Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus

by Beaton, M. C.

  “It must be something very important,” said Lord David.

  Mrs. Pomfret looked awkwardly at the ground. “Miss Molly asked me to find her a special kind of silk for her embroidery,” she finally gasped.

  “Come now,” said Lord David soothingly, taking her by the arm and leading her away from the dining-room windows. “A lady like you, Mrs. Pomfret, does not come all this way to talk about silks. You must tell me the truth. Something has frightened Miss Molly badly.”

  Mrs. Pomfret let out a squeak of distress. “I must tell you then,” she cried. “It has obviously started already.”

  Lord David steered her into a summerhouse in the gardens, out of the sight of the windows of the Court.

  Straightening her hat with careful fingers, Mrs. Pomfret sat primly down on the edge of a cane chair while Lord David drew up another chair and sat opposite. And Mrs. Pomfret told him everything from the incident of the cream bun to the proposed haunting of Molly.

  The windows of the drawing room opened and couples began to move about the terrace, chattering and laughing. “Dinner must be over,” Lord David said. “I must go and tell Miss Molly before she decides to retire to her rooms. Don’t worry, Mrs. Pomfret, everything will be all right.” He gave a sudden infectious grin. “I say, what a stunning hat!” Mrs. Pomfret blushed like a girl and thanked him.

  Then she got up to leave. “I am going to be cowardly, my lord, and slip away. I do not wish to make an enemy of Lady Cynthia. She could do me quite a lot of damage in the town. I am sorry to have to speak so about your fiancée, but my loyalties lie with Miss Maguire and her sister.”

  Lord David bit his lip in vexation. He longed to say that Cynthia no longer meant anything to him, but the evening had already been complicated enough.

  Molly and Mary were seated quietly in a corner of the drawing room. The bright young things of the house party flitted endlessly to and fro. They kept throwing the girls sidelong looks and the air was electric with a kind of suppressed expectation.

  Molly looked up nervously as she realized that Lord David was standing in front of her. “Would you care to take a turn in the garden, Miss Maguire?” he asked.

  “The night air may be bad for your constitution, my lord,” said Molly with a pathetic attempt at humor.

  “My constitution never felt better,” he said, raising her gently to her feet, “and Miss Mary must come, too. It is not often I have an opportunity to escort two beautiful girls.” And talking light nonsense and teasing them gently, he led them out into the soft evening air and across the dew-laden lawns. Molly seemed to relax but Mary started and shied at every shadow.

  Molly looked at him in surprise as he suddenly said in a very serious voice indeed, “Now we can talk. They are trying to frighten you away.”

  “They?” queried Molly faintly.

  A little breeze rustled the leaves and every shadow of the garden seemed alive with menace. Far away, the sound of the sea whispered on the beach like the voices of the dead, murmuring and crying in the chains of their spirit world.

  “I mean Cynthia and Cuthbert,” said Lord David.

  Molly took a deep breath and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. How pretty and romantic the overgrown garden suddenly seemed. And the voice of the sea only conjured up pictures of long, sunny summer days.

  Lord David told her all about the plot—how the magician had been hired and how they planned to frighten her out of England.

  Mary was beginning to look radiant. “I thought I was out of my mind,” she said. “What shall we do to this magician?”

  “You will not do anything,” said Lord David firmly. “You must leave me to deal with it.”

  “Pooh!” said Molly rudely. “We want our revenge.”

  She paused for a minute, startled by the sudden memory of how she had wanted revenge on Lord David. How long ago that all seemed and how much seemed to have happened to her since then. She went on, “It’s very kind of you to have warned us and it’s awfully decent of Mrs. Pomfret to have come all this way, but we should get a bit of our own back.”

  Lord David grinned at the “awfully decent.” Molly was becoming very anglicized in accent and speech. “Then let me come, too,” he urged.

  Surprisingly, Mary backed him up. “I really don’t want to have anything to do with him, Molly,” she pleaded.

