright © 1989 Brenda W. Clough

First published in Aboriginal Magazine, March/April 1989