Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus

by Beaton, M. C.

  “Yes, Masters’s face gives me a turn as well,” said Ginny thoughtfully.

  Masters’s horselike face was still registering disapproval as the train steamed out of Bolton Station on its way south. Really! What common, vulgar people. If only she could make her mistress see that it was not the thing to associate with such low types.

  She became aware that her mistress had put aside her copy of Queen magazine and was staring at her in an irritatingly vacant manner. Masters shifted restlessly on the seat. At times Miss Bloggs looked downright half-witted, she thought.

  Ginny’s question when it came surprised her.

  “You speak French, don’t you, Masters?” said Ginny, still with that vacant stare.

  “Yes, of course, madam,” said Masters, simpering. “All good lady’s maids speak French.”

  “Who paid for the tuition?”

  “My parents, madam.”

  “Then,” said Ginny thoughtfully, “your parents were ambitious on your behalf. They wished you to better yourself.”

  Masters saw her chance. “We must all better ourselves when we get the opportunity, madam,” she said righteously.

  “And once having bettered oneself,” said Ginny, “one should of course not forget the people who have been kind to us and who have given us our chance.”

  “Oh, no, madam,” said Masters smugly. “That would be unchristian.”

  Was there a hardness creeping into Ginny’s beautiful eyes, or was it only a reflection of the gray day outside?

  “Your father, I believe, is a linen draper in Maidstone,” said Ginny.

  “In trade,” she added, as Masters remained silent.

  “Yes, madam,” said Masters in a low voice.

  “And when did you last see him?”

  Masters flushed miserably. Miss couldn’t know that she, Masters, had spent her last holidays with a friend who was also a lady’s maid.

  “Last holidays, madam,” she mumbled.

  “Then I am giving you a week’s leave to see him after we arrive,” said Ginny. “And Jobbins, the second footman, will take you over in the dogcart and leave you right on your doorstep. I shall tell Jobbins not to leave until he has made sure that you have met your father. I may even go with you.”

  The rest of the journey was passed in silence—placid on Ginny’s side and seething embarrassment on Masters’s. Somehow the idea of regaling the servants’ hall with all the delicious stories of Miss Bloggs’s low connections had suddenly palled. Masters was only too worried about her own. She had had hopes of walking out with Jobbins one day, since Jobbins shared her own snobbish views of life. Now Jobbins would see her father’s poky, dark little shop in the narrow side street.

  Masters suddenly remembered that she had told Jobbins her father was a vicar and blushed with shame and anticipated humiliation the whole way to London.

  The next to be embarrassed by Ginny were the four relatives, for Ginny had brought them each a present. After she had gone upstairs to change, they stared at the gaily wrapped packages in dismay.

  “Probably some awful junk,” said Tansy. “At least they’re small. How provincial of her to do such a thing!”

  One by one they unwrapped their presents and then looked at each other in silent consternation.

  Tansy’s was a long and beautiful jade cigarette holder. Barbara was staring as if mesmerized at a set of collar and cuffs made of delicate white lace. Cyril’s was a waistcoat in fine gray silk, embroidered with two peacocks in shades of blue and pink, and Jeffrey’s was a malacca walking cane with a solid-gold top.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” exclaimed Barbara breathlessly, looking at the fine lace as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Do you think,” she said timidly, “that perhaps we are going about this all the wrong way? I mean—”

  “Nonsense,” said Tansy, putting down the cigarette holder she had been admiring on the table with a sharp click.

  “I-I think sh-she’s cunning,” said Cyril. “I think we were supposed to feel like w-worms. I-I think Miss Bloggs deserves everything she’s going to get.” The others with the exception of Barbara nodded furiously.

  “Everything’s set for tomorrow,” said Jeffrey, sensing Barbara’s doubts. “We can’t back out now.”

  Perhaps Barbara might not have agreed to take any further part in the plot against Ginny had it not been for the arrival of Lady Rochester. Lady Rochester was a leading light of the local county, and everyone went in fear and dread and admiration of her. Her visit for afternoon tea was considered to be the height of social condescension. But Ginny had only smiled in an irritating way when the others tried to impress her with the honor about to be conferred on her.