  Molly noticed Roddy hurrying across the gardens toward them and wondered if the presence of the marquess could have anything to do with her sister’s sudden lack of spirit. But David was speaking again. “I’ll go upstairs and hide myself in your room, Molly. You stay with the others until they all go upstairs to bed. Then we’ll catch him together.”

  Roddy had joined them by this time and was told the whole story. Mary should pretend to go to her room, he said, and he would take her for a walk in the gardens instead. Mary agreed enthusiastically and Molly gave a little sigh. Her sister was obviously in love with the marquess… but was the marquess in love with Mary?

  She walked slowly back to the house with Lord David.

  Lord David felt he had been waiting behind the curtain in Molly’s room for hours. He had a sinking feeling that nothing was going to happen. Just as he was wondering whether to give up his vigil and join the others downstairs, he heard a board creak in the corridor outside and then there was silence. The door opened very slowly and quietly, and a dark figure that looked like an insubstantial black ghost crept into the room and moved behind the dressing table. Then there was a stealthy click—His workbox, thought David—and then silence again.

  A long wait began, David leaning out of the window, hoping that the sound of his breathing would not carry to the magician.

  He found himself hoping that the man would attack Molly so that he could pose as a hero.

  Brisk footsteps came along the corridor, the door swung open, and Molly’s maid, Goodge, came in. She struck a lucifer and lit the gas lamps in their brackets, flooding the room with light, and then went out again.

  For a few moments nothing happened. Peering through a chink in the curtain, Lord David saw the magician creep from behind the dressing table. He looked a frightening figure, even in the bright light, with his graveyard face and black wig.

  He turned out all the lights except one that he lowered until the room was full of shadows. Then he took a hairbrush and some other items from the dressing table, placing them carefully on the floor, standing back to survey the effect, and then replacing them to make them look as if they had accidentally fallen to the floor.

  Footsteps in the corridor again. Pause… silence… wait. The door swung abruptly open and Molly stood on the threshold. She moved into the room, stretched and yawned, and then looked around. It was so casual, so well done, that Lord David thought for a moment that Molly had forgotten all about the magician.

  Molly sat down at the dressing table and looked at herself in the glass. With a little moue of irritation she turned around and saw the objects scattered on the floor and bent to retrieve them. With almost uncanny speed the “ghost” slipped out the mirror, replaced it with plain glass, and took up his position behind it. Molly returned to the dressing table and sat down. She looked long and hard at her “reflection.” Then she leaned forward and took the “ghost’s” nose firmly between finger and thumb and tweaked hard. There was an agonized yell. Lord David sprang from behind the curtains but the magician was quicker than both of them. He was out of the door and down the corridor before either of them had time to draw breath.

  Molly made a move to run after him but David held her back. “Let him go,” he said, trying to control his laughter. “What a splendid girl you are, you should have seen his face.”

  Molly burst out laughing as well and they clung together, bawling with mirth. Lord David suddenly became very conscious that he was holding Molly in his arms. She stopped laughing and looked up at him.

  The hell with good form, thought Lord David savagely. He tilted up her chin and bent his mouth to hers.

>   For one startled moment Molly thought of pushing him away. Then her senses took over and her lips clung to his, and a tide of passion swept them both and left them shaking. Lord David was immersed in the feel of Molly, the scent of Molly, and the passion of Molly. In the dim light of the room he could see the beautiful curve of her breast above her gown. One tiny logical bit of his mind stared down at himself, muttering endearments as his mouth moved slowly down to that delectable bosom, and the rest of him didn’t give a damn. His expert hands moved around to the fastenings at the back of her gown. She murmured a faint protest, but so faint he did not pay the slightest attention.

  “David!”

  The scandalized voice calling his name was not that of Molly but of Lady Cynthia, who was standing in the doorway and looking as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. She had decided to visit Molly’s room to gauge the amount of nervous damage done by the magician. She had expected to see a Molly Maguire trembling with fear but hardly a Molly Maguire trembling with passion.

