Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus

by Beaton, M. C.

  “Care for a spin, Miss Bloggs?” he asked.

  “No,” said Ginny. “I can’t stand motorcars—nasty, smelly things.”

  Gerald raised his eyebrows in surprise. This was surprisingly rude coming from the usually pleasant Ginny.

  “Peter… I-I’d love to go,” said Alicia suddenly. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”

  “Hop in,” cried Peter with enthusiasm. The happy pair bowled off and Gerald turned toward Ginny, who surprised him with a placid, almost maternal smile on her lips as she looked after Peter and Alicia.

  “Just how did Peter Paster come to be invited?” he asked with a growing feeling of suspicion.

  “Do you mind?” exclaimed Ginny. “After all, he is a friend of yours. And when I saw him at the house party, my heart gave a great lurch. I think I am in love with him, so I wrote and simply begged him to come.”

  Gerald glared at her wrathfully. He had had a very pleasant dream about Ginny Bloggs during the night, an intoxicating dream of soft lips, small waist, and blond hair. Damn her! He had forgotten how utterly infuriating she could be.

  “You are talking codswallop,” he said, because he simply could not think of anything else to say, so great was his anger.

  “No, I’m not,” said Ginny. “I have no mama, you know, so I must find an eligible young man for myself. Peter Paster is very eligible.”

  “He has no money,” snapped Lord Gerald.

  “But I have,” said Ginny, opening her eyes wide. “So that does not matter.”

  “Have you no morals?” demanded Lord Gerald, taking Ginny by the shoulders and giving her a slight shake. “You cannot go around kissing me and then say you’ve fallen for another man.”

  “Yes, aren’t we both dreadful,” giggled Ginny. “There you are, sweet on Alicia and here am I, pining for Peter, and there go both of us, kissing in the moonlight. But I am sure both our loved ones will benefit from our bit of harmless practice.”

  “And was that all it was to you—harmless practice?” asked Lord Gerald, looking down into her wide blue eyes with his deep black intense ones, looking into those flat, empty pools for any flicker of emotion.

  Ginny was saved from answering by the rattle of carriage wheels on the drive, and Lord Gerald quickly dropped his hands. Physical contact of any kind in public was a social disgrace.

  One by one the guests were beginning to arrive.

  The picnic was to be held at a beauty spot some two miles distant beside the river Perch at a point where the wide, placid river wound its way through smooth, grassy banks strewn with wildflowers and little stands of silver birch. An army of servants was to travel on ahead to set up tables and chairs and light the spirit stoves and stack the bottles of champagne in the river to keep them cool.

  The Bishop of Welcombe had surprisingly decided to grace the party with his wife and daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle was like a rather faded copy of Ginny. Where Ginny’s hair was golden, Annabelle’s was light brown. Where Ginny’s eyes—albeit often expressionless—were of a vivid blue, Annabelle’s were pale and slightly protruding, and where Ginny’s curvaceous figure owed nothing to tight lacing, Annabelle’s was achieved with the rigors of a whalebone corset. Possibly this might have been why Annabelle took such an intense dislike to Ginny and wandered through the rooms of Courtney, before the party set out, fingering the delicate objets d’art and sighing that it was a pity that Courtney had fallen into such hands. Annabelle was wearing a pretty white silk dress with a white straw bonnet embellished with scarlet poppies, and her dislike was intensified when Ginny appeared, ready to leave, wearing almost the same outfit.

  The carriages and motorcars moved off in a long procession, Peter Paster again having to escort Alicia, as Ginny refused to set foot in a motorcar and had offered space in her carriage to Barbara… a point noticed and chalked up against Barbara by the three conspirators.

  It was a perfect day, with the sun shining down merrily from a sky as blue as Ginny’s eyes.

  The air was heavy with the scent of limes and masses of tiny blue butterflies performed their erratic dance over the meadows.

  The stream was soon reached and the ladies of the party promenaded across the grass at the edge of the river, frilly parasols unfurled and long dresses trailing across the carpet of tufty grass and wildflowers. The men in their colorful blazers and white flannels walked sedately beside the ladies, and the whole thing looked like an enormous out-of-doors drawing room.