  First of all, Lady Rochester liked to make stately visits and complained of the cold even on the warmest of days. She expected her tea to be served in the sitting room, with the windows closed and the fire lit. Ginny seemed unaccountably deaf to all such suggestions for Lady Rochester’s comfort and had insisted that tea be served on a table on the lawn under a large oak.

  Alicia rode over to tell Lord Gerald about the impending social catastrophe and to beg him to come to tea.

  “Ginny just will not listen to sense,” she cried.

  “Oh, it’s Ginny, now, is it?”

  Alicia flushed slightly. “Oh, she asked us all to call her by her christian name. And the ridiculously generous girl brought us all presents.”

  Lord Gerald looked at the bright scarf that was wound around the brim of Alicia’s riding topper. It was designed in iridescent greens and blues and added a feminine note to the severe, masculine lines of her black riding habit. “And that is the present,” he said, indicating the scarf.

  “Yes, how did you guess?” asked Alicia, and then rushed on without waiting for a reply. “I do so love coming over here, Gerald. Your home is so… so… stately. I much prefer it to Courtney.”

  Lord Gerald looked around his home in surprise as if seeing it for the first time. He compared it to Courtney—Courtney with its wide, spacious rooms, delicate coloring, and light, elegant furniture.

  His own home had been designed in the eighteenth century by William Wyatt and was a sort of Gothic castle with a great deal of pointed windows and stone fretwork. The Victorian furniture, bought by his late parents, had not been replaced. It was large, solid, and heavy and seemed to take up a considerable amount of space.

  Everything was very highly polished, reflecting the dimness of the room rather than the daylight outside. Various stags’ heads glared down from the walls, and a large stuffed pike seemed to float in its glass case above his head. Lord Gerald suddenly realized that old Mr. Frayne had had very good taste in furnishings indeed; an almost feminine taste for charming colors and beautiful china vases and ornaments.

  “Have Frayne’s relatives become reconciled to the idea of Ginny being mistress of Courtney?” he asked abruptly.

  “I don’t think so,” said Alicia slowly. She lowered her voice. “Jeffrey confided in me that there were some unsavory scandals attached to Ginny’s name in Bolton. Something about one of her father’s coalmen.”

  “Spite, that’s all,” said Gerald roundly while his mind worked furiously. Was it the action of a virginal and innocent girl to lead him into the rose garden and to allow him to kiss her with such passion? He closed his eyes slightly, remembering the feel of her lips and the fresh pliancy of the young body pressed so close against his own. He remembered…

  “Gerald! Are you feeling ill?” asked Alicia anxiously. “There’s a most peculiar expression on your face, and you are quite flushed.”

  “I’m rather tired, that’s all,” lied Gerald. It was comforting sitting here with Alicia, he reflected. He really ought to propose to her. It was as comfortable as being with another man. He wondered what it would be like to kiss her. Her lips were rather thin and hard and brightly painted, and like most women he knew, she smelled of cigarette smoke. He admired the fact that she had a studio in Bloomsbury, where she painted and wrot
e poetry. All women should have a career, instead of sitting around uselessly in pretty-pretty gowns and batting their eyelashes. But then Ginny Bloggs would no doubt question the wisdom of following a career that did not earn any money. Ladylike accomplishments, indeed. Drat her!

  Instead of proposing he said, “Of course I’ll come for tea. Ginny will need all the support she can get.”

  “She doesn’t realize it,” said Alicia gloomily. “I told her Lady Rochester’s ancestors came over with the Conqueror, and do you know what she said? She said, ‘Oh, how very interesting,’ and then she yawned right in my face.”

  “Well, Ginny has been coping very well,” Gerald felt forced to admit. “But she’ll meet more than her match in Lady Rochester.”

  The information that tea was to be served on the lawn put Lady Rochester in a bad mood for a start. She had arrived, punctual as ever, accompanied by a wheezing pug dog and a companion called Miss Chesham, who walked in the shadow of Lady Rochester’s bulk like a frightened ghost.

