Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus

by Beaton, M. C.

  So the blackberry brandy was duly brought in, winking evilly in its squat bottle. Lord Gerald was poured a handsome glassful. He decided the best way to get it down was to swallow it in one gulp like medicine—which he did.

  It was very potent, and for one moment he thought the top of his head was about to blast off and disappear into outer space like one of Mr. H. G. Wells’s rockets to the moon. Then he felt a comforting glow spreading through his veins.

  He gave the anxious Mr. Jones a nod of approval. “Excellent stuff! Excellent,” said Lord Gerald. And, “Have some more, m’lud,” said the much gratified farmer.

  * * *

  Alicia was sitting discussing the ball with Peter Paster and Ginny Bloggs some time later that dismal and wet day, when Harvey came in and announced that Lord Gerald wished to have a word with Miss Benson. Alicia and Ginny looked around in surprise at the butler and Peter said, “Tell him to come in here, Harvey.”

  “His lordship is most insistent that he sees Miss Benson privately.”

  “I’ll go,” said Alicia, getting hurriedly to her feet. “One of our friends might be ill.”

  She went hurriedly from the room. After a few minutes’ silence while Ginny stitched and Peter gazed at the fire, he suddenly said, “Look, Ginny, I don’t like the idea of Alicia being alone with Gerald. He was rather sweet on her, you know.”

  Ginny put down her sewing. “If it will make you feel any better,” she said, “I’ll go along and see what’s happening.”

  “Thanks most frightfully,” said Peter. “I would go myself, but you must admit, the situation is pretty delicate.”

  Harvey met Ginny in the hall, and in answer to her question, said that he had put Lord Gerald and Miss Alicia in the morning room, because there was a fire there and his lordship had looked soaked to the skin.

  Ginny followed a trail of small puddles to the morning room and opened the door. Then she stood very still.

  Lord Gerald de Fremney was down on one knee, proposing marriage to Miss Alicia Benson.

  Alicia heard a small gasp from the doorway and turned gratefully. “Oh, poor Gerald,” she cried to Ginny. “What am I to do? You tell him, Ginny.” And with that, she ran from the room, leaving Ginny standing looking down at a very wet, very embarrassed, very bedraggled, and very drunk Lord Gerald.

  “What the hell… ?” began Gerald.

  “Well, really,” said Ginny. “It’s really too bad of you. Poor Alicia.”

  Gerald got to his feet and stood swaying slightly. He felt angrier than he had ever been in his life. When he had left the Jones’s on a wave of blackberry brandy, it had seemed a splendid idea to propose to Alicia. Dear Alicia. Always so forthright, so sane. And now for some mad reason it was “poor Alicia.”

  “Perhaps your fiancé will join us and make the party complete,” said Gerald, sneering.

  “My fiancé?” repeated Ginny, looking at him in pretty bewilderment.

  “Oh, don’t try that little-girl act with me,” said Gerald. “I mean Peter Paster. The man you were hugging and kissing last night.”

  “I was hugging and kissing Peter last night—I didn’t know you were at my ball, by the way—because I was congratulating him on getting engaged to Alicia.”

  Lord Gerald stood dumbfounded while this startling piece of intelligence struggled in a sea of blackberry brandy.

  He thought of what a fool he had made of himself, and he thought of how much he would like to wring Ginny’s neck. He felt she had somehow plotted the whole thing. Had it not been for the perfidy of Ginny Bloggs, he would never have proposed to Alicia in the first place.

  Shock and rage had sobered him. He looked at Ginny and Ginny looked wonderingly back. Could it be a trick of the firelight or had Lord Gerald’s black eyes actually turned red?

  “Ginny Bloggs,” said Lord Gerald, slowly and distinctly. “I never want to set eyes on you again.”

  “All right,” said Ginny mildly, and turned and left him fuming on the hearthrug.