  Molly stood proudly beside Lord David, waiting for him to tell Cynthia that the engagement was at an end and that he and Molly were to be married. But all Lord David did was to say in a perfectly normal voice, “Oh, hello, Cynthia.” He walked to the door, turned, and remarked gently, “Good night, Molly,” and then, taking Cynthia by the arm, led her off down the corridor.

  Miss Molly Maguire threw herself down on the bed and cried and cried. She cried because she was a foreigner, lost and at sea in a strange land where people drove each other mad for the fun of it and handsome lords could make love and walk away as casually as if they were leaving the breakfast table.

  “Let’s go into your sitting room, where we can talk in private,” said Lord David.

  “I have nothing more to say to you,” snapped Cynthia.

  “But I have a lot to say to you, dear Cynthia,” he said, pushing open the door that led to her rooms and all but dragging her inside.

  At the other end of the corridor Mary watched them with shock and dismay. She felt sure that her sister was falling in love with the handsome lord. She could have sworn Lord David loved Molly. It seemed as if it were all a sham. And she would have to tell her sister. Better that Molly should hurt now than suffer much more later.

  “Of course I want you to release me from the engagement,” Lord David was saying acidly. “I am not in the habit of making love to virgins unless my intentions are strictly honorable. I mean to marry Molly Maguire, and nothing you can say or do can stop me. You can hire as many magicians as you like, and I will still marry her.”

  “That was Cuthbert’s doing,” said Cynthia, turning an ugly color.

  “I happen to know it was as much your doing as his,” said Lord David.

  Cynthia saw that the game was up but her mind was working feverishly. She needed just a little time.

  “Well, it looks as if I have lost you,” she said with a lightness she did not feel. “But it is all very humiliating. My parents will be most disappointed. I shall return to town tomorrow. But mother is not well at the moment, David, and this news would upset her terribly. Can you at least wait a fortnight and I’ll tell her then? It will give me time to prepare her for the news. Please, David.”

  She looked very beautiful and appealing. And Lord David felt great relief that he was getting off so easily. He gladly agreed to her terms and then went off to search for Cuthbert’s bedroom so that he might give that young gentleman the punch in the nose he so richly deserved.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mrs. Pomfret returned slowly from her evening walk around the harbor. All did not seem to be going well with her heroine. Molly was looking tired and cross and changed the subject every time that nice Lord David’s name was mentioned.

  Her own life seemed to be looking up. One by one she had begun to buy the necessary essentials for her home, a thing she had never been able to do when she was paying blackmail money to Billy Barnstable. In another week she would have enough saved to buy a new dress. The week after that, new gloves. And the week after that, new boots, bright, shiny boots, with elastic sides and little high heels.

  Her thoughts were still mostly on Molly, however, as she put the kettle on the stove to boil and took down a tin of biscuits from the shelf. Molly had left Cuthbert’s, the morning following Mrs. Pomfret’s warning, but she and Mary were no longer to be seen around on their bicycles and had not even called at the post office. Perhaps Lord David was a philanderer, just like one of those dreadful characters in Mrs. Henry Wood’s books. Mrs. Pomfret was so engrossed with this new idea that she did not see the shadow falling across the kitchen window or hear the door being gently opened.

  A low cough made her turn around, dropping the tin of biscuits in her fright.

  Billy Barnstable was leaning against the doorjamb, a sheepish smile on his face.

  “Here, now,” he said, as the postmistress made terrified, choking noises in her throat. “I ain’t going to hurt you. I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

  Mrs. Pomfret eyed the rifle propped against the kitchen wall and prayed for Molly Maguire’s courage.

  “What do you want?” she said faintly, while her heart was already mourning the loss of the dress, the gloves, the boots.

  “I want peace and quiet and my old job back,” said Billy, sitting down at the kitchen table. “I can’t get work anywhere. Times are hard and I’m starving. I’ve been eating out of fields, whatever I could get. Blimey! I’m hungry, I am.”

  He picked up the tin of biscuits and looked at it longingly.

  “They’ll have me back at my old job,” he said. “If I promise to behave meself, will you tell that Maguire female to leave me alone?”

