Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow

by Catherine Bowness

  The groom having hurried off to do his bidding, Waldron told the two women that he would accompany the party to render what assistance he could to the unfortunate family.

  “My lord, is that sensible? You have surely done all you can,” Miss Godmanton cried, rather outraged.

  “I have not done a great deal,” his lordship admitted with a fleeting smile. “I am going to change into something more suitable for the purpose and will go with the rescuers to do what I can. In the meantime, I forgot to ask the groom to send for a physician. Would you be so good as to do that for me? Whatever state they prove to be in, I think we may need him.”

  He said to Helen, who was standing by the window staring out into the advancing night. “Try not to worry too much. These people live in the mountains; they will know what to do.”

  “There may not be anything anyone can do but bring up the bodies,” she muttered, raising her pale eyes to his face. “Who was the prone person, do you suppose?”

  “There is no way of telling until I get there. In the meantime, it is useless to speculate. I daresay the other carriage will be here soon, and the occupants may be able to tell you more.”

  “It does not sound as if they stopped,” she said.

  “We do not know that for certain. They may have done and decided that the best thing they could do was to drive on to the nearest hostelry.”

  “Perhaps, but, if they hadn’t gone far, might it not have been better to go back to the previous one?”

  “Possibly; but turning a large carriage on that road would be extremely dangerous. Chin up, Coz, I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “You won’t.”

  But, as there was nothing she could say which would deter the Earl from going – and, even if there had been, she would probably have despised him if he had heeded her – she was obliged to wish him luck and beg him to be careful.

  “You need not fear for my safety,” he said, clearly touched by her concern.

  “If you are thinking of letting yourself down into a ravine on the end of a rope, I think there is every reason to be nervous,” she countered.

  After the Earl had left, Helen and Miss Godmanton found themselves even more at a loose end. They had run out of things to say to each other before they met Waldron in Venice and, although meeting the Mosses had been dramatic and had given each of them so much food for thought that they felt unequal to digesting it, neither had much desire to share their burden with the other.

  Their only hope lay in the promise of another party, consisting, if the groom was to be believed, of two men, arriving shortly. They could do nothing but speculate upon these persons for some considerable time for the minutes continued to tick past and darkness had completely fallen before they heard the sound of an arrival outside.

  “Do you think it is the carriage the groom met on his way to find the Mosses?” Helen asked rather pointlessly, but more to have something to say than because she expected to receive an answer.

  “Either that or it’s Waldron returning,” was Miss Godmanton’s reply.

  “He has not been gone long; surely he could not be returning already unless …” Helen left the sentence unfinished for the only reason she could think of for her cousin being back already was if he had found everyone who had fallen into the ravine past help and had returned only to send for whatever passed for undertakers up here in the mountains.

  “No doubt we shall soon find out,” Miss Godmanton said flatly.

  “If it is Horatio, we will,” Helen agreed, “but, if it is the other party, we will not for this is a private parlour. They will be shown into another.”

  At which thought, unable to bear another moment’s suspense, she rose, opened the door and went into the hall.

  She appeared at much the same time as the two men came in from outside. The new arrivals were indeed both men - one middle-aged, one young. Both they and Helen were startled to see each other, although Helen had emerged from her parlour for the sole purpose of meeting them.

  “Good evening, Miss,” the elder man said when he had recovered a little.

  “Good evening, sir,” Helen replied. Fearing that he had mistaken her for a servant and was about to ask her to book him a room, she explained, “I wondered if it was my cousin returned. He went out a couple of hours ago.”

  “Indeed? In which direction was he going?” the man asked, frowning, no doubt thinking that leaving the safety of a hostelry as darkness was coming on was a curious thing to do.

  “Back toward Piedmont,” she said. “We had just learned of an accident on the road and he went out to offer help. Did you see it?”

  “An accident? No, although we did meet a man riding hell for leather – extremely dangerously in my opinion. Is he your cousin?”

  “No, that was a groom,” Helen replied rather shortly, now convinced the gentleman took her for a maid. “My cousin is Lord Waldron and he went out in a carriage.”

  “Oh, yes, we did pass a carriage – indeed, several – going the other way a few minutes ago.”

  “That probably was him,” Helen said obscurely, adding in an attempt to improve her manner, “it is a long way, is it not?”

  “I suppose,” the gentleman replied, not much softened by her attempt at amiability, “it depends where you started.”

  “If you were coming up the mountain, as you have just said you were, you were travelling in the same direction as we were earlier in the day – and so I know that it is a long way.”

  “I have no wish to argue with you, young lady,” the gentleman said, his colour rising with annoyance, “but there is still room for manoeuvre, as it were. I am ignorant of your point of departure, but we have come from Turin.”

  “Oh,” she said, flushing with irritation, “in that case you have come an extraordinarily long way in a short time. I should think you must have been springing your horses.”

  If she had thought that this playful riposte would amuse him, she soon saw her error for his complexion darkened further.

  “Are there no servants in this place?” he asked in a loud voice, banging his fist upon the counter.