  * * *

  October was rolling its mists around the mellow walls of Courtney. Peter and Alicia had left long ago. Cyril spent his days in seeing as little of his affianced as he possibly could. Jeffrey had been quiet and morose ever since his accident on the fatal day he had tried to abduct Ginny, and Tansy wandered through the rooms like a nervous chainsmoking ghost. She felt if she did not take some sort of action, she would scream. At last she humbled herself enough to ask Ginny if she could travel up to town and see that the town house in Berkeley Square was in order. Ginny had surprisingly agreed and had suggested that the whole household might move up to town about the end of November. Tansy made a rapid escape, leaving Jeffrey to his dark thoughts and Cyril to his nail-biting and Annabelle-avoiding.

  Barbara had settled happily into the role of companion to Ginny, her embarrassing hatred having changed to an equally embarrassing devotion. Ginny planned another trip to Bolton, but had refused to allow Barbara permission to travel with her. She would only be gone a week, Ginny had said tactfully, and Barbara was needed at Courtney to see to things.

  Barbara was left to wonder what exactly there was to see to. The house was running smoothly, the crops had been gathered in, and in some mysterious way the estate seemed to be showing more of a profit than it had ever done, despite the fact that Ginny had laid out quite a lot of capital on the latest phosphates and farm machinery.

  Barbara had tried to protest to Ginny’s traveling without a female companion. But Ginny had explained that she was in too much of a hurry to hire a maid. Her carriage would take her to the station, and she would be traveling in a first-class, “Ladies Only” compartment to London and from there to Bolton, where she would be met at the station by Mrs. Pearsall, so what could possibly happen to her?

  But it was pleasant to be allowed to run Courtney, Barbara had to admit, after Ginny’s carriage had bowled off down the drive. No sooner had the carriage passed from sight down the long avenue of limes and out through the lodge gates than Barbara summoned Harvey and proceeded to irritate that gentleman immensely by giving him a long list of fussy and unnecessary commands.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A week had passed since Ginny’s departure, and Lord Gerald was motoring back home in a thoughtful mood.

  He had taken a young lady, very like Alicia, for an evening of dinner and Wagner. They had discussed the latest books and the latest opinions and had found themselves in complete agreement. She had made him feel a witty, cultured man of the world, and it was only now, in retrospect, that he realized he had in fact been bored in a kind of strung-up nervous way, as if he were constantly waiting for something to happen.

  I was probably waiting for her to make some silly, irritating remark, he thought. It would take him a long time to get over the humiliation of his drunken proposal to Alicia and the indifference with which Ginny Bloggs had accepted his statement that he never wished to see her again. But what did you expect her to do? a nagging inner voice kept asking. Fall to her knees and beg you to stay?

  As he left the lights of Maidstone behind and plunged into the dark lanes of the Kentish countryside, his eye was caught by the flicker of a bonfire among the trees, its black smoke rising up in the cold air to mingle with the blacker blackness of the night sky.

  He found himself remembering the day the rotunda had been blown up. Funny he had forgotten about that! Had it been an attempt on Ginny’s life? Tansy, Barbara, Cyril, and Jeffrey all stood to inherit a considerable sum of money should Ginny die. But he could not picture either of the relatives as a murderer. They would play silly, malicious tricks, yes, but murder! It was unthinkable, and this was England, after all.

  But then the thought would not go away. Somehow or other, because the explosion had been so improbable, so divorced from the humdrum happenings of their everyday lives, they had dismissed it from their minds. It was unbelievable that such a thing had taken place on the sleepy grounds of a country house; unbelievable that such a thing would happen again.r />
  And what did Ginny think?

  What, for that matter, did Ginny Bloggs think about anything? Lord Gerald had once again been courted and feted by his admiring clique of modern hard young women, and knew himself to be considered extremely attractive. He had been a fool to allow himself to let one silly little chit upset him so.

  Despite the warmth of his fur coat he shivered in the November cold. The welcoming lights of an inn flickered in the darkness and then vanished from view as the narrow road twisted and curved. He would drop in and warm himself before continuing his journey. It really was beastly cold and he wished now that he had taken the train.

  The public bar of the inn was nearly empty, but it was warm and cozy, with a good fire crackling up the chimney and the old oak of the small bar counter gleaming under the soft light of oil lamps hung from the ancient blackened rafters.