  Everything about Lady Rochester was larger than life. She had a large, heavy-looking face with large, protruding eyes, a large, jutting nose and chin, and great, strong yellow teeth. Her lace tea gown had been starched, so that instead of falling in soft cascades, it stuck out all around her in layers, making her look rather like an angry Christmas tree.

  She wore a hard white straw hat decorated with very hard, very red artificial cherries.

  Lord Gerald thought the table looked very pretty in its garden setting, standing as it did on the green velvet of the lawn, with the sunlight winking on the silver teapot.

  Ginny was wearing her favorite sky-blue, a clinging silk blouse tucked into the waist of a long skirt of darker blue and bound at the waist with a white silk sash intricately wound and tied to emphasize its smallness.

  Lady Rochester sat down in a basket chair that creaked protestingly and immediately demanded rugs and wraps to be brought. Then she ignored the delicate little sandwiches on their bed of cress and, seizing a rich-looking cream cake, proceeded to feed it to her pug. To Lady Rochester’s annoyance, she found that the day was, after all, exceedingly hot, but not for the life of her would she shed one of the wraps she had wound around herself in order to underline her young hostess’s thoughtlessness in setting tea in the garden. She began to sweat, exuding a strong smell of camphor and lily of the valley.

  “You have never met anyone like me before, heh?” she barked at last, fixing her protruding eyes on Ginny.

  “No,” said Ginny calmly.

  “You are supposed to say ‘no, my lady,’” pointed out Lady Rochester. “But I suppose we must make allowances. Your sort, of course, can’t be expected to know what’s what.”

  The snub went unnoticed. Ginny appeared to be childishly absorbed by the spectacle of a blackbird pulling a large worm out of the lawn. “Isn’t it marvelous the way they can hear them… worms, I mean,” exclaimed Ginny. “I am so sorry, Lady Rochester, what were you saying?”

  “I said,” repeated Lady Rochester loudly, “your sort can’t be expected to know what’s what.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Ginny patiently. “’What’s what?’ Is that something risqué like ‘having It’? Why, Lady Rochester, you naughty old thing. You’ve gone quite red. I am not as prim and proper as you might imagine. But you might be shocking poor Alicia. Foreigners do not quite have our free and easy ways, dear Lady Rochester.”

  “I-I-I…” stuttered Alicia.

  “There!” said Ginny. “You have shocked her.” And then raising her well-modulated voice in the accepted manner for speaking to the foreign, the retarded, or the deaf, she said, “You must forgive her, Alicia. She’s just being playful.”

  “If I could just explain something…” began Tansy in tones heavy with irony, but she was interrupted by Ginny, who turned a blue indulgent gaze on her.

  “Courtney,” said Ginny slowly and firmly. “Courtney in Kent,” and then added in a perfectly audible undertone to the rest of company, “Poor thing! She often forgets where she is.”

  Cyril felt things had gone far enough. Tansy and Alicia were spluttering, and Lady Rochester looked on the verge of an apoplexy.

  “Look,” he said in exasperation. “I have a proposal to make—”

  “Oh, no, Cyril!” cried Ginny, and to everyone’s amazement she actually blushed, deeply and painfully. “I have already refused you, dear,” she said in a stage whisper, “and you must be a good boy and not embarrass me in front of my guests by proposing marriage. What on earth will Lady Rochester say?”

  Alicia, who had been about to shriek that she was not a foreigner, Tansy, who had been about to scream that she was not soft in the head, and Cyril, who had been about to yell that he had only been going to propose a game of croquet, all fell gleefully silent and all eyes turned to Lady Rochester. Ginny Bloggs, they knew, was just about to receive the dressing down of her life. And they were glad.

  Even Ginny, who had been stuffing Lady Rochester’s pug with marzipan cakes, stopped and stared at Lady Rochester, round-eyed.

  Lady Rochester cast off her wraps and glared at Ginny, every starched lace pelmet on her bosom quivering with suppressed rage. “You…” she began, “I will tell you what you are. You…”

  But that was as far as she got, for her pug suddenly got violently sick right in her lap. Lady Rochester burst into noisy tears of sheer rage and frustration while Ginny sat and smiled in a pretty and puzzled way and Tansy and Barbara and Alicia clustered around to try to give aid to the overwrought lady.