  Cyril was confused by the similarity of dress between Annabelle and Ginny, and irritated that the bishop’s daughter welcomed all his attentions when he made the mistake of whispering compliments in her ear instead of Ginny’s. From the back both girls looked the same.

  Lord Gerald sat a little apart from the party on a convenient boulder under the birch trees and covertly studied Ginny, who was at that moment walking with Peter Paster and smiling up at him in a way that was most irritating. Her eyes were sparkling and the unusual animation made her look so beautiful that Lord Gerald reflected sourly that Peter would be at the altar before he knew what had hit him.

  Gerald was soon joined by Alicia, who was wearing a surprisingly pretty and feminine dress of cream-colored lace that added softness to her angular figure and added a golden glow to her normally sallow complexion.

  “Enjoying yourself?” asked Gerald lazily, removing his eyes with reluctance from Ginny and Peter.

  “Yes,” said Alicia, sinking down beside him with a happy sigh. “Ginny appears to have a flair for entertaining. You know,” she added wryly, “I don’t think Ginny needs help from any of us when it comes to social behavior. I feel quite a fool now for trying to help her. Do you think perhaps she’s really clever? It’s strange—but the minute I stopped advising her as to what to do, she miraculously seemed to realize I wasn’t a foreigner after all.”

  “She’s not doing so well now,” said Lord Gerald. “Whatever has she said to Peter to make him look so mad?”

  “Oh, dear. Poor Peter,” said Alicia, getting to her feet. “Ginny’s probably told him that she thinks he is retarded or that he’s a foreigner. You know how she can go on. I’d better go and rescue Peter.”

  “You can’t know what you are talking about!” Peter was exclaiming in horror as Alicia came up. “Alicia! Come and hear this. Miss Bloggs thinks that fox hunting should be banned!”

  Gone were Alicia’s modern ideas, culled from the studios of Bloomsbury. A young, out-raged county lady with very hard eyes stared at Ginny.

  “Nonsense!” said Alicia. “Ginny’s just making fun of you.”

  “But I’m not!” said Ginny with bewildered hurt. “When I think of what the poor, dear foxes have to go through, it almost breaks my heart.”

  “Look,” said Peter desperately. “The fox enjoys it. It is a more dignified form of death than just plain shooting the animal.”

  “Shooting is less painful,” said Ginny firmly. “Why you should all go to the trouble to spend all that money on pretty pink coats and top hats and expensive hunters and expensive hounds just to go hounding down one poor animal is beyond me. Wasn’t it Mr. Oscar Wilde who called it something like the ‘unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’?”

  “Really, now,” said Alicia uncomfortably. “You should not be quoting the views of a… of a… well, never mind.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Ginny went on as if Alicia had not spoken, “I might sell my hunters. Goodness knows, I don’t need them.”

  Peter Paster’s face was dark-crimson. This was too much. He turned one broad shoulder on Ginny. “I think I saw a kingfisher over there, Alicia,” he said. “Would you care to walk down to the river with me?”

  “Certainly, Peter,” said Alicia, taking his arm. “Ginny, I will talk to you later. That is, if you can listen to me for two minutes without pretending you think I’m a foreigner.”

  “Oh, but you shouldn’t be ashamed of it, Alicia dear,” said Ginny maddeningly. That was enough. Alicia had fo
und herself becoming quite fond of Ginny and had thought that Peter was being unnecessarily rude. But now she cast a fulminating look at Ginny and moved off with Peter.

  Ginny watched them go, her eyes wide with puzzled hurt.

  She looked up to find Lord Gerald looking down at her. “The course of true love seems to be a bit bumpy,” he remarked. “Peter’s the easiest going of fellows. What on earth did you say to upset him so?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny vaguely. “Perhaps we are not suited after all. Oh, dear, now I shall have to go to all the trouble of finding someone else.”

  Lord Gerald looked thoughtfully to where Peter and Alicia were walking together by the water’s edge, engrossed in animated conversation. An awful suspicion began to form in his mind.

  “Look, Ginny,” he said. “I don’t believe you were interested in Peter Paster at all. I think you are trying to matchmake. Well, it won’t do, you know. Alicia and I are practically engaged.”

  “If I were practically engaged to someone,” said Ginny thoughtfully, drawing patterns on the grass with her parasol, “I should not kiss someone else in the moonlight. But of course, I forgot, you do not believe in romance.”