  Lord Gerald ordered a whisky and hot water and turned to look along the bar.

  A telegraph boy, surely too young to be out so late and to be drinking so much, gave him a cheeky wink and remarked, “Cold night out, guv.” His lordship was about to resort to that well-known characteristic of the aristocracy in dealing with inferiors who stepped out of their place by becoming to all intents and purposes totally deaf, but there was something cheerful and cheeky about the boy’s freckled face, so instead he grinned back and agreed it was indeed cold.

  Then, “You’re out late,” said Gerald.

  “I been delivering a wire up Courtney way,” said the boy, “and very nicely I did out of it, too. Very nicely, guv. A gold sovereign I got for my trouble.”

  “Not bad news I hope?” asked Gerald.

  “No, gov. It was only to say as how Miss Bloggs was ketchin’ the late train and was for to be met at the station,” said the boy, seemingly unaware of the privacy of His Majesty’s marconigrams.

  Gerald thoughtfully finished his drink. He had a sudden overwhelming desire to see Ginny again, to prove to himself that she could no longer upset him. He finished his drink and walked outside.

  The cold air hit him like a body blow. Ginny would already be nearly home and it was surely too late for a social call. Furthermore, it was frightfully cold. He cranked up the cold engine of his motor and then stood undecided in the light of its lamps. A carriage was coming along the road at a great rate. Far too fast to be traveling along roads so dark and icy, he thought. Probably some young county bloods with more horseflesh than sense, he reflected. The cold and the dark were somehow upsetting, bringing back the nervous unrest he had felt all evening. Much better to go home to bed and put all his confused emotions to sleep.

  Ginny Bloggs was very, very tired. The journey had been long and boring. A garrulous old lady had shared her compartment as far as London. The train to London had been stuffy and overheated and the slow local train into the dark reaches of Kent had been cold and chilly. She stepped down onto the wooden station platform at the small country station of Gyrencester, the nearest to home, and wondered at the vagaries of the English climate. Bolton had been relatively warm for November and she was therefore underdressed for the freezing temperatures of Kent.

  “Kerridge is waiting, mum,” said the porter, picking up her bags. “Been waiting this half hour or more. Bad for them horses. Told ’im to walk them but he don’t speak none.”

  The porter, Ginny knew, was old and garrulous and quite likely to hold her on the platform until she froze unless she simply kept on walking to the carriage. She accordingly bolted for the haven of the carriage, which she could see standing in the stable yard. To her surprise the silent figure on the box made no move to jump down and assist her into the carriage but the door was standing open—letting all that nasty cold air into the coach, thought Ginny angrily—and Ginny climbed inside and resolved to have a few sharp words with whatever servant was responsible as soon as she got home.

  The servant did seem to have come to life, she noticed sourly, as a dark figure appeared outside the window and fiddled with the catch of the door. There was a slight jerk as her bags were strapped up on the back, another bump as the coachman climbed back on the box, and the carriage began to move slowly at first and then with increasing speed as the lights of the station were left behind. Then Ginny noticed with surprise that there were no rugs in the carriage and that the floor was covered in straw. Just like an old-fashioned four-wheeler, she thought.

  The carriage took a bend at breakneck speed and Ginny rapped on the roof of the coach with her umbrella. Still the carriage hurtled on.

  Ginny stared out vacantly at the dim, flying landscape of unfamiliar trees and fields, now shining with frost under a pale moon. Whatever direction the carriage was traveling, it was not going to Courtney. Slowly she edged toward the door and lifted the strap. The door would not open. She jerked at the strap, first on one side and then the other, and then she began to bang on the roof again with her umbrella.

  But still the carriage would not stop.

  Lord Gerald started to walk toward his motor. He climbed in and adjusted his driving goggles and prepared to move off. He would just let those idiots in that carriage get by first. At the rate they were driving they were liable to end up in a ditch.

  Four steaming horses raced around the bend, vapor pouring from their mouths and sparks flying from their hooves, a dark, muffled figure crouched on the box.

  The carriage flew past.