  “I think a good many went off to see if they could help with the accident,” she said frostily. She was not intimidated by people losing their tempers, being perfectly accustomed to it at home, but glanced at the younger man as she spoke and saw that he appeared to be wrestling with a strong desire to laugh.

  “So how are we supposed to go about reserving a couple of rooms?”

  “I’m not sure,” Helen admitted, reassured by the younger man’s amusement. “I daresay someone will come eventually. Would you like me to try to summon someone from our parlour?”

  As she spoke, Miss Godmanton emerged.

  “To whom are you speaking?” she enquired in disapproving accents.

  “These are the gentlemen whom the groom passed earlier,” Helen explained. “They want to book a couple of rooms but there doesn’t seem to be anyone left in the inn to attend to them.”

  Miss Godmanton looked the two men up and down. “If you would like to come into our parlour for a moment or two, I daresay someone will see to you eventually,” she said majestically.

  The outer door opening at this moment to admit what were evidently the men’s servants, each carrying a couple of valises, the older gentleman instructed them to book the rooms and followed Miss Godmanton and Helen into their parlour.

  “Let us see what effect this will have,” Miss Godmanton said with unusual amiability, tugging the bell.

  “You are very kind,” the older gentleman said, softening noticeably. “Let me introduce ourselves. I am Lord Merdle and this is my son, Justin. Whom have I the honour to be addressing?”

  “Oh,” said Miss Godmanton, looking not at all displeased now that she knew the gentlemen’s names, “I am Miss Godmanton and this is Miss Lenham. We are on our way to Geneva to stay with my young friend’s cousin, Lord Waldron.”

  “Ah, the charitable gentleman whom we passed
as we toiled up the mountain,” Lord Merdle said, apparently pacified by Miss Godmanton’s explanation and beginning to smile expansively.

  “Did you? Yes, very likely. Will you take off your coat, my lord, and sit down beside the fire? I am persuaded it must be excessively cold outside. I hope it has not begun to snow again when there are so many people still abroad.”

  Lord Merdle did as he was bid. He was a tall man aged somewhere between forty and fifty for whom the description ‘handsome’ was less accurate now than it might have been even ten years before. His hair, what remained of it, was more or less grey and his eyes a colour hovering somewhere between blue and green.

  His son was probably in his early twenties, if as old, and was a rather sweet, willowy-looking young man with fair hair and the same eyes as his father.

  A servant appeared and was requested to bring the new arrivals some refreshment as well as to prepare rooms for them and their servants.

  “I am not acquainted with Lord Waldron,” Merdle said when the man had left, “although of course I have heard of him. Is he a young man?”

  “Just over thirty,” Miss Godmanton informed him. “He has lived abroad since he reached his majority.”

  “Indeed? How unusual! I have my main house in Shropshire but spend a considerable amount of time in London. At present I am escorting my son on a grand tour before he goes up to Cambridge. I know this sort of thing is generally undertaken by an unrelated person, but I own I wanted to be his bear-leader myself.”

  “He doesn’t trust me,” the son put in with a sideways glance at Helen.

  “One’s parents never do,” she opined with a conspiratorial smile.

  “He is not yet twenty,” Lord Merdle explained in a louder voice, clearly designed to drown out his son’s observation, “and not at all up to snuff. I suppose you are by way of being on a grand tour yourself, Miss Lenham.”

  “I don’t think it’s very grand,” she said. “Miss Godmanton and I have not been to every country and have, I think, now ceased to tour in any real sense. We are to stay with my cousin for the foreseeable future.”

  “He must be pleased you have you come to visit,” Lord Merdle suggested without much conviction.

  “If he is, he has not said so,” Helen returned a trifle petulantly. “He and I grew up together. He was orphaned when he was quite a young child and was brought up by my parents.”

  “Ah, so he is by way of being a brother?”

  “Indeed.”

  Chapter 16

  Lord Merdle, finding the two women still alone when he and his son returned from approving their rooms, resumed his speculations concerning Lord Waldron’s whereabouts.

  Darkness had fallen and the continued absence of his lordship from a solitary alpine inn perched uncompromisingly on the edge of the mountains was, Helen supposed, bound to seem a little mysterious.

  “I thought you said you had passed him on your way here,” she said, frowning.

  “We may have done, although I cannot be sure it was he; certainly, we passed several vehicles going the other way shortly before we arrived. Otherwise, the only person we encountered between here and Turin was a lone horseman, who hailed us earlier today. Apparently – although I did not know this at the time for I did not speak to him myself - he was looking for a carriage which had been following yours but had not turned up.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual as you drove along?”

  “No - nothing untoward except, as I say, the lone horseman. Did you see any sign of an accident, Justin?”

  “No, no, I’m afraid I didn’t. But, surely, that must be accounted a good thing?”

  “Well, but what in the world can have happened to them? They cannot have disappeared into thin air!” Helen exclaimed.

  “Thin air, eh? The air is thinner up here, is it not – makes one quite breathless if one exerts oneself too much! Will you join us in a glass of wine?” Lord Merdle enquired, apparently assuming her question was rhetorical.

  Both ladies assenting – for they were exceedingly tired of waiting around with only each other for company - wine was sent for and the men sat down and began to make themselves at home.