  “I do not believe in maudlin sentiment, which you seem to call romance,” snapped Gerald. “In fact, there is a lot to be said for arranged marriages. One should marry someone with the same interests and the same background.”

  Ginny looked at him thoughtfully. Then she said, “For someone who champions the modern woman and modern thought, my lord, you are a surprising snob.”

  “Nonsense!” said Gerald, growing red. “I would marry my kitchen maid if she had a mind to equal my own.”

  “She may very well have,” said Ginny. “Shall we join the others? You should not quarrel with people the whole time, Lord Gerald. It is not at all good for your blood pressure. Just look at poor Jeffrey, for example. Hullo, Jeffrey! I was just talking about you.”

  Lord Gerald gave a groan and fled. He was damned if he would let Ginny draw him into one of her mad conversations. He decided to join Alicia.

  Alicia and Peter were deep in conversation, and Gerald felt a stab of pique. Alicia did not seem to want his interruption. I shall not let Ginny Bloggs get away with this, thought Gerald, and began to turn the full force of his charm—which was considerable—on the bewildered and gratified Alicia. And Peter Paster, who had been thinking that Alicia was a pretty good sort, became aware that Gerald was trying to lure her away from him and plunged into competition, and for the first time in her life, Alicia found two attractive men competing for her favors and as a result looked nearly pretty.

  After an alfresco meal of considerable proportions, Cyril and Tansy found they had a job on their hands to keep Jeffrey awake. Unaware that Jeffrey had already drunk more than was good for him, they plied him with brandy in order to stimulate him. Jeffrey indeed drank it gratefully and seemed to come to life again. “Well, how goes the plot?” he said at last.

  “There’s a h-hitch,” said Cyril. “I can’t get Ginny to walk with m-me. She’s always talking to someone else.”

  “So,” said Tansy, “you, Jeffrey, must say you think there’s something up with one of your horses and ask her to come with you and investigate it. Or tell her you have a new carriage you’d like her to see. Or tell her one of the guests has fainted and is in your carriage. Cyril will drive. You’re stronger than he is, Jeffrey. Just get her inside that carriage and off you go. Think of something!”

  “Right-ho,” said Jeffrey, feeling masterful and sure of himself. “Just let me have another slug of that brandy and off I’ll go. No, don’t stand there hovering. Leave it to me.”

  Cyril and Tansy walked off to check that the carriage was parked behind a stand of trees some distance from the other carriages and motorcars. “Don’t want any curious chauffeurs or coachmen around,” said Tansy. “I hope Jeffrey manages it. If he doesn’t, I’ll go and try to get her over here myself.”

  But Jeffrey, it seemed, was proceeding admirably. Certainly his legs appeared rather rubbery when he stood up but his brain, he felt, had never been clearer.

  Annabelle was just emerging from a conversation with Ginny, feeling as if she had got the worst of it. She had warned Ginny that gentlemen did not like ladies who appeared too bold in their manner and she, Annabelle, had observed that Ginny had a distressingly forward manner with the gentlemen. Annabelle hoped Miss Bloggs would forgive her for pointing this out, but Miss Bloggs would find that these rarified circles of society did not have the same free and easy license as the society from which Miss Bloggs had sprung. To which Ginny had mildly replied that on the contrary, the middle classes were very strict, and a conversation such as this would be considered impertinent in the extreme. And when the furious Annabelle was just grasping the fact that she had been neatly put in her place, Ginny had noticed Jeffrey lumbering toward them and had said that Annabelle must forgive her, but the gentlemen could be very forward in their attentions.

  “Take poor Jeffrey,” said Ginny. “He would marry me tomorrow if only I would have him.”

  Annabelle’s pale-blue eyes narrowed. Jeffrey had been flirting with Annabelle over the picnic lunch, and Annabelle saw an excellent opportunity to score off Ginny.

  Jeffrey tried to bring the two girls, who looked remarkably alike, into focus. The full effects of the amount of champagne he had drunk at luncheon followed by the brandy had hit him like a blow. He could only thank God that his brain seemed to be unnaturally clear, even though his eyes were blurred and his legs wobbled at the knees.