  But no, Lady Rochester would not go into the house and change. Chesham should take her home immediately.

  Ginny continued to watch in bewildered amazement until her victoria bowled away down the drive.

  Then Ginny picked up the teapot and poured herself another cup of tea. “I think it must be the sun,” she said in a kindly voice. “I had an aunt rather like that. Sweetness and light during the winter, I can assure you, but most strange whenever the sun shone. I am quite relieved to find my aunt is not unique. To be unique is very uncomfortable, you know. Now, of course many people, I believe, are affected by the full moon. However…”

  She broke off and raised her pretty eyebrows in surprise, for Lord Gerald de Fremney was laughing helplessly. He roared and laughed and chortled as he could not remember doing since he was at school. He tried to control himself but found he could not. With a choked apology, he rose to his feet and ran across the lawn, still bellowing with laughter.

  “There you are!” cried Ginny. “What did I tell you? Another of them. I declare, next time I have a tea party it shall be in the sitting room and with all the blinds drawn, I assure you. More tea, anyone?”

  Shaking their heads and looking at Ginny as if she were a rattlesnake, the party edged away across the lawn.

  Ginny sat and watched them go. Then she signaled Harvey to clear the table.

  “People are sometimes very strange, are they not, Harvey?” asked Ginny Bloggs.

  “Indeed they are,” said the ever-correct Harvey, “indeed they are, madam.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The four relatives sent Alicia off to find Gerald and then huddled together in the library.

  “Did you ever?” said Tansy.

  “Pon my Sam, I never heard the like,” replied Jeffrey.

  “T-to m-make a deliberate fool of me…” Cyril stammered.

  “Well, if she hadn’t behaved the way she did, Lady Rochester would have given her a very unpleasant time. I think Lady Rochester’s an old cat. So there,” said Barbara.

  Three pairs of baleful eyes stared at her. Tansy said sweetly, “It appears, dear Barbara, as if that lace Ginny gave you has not only gone to your neck”—here she gazed at Barbara’s pretty lace collar—“but to your fat head as well.”

  “I don’t care,” said Barbara, beginning to cry. “I just don’t want to have anything to do with this business tonight!”

  “You wouldn’t tell her about it?�
�� asked Jeffrey, horrified.

  “No,” sobbed Barbara, “I won’t tell, but I’m fed up with the whole thing. I think she’s sweet.” And with those appalling words, Barbara ran from the room, every roll of fat jiggling in distress.

  “Now, let’s get one thing clear,” said Tansy grimly. “Do the three of us stick together or not?”

  Both Cyril and Jeffrey gave a shaken “yes.” Both were still shocked over Barbara’s treachery.

  “I’ll enjoy messing her up,” said Jeffrey grimly. “And in every which way you can think of.”

  “I’d better go along and have a jaw with her about duties to her tenants and all that rot,” said Tansy, getting to her feet. “Lay the ground for tonight.”

  “As l-long as sh-she doesn’t think y-you’re retarded,” said Cyril maliciously.

  “Don’t worry,” said Tansy grimly. “I’ll get some sense into her stupid head if it takes the rest of the afternoon.”

  Everyone, with the exception of Alicia and Ginny, sat very tensely at dinner that night, waiting for the telephone to ring. Tansy was praying that Cyril, who had gone to The Green Man, would not stammer, and Jeffrey was strung up with nerves.

  When the telephone which, as in most country houses, was placed in the darkest, draftiest, and most inconvenient part of the hall, did ring, Tansy dropped her spoon into her soup with a clatter and Jeffrey jumped about three feet in the air.

  A few seconds later Harvey came into the dining room. “There is a person on the telephone for you, madam. A low person,” he added. “I will deal with him if you wish.”

  “A low person,” repeated Ginny, putting down her napkin. “How clairvoyant of you, Harvey. No, I will take the call myself.”

  Tansy heaved a sigh of relief. It was up to Cyril now.

  Ginny picked up the telephone and eyed it doubtfully. She had never used one before but she had seen photographs of people using it. So, after some hesitation, she picked up the heavy stand, which seemed to weigh a ton, and put the earpiece to her ear.