  And the white, frightened face of Ginny Bloggs stared out at him through the window of the carriage. And then it was gone.

  I’m seeing things, thought Gerald, determinedly giving chase just the same. I’ve thought so much about that dratted girl, I’m seeing things.

  He raced after the coach, honking his horn furiously, but still it raced on. Above the sound of his engine he thought he could hear a crash like breaking glass. Then as the trees on either side of the road vanished and the faint moonlight washed over the frosty fields, he saw Ginny’s head and shoulders appearing out of the window of the hurtling carriage. He tried to shout to her to wait, that he was gaining, that he would soon rescue her.

  But suddenly her slight figure went hurtling straight through the window of the carriage and landed with a sickening thud on the road. He swerved like a madman, and the only tree on that stretch of road loomed up in front of him and his Lanchester ploughed straight into it.

  His windscreen shattered into a thousand fragments, and with the part of his brain that still seemed to be working, he realized that if he had not been so muffled and goggled and scarfed and wrapped up, his face would have been cut to ribbons. The thought of fire galvanized him and without waiting to see whether he had any broken bones or not, he scrambled from the wreck of his car and stumbled across the icy road to where the still figure lay in the road.

  Ginny had removed her hat and coat in order to make her escape. She still clutched the tattered remains of an umbrella in her hand. He guessed she must have smashed the window of the carriage with its heavy silver handle.

  He knelt down in the road beside her, frightened to touch her in case she had broken bones, frightened she was dead.

  And then “Hullo, Lord Gerald,” said Ginny Bloggs faintly, opening her eyes and staring up at him.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered, as if the sound of a raised voice might hurt her.

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny with much of her old irritatingly vague manner.

  “Well, you’d better move yourself and find out before you freeze to death,” he said, starting to take off his coat.

  Ginny sat up very slowly and carefully and cautiously moved her arms and legs.

  “No bones broken,” she said, with a sigh of relief.

  He wrapped his heavy motoring coat around her and helped her to her feet, noticing with a strange pang of worry that she seemed to have lost a great deal of weight.

  “We had better try to walk back to that inn,” said Lord Gerald. “I could leave you here and go on to fetch help—”

  “Don’t,” said Ginn
y. “He might come back.”

  “Now—what happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny. “The carriage was waiting at the station and I just got in. I thought it was odd at the time, because usually there are the footmen to open the door and the coachman to give me a friendly welcome. But I was so cold and tired and Muggles—you know Muggles, the porter—seemed all set for a long chat and I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Silly of me. The worst moment was when I tried the doors and found they would not open.”

  She gave a sudden shudder and he put an arm around her as they walked along the road through the unearthly peace of the night, with the whitening fields stretched on either side and the great skeletal arms of the winter trees stretching up to a star-laden sky.

  “I saw you at the inn,” Ginny went on. “I didn’t know you were following me. It looked to me as if my last chance of aid were going to simply stand there watching me go by. I became desperate, and then I started to smash in the window. If you hadn’t been behind us, he might have stopped when he heard the sound of breaking glass, but as it was—”

  She suddenly pulled herself away from his arm and staggered to the side of the road and was violently sick. He stood shivering and waiting tactfully until she had recovered.

  “Shock,” said Ginny finally, tottering back to him and gratefully accepting the help of his arm. “Do you think it was another practical joke?”

  “No one would go to such lengths,” said Gerald, and then paused. Would they? Some pretty awful practical jokes were played.

  There had been the case of young Felicity Bryce-Jones, who had been abducted on a London street in broad daylight by two ferocious-looking men, who had carried her off in a carriage at pistol point. They were ponces, they had told the terrified Felicity, and they were going to ship her off to Turkey, where they could get fifty pounds sterling for her. Felicity, half dead with fright, had been carried aboard a yacht anchored in Rye Bay to find herself welcomed by a party of cheering friends, all splitting their sides with laughter at the joke. They had all been terribly disappointed in Felicity and had called her a bad sport when she had damped the spirits of the party by throwing a screaming fit of hysterics and then taking to her bed with a high temperature for three weeks.