  “Ginny,” he began, “one of the serving-maids has taken poorly and she has been put into my carriage to recover. I wonder if you could come with me and take a look at the poor girl.”

  “Leave this to me, Miss Bloggs,” said Annabelle sweetly. “I am more accustomed to dealing with servants than you. She is probably malingering. Lead on, Mr. Beardington-Smythe.”

  She marched a little way forward and turned impatiently, waiting for Jeffrey to catch up with her.

  “I say,” said Jeffrey, looking from one to the other like a baffled bull and desperately trying to focus his eyes. “Ginny’s supposed to go with me.”

  “She has,” said Ginny, giving him a push. “I’m Annabelle.”

  “Eh, what? By Jove, thanks, Annabelle,” wheezed Jeffrey, and weaved off after Annabelle.

  Cyril was sitting on the box of the closed carriage, a strung-up bundle of nerves. It was such a relief, it almost hurt when Tansy whispered, “Here she comes!” and he saw the flash of a white dress and a red-and white hat coming through the trees. “I’ll make myself scarce,” said Tansy, grinning. “You don’t need a chaperon for this. Good old Jeffrey. He hasn’t let us down.”

  Cyril, who had changed into coachman’s livery, sunk his neck into his hot collar so that Ginny would not recognize him. As the couple came nearer he had a fleeting thought that Jeffrey must have pitched Ginny a very good story, for he had never heard Ginny’s voice so sharp and shrill before.

  “In here,” he heard Jeffrey say. Then the carriage door slammed and Cyril sprang the horses, glad that he was not the one who had to cope with whatever was going on inside.

  Jeffrey was having a blissfully quiet time. “Ginny” had tried to scream, and he had stuffed his pocket-handkerchief in her mouth, whereupon she had fallen into blessed silence. The carriage swayed and bumped and Jeffrey felt his own eyes beginning to droop. No harm in a little shuteye, he thought. He hoped that Cyril remembered that it was he, Cyril, who was supposed to compromise the girl.

  The Bloomington estates lay quite close to the picnic area, and in no time at all, Cyril found himself clattering up the weedy drive. He took a small sketch plan out of his pocket and guided the carriage off up a long, winding side road that led to the gamekeeper’s cottage.

  He drew up with a flourish and jumped down triumphantly. Then he paused and hammered on the carriage door. He somehow did not want to face Ginny until she was safely locked
up inside.

  Jeffrey’s sleepy, beefy face popped out of the window like a jack-in-the-box. “There you are, lad,” he cried. “Takes old Jeffrey to show you how to run a campaign, eh what?”

  “How is she?” asked Cyril.

  “Fainted,” grinned Jeffrey. “Came to a minute ago and looked at me and fainted again. Just as well.”

  “Bung her inside,” said Cyril. “I’ll put the carriage round the back where it can’t be seen.”

  “Here, now,” expostulated Jeffrey. “You can’t expect me to walk back in this heat, and we don’t want to raise any suspicions by all of us being absent. Tansy’s going to tell ’em Ginny’s gone home with a headache and is not to be disturbed. I’ll come back for you in the morning. Come along, man. I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you.” He gave a fat wink. “And you won’t be needing old Jeffrey’s help for that!”

  “Oh, all r-right,” said Cyril sulkily. “Carry her indoors. I d-don’t want to l-look at her until I have to.”

  Pulling and tugging, Jeffrey got the half-unconscious girl out of the carriage and carried her indoors. Then he emerged a few minutes later, grinning. “I’ve put her where you wanted her, laddie. Right on the bed.”

  He swung himself up unsteadily into the box and Cyril looked at him nervously. “Are you sure you’re sober enough to drive?”

  “Course,” said Jeffrey. “Jober as a sudge.” And with that he rattled off. A faint moan came from inside the cottage. Cyril took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and marched in. He locked the door firmly and turned to face the girl, who was sitting white-faced on the bed, staring at him.

  “What the hell!” screamed Cyril. “Annabelle!”

  Annabelle’s feelings on being confronted by the handsome Cyril instead of the boozy, beefy Jeffrey underwent an almost ludicrous change.

  A faint blush bloomed on her white cheeks and she looked coyly at the floor. “Oh, Cyril, dear,” she murmured. “So wild! So impetuous! There was no need to go to these lengths. But how romantic!”