  “But you tried to kill her,” screamed the postmistress, who had heard of the wire across the road.

  “Naw!” said Billy.” Wanted to give her a tumble, that was all. Then she starts calling me names like you’ve never heard and I was mad and starving and went for her with the cudgel. For gawd’s sake, believe me. You don’t know what hunger does to a man.”

  “How can I believe you?” whispered Mrs. Pomfret. “Why should I? You sat there, week after week, watching me crying and taking my money, and you never had any pity.”

  Billy shifted awkwardly in his seat. “It seemed like a game to me,” he said. “Easy pickings, you know. That’s the way me Da brought me up. See your chance and take it, he allus said.”

  “Is your father alive?” asked Mrs. Pomfret.

  Billy shook his head and soundlessly parodied a head being jerked in a noose.

  “Well, there you are,” said Mrs. Pomfret, regaining her courage. Dress, shoes, and gloves began to appear on a rosy horizon in her mind.

  She opened the tin of biscuits and Billy stared at their brightly colored icing tops as if hypnotized and then tears began to run down his cheeks, cutting clean furrows on his dirty face.

  “Go and wash your face and hands, Billy,” said Mrs. Pomfret. “I have a piece of game pie in the larder and some bread and butter and you shall have it directly. Much better for an empty stomach than sugar biscuits.”

  While Billy washed at the kitchen sink, she put the wedge of pie and thick slices of bread and butter on the kitchen table. Billy fell on them, desperately trying to eat slowly, but ending up by cramming the food into his mouth with both hands.

  When he had finally finished every last crumb, he looked at Mrs. Pomfret with shamefaced gratitude.

  “I’d like for to say how I’m truly sorry,” he mumbled.

  “I shall trust you,” said Mrs. Pomfret, her sensitive soul realizing the great effort it had cost the uncouth and rough Billy to choke out this apology. “Will you be able to get your room back at Mister Wothers’s?”

  Billy shook his head. “He’s got another chap, and I ain’t exactly popular around here.”

  Mrs. Pomfret wrestled furiously with her conscience. The vicar had said in church only last Sunday that one should truly forgive and help the repentant sinner.

&nbs
p; “I have a little room upstairs,” she said slowly. “But I do not know if I could take in a man lodger. What would the people in the town say?”

  “They wouldn’t say nuffink if we was married,” said Billy suddenly.

  Mrs. Pomfret raised her thin freckled hands to her suddenly hot cheeks. “The whole idea is ridiculous. I’m at least thirty years older than you! Now drink your tea and we’ll pretend that you never said…er…what you did say.”

  She searched her mind feverishly for some change of subject. “Do you still read Westerns?” she asked.

  “Haven’t read one in weeks,” said Billy. “Couldn’t afford to buy ’em.”

  “There is a new one in by Art Rudge,” said Mrs. Pomfret. “It’s called Shootin’ Irons.” She passed the book over to Billy. “Who taught you to read?”

  “Went to school till I was eleven,” said Billy proudly. “’Course, that was before me Da…”Again his large hands parodied the hanging.

  “Quite, quite,” said Mrs. Pomfret hurriedly, but Billy had opened the book and plunged in, his lips soundlessly forming the words.

  Mrs. Pomfret watched him, realizing with a little shock that it was nice to have company, even the silent company of her ex-blackmailer.

  At one point Billy raised his head in the slow manner of a large pig looking up from its trough and said, “If we was married, you’d have my pay same as your own,” and went back to reading.

  The whole idea is so ridiculous, thought Mrs. Pomfret. Marry Billy, indeed! “But you would be married, really married,” whispered a little imp in her ear.” You’ve only been a mistress before.”

  Mrs. Pomfret resolutely banished the imp and rose and went to the stove to make a fresh pot of tea.

  Molly looked in surprise at Bobby and Jim Wheelan. The twins had called at the Holdens to present their usual bouquet of flowers, culled from the neighboring gardens along the way.

  “A man’” said Molly. “A man at the post office? Are you sure?”

  The twins nodded their heads energetically.