  “Are these lost people your relatives?” Mr Merdle enquired sympathetically of Helen. “I can see that you are anxious about them and fear you may have reason for concern. The roads up here are dangerous, particularly when the sun goes down.”

  “It would be idiotic to be driving around here in the dark,” his father opined.

  “No, not our relatives,” Helen said in answer to Mr Merdle, trying to ignore his lordship’s intervention, which both frightened and annoyed her. “We only met them last night.”

  “Ah,” Lord Merdle murmured, abruptly abandoning his attempt to inject a little of what he now perceived to be misplaced humour and endeavouring instead to appear more sympathetic, “but, in such circumstances – two families staying in the same inn in the mountains at the start of winter – friendships can develop quickly.” He smiled encouragingly but the damage had been done.

  Helen was by no means certain that she liked Lord Merdle and was indeed beginning to wish that she had not been so forward when she first saw him in the hall. On closer acquaintance, his manner was a touch overbearing, although his son seemed agreeable; indeed, she had begun to wonder if the father was reluctant to let him out of his sight on account of his being excessively naïve, almost childish – a curious echo of Phyllis Moss. Between them, the Merdles possessed an extraordinary combination of worldliness and simplicity.

  “Yes,” she said discouragingly.

  “Usual sort of family?” Lord Merdle persisted. “Mother, father and a complement of children?”

  “No,” she replied uncertainly, unwilling to veer too far from her natural inclination to adhere to the truth but increasingly uncomfortable beneath a series of enquiries which struck her as peculiarly intense - as well as curiously inappropriate - for why should he be interested in the composition of a family with whom he was not acquainted?

  He laughed although it did not seem to Helen that there was anything particularly amusing in what either of them had said. “I suppose families come in all sorts of permutations; no doubt you are wondering about Justin’s mama.”

  Helen shook her head. In point of fact, although she had speculated upon the dynamic between father and son, she had not – at least until this moment – paused to consider where the mother was.

  “You are an unusual sort of female if you have not wondered why two men are travelling together without a female in attendance,” he said with barely concealed contempt for what he evidently considered to be her sex’s preoccupation with relations between the sexes.

  “I own I had not,” she replied coldly. “My intention was simply to be helpful to fellow travellers who were encountering a little difficulty in being served when they first arrived.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “I did not mean to insult you, Miss Lenham, and am indeed extremely grateful to you for your intervention.”

  She bowed her head in acknowledgement of the apology and said, “It was no trouble, my lord.”

  Miss Godmanton, clearly feeling that she was shirking her duties as a chaperone while her charge was being subjected to interrogation as well as insults, enquired pleasantly about the places the Merdle gentlemen had visited so far on their grand tour.

  This had the happy effect of steering the gentlemen away from the personal and focussing their attention on such matters as the relative merits of different art galleries and the relevance the artists’ nationality might have upon their works.

  This innocuous subject kept them occupied for some considerable time although Helen was not unaware of the lengthening absence of the Earl and the failure of the others, whom she had been reluctant to claim as friends but for whom she was growing increasingly concerned, to arrive at all. Indeed, she was beginning to wonder if, as Miss Godmanton had suggested, they had taken fright at the Earl’s offers of hel
p and gone in the opposite direction.

  The hour for dinner was approaching when the servant knocked and enquired whether they wished to wait for his lordship’s return before sitting down.

  “Oh, yes, I think so; he cannot be much longer,” Helen said at once.

  “My son and I would be honoured if you would join us,” Lord Merdle said. “If Lord Waldron does get back in time, we would of course be pleased if he sat down with us too.”

  “I don’t like to contradict you, my dear,” Miss Godmanton interrupted before Helen could refuse again, “but I do think perhaps we should accept Lord Merdle’s kind offer; we might otherwise find ourselves waiting an excessively long time for our dinner with all the inconvenience that will cause – and you know,” she added in a low voice to her charge, “that I cannot eat late unless I am to suffer the most dire consequences!”

  “No, of course not,” Helen agreed hastily, afraid that Miss Godmanton might go into disagreeable detail about the consequences. “Thank you, my lord,” she added to Lord Merdle, “we would be delighted to join you.”

  His lordship ordered another private parlour to be prepared for their dinner, pointing out that they were presently sitting in Lord Waldron’s, which should more properly be reserved for him, particularly if he were not to arrive until very late.

  When Miss Godmanton and her charge went upstairs to change, the chaperone said, “I hope you did not mind my countermanding your refusal to eat dinner with Lord Merdle. It is only, you know, that …”

  Her voice trailed off and Helen said quickly, “No, I am persuaded it was a wise decision, but where, in the name of Heaven, do you suppose Horatio is? And where are the Mosses?”

  “I am very much afraid we shall not see them again,” Miss Godmanton said, adopting what she judged to be a suitably gloomy tone.

  “Lord Merdle did not notice any sign of an accident and he must have come along the same road,” Helen reminded her, beginning to feel irritated by the chaperone’s interference, not only in insisting on eating dinner with the Merdles, but also for adding an unpleasant aura of doom to the whole proceedings.