The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  “Have you tried Sing Sing?” asked Cuthbert in a conversational voice. “Damned racketeers all you bally American chappies. Thank God for old England, that’s what I say.”

  There was a murmur of agreement. Quite a lot of the young men had been rejected by the Maguire sisters and quite a lot of the young ladies were jealous.

  But the whole thing would have passed over had not Mr. Joseph Maguire decided to make a speech. As snazzily dressed as a New Orleans riverboat gambler, complete with frilled shirt and a plethora of rings, Mr. Joseph Maguire addressed the startled guests.

  In what he fondly imagined to be the very best of English accents, he began: “Folks. Youse have all got it wrong. Me and my lady wife are as English as the next man. Why, just listen to my voice. What-ho! Toodle-pip and all that.” He gave a fat laugh. Nobody joined in but Bernie, who was leaning back in his chair, his little eyes twinkling with glee. “Attaboy, Joe,” he cheered.

  “Now it seems that my lovely daughters what I brung up good are to marry into the arrerstocracy. Not that one young man has asked me permission yet but I knows the love light in a chap’s eyes when I sees it.” He gave Lord David a broad wink. Molly was dying by inches in her chair and did not see Lord David wink back.

  “Sit down,” pleaded Mrs. Maguire. “Everyone’s laughing at you.” She held a wisp of handkerchief to her brow in what she fondly hoped was a genteel way.

  “Sit down,” Cynthia suddenly mimicked, ruthlessly copying Mrs. Maguire’s gestures. “Everyone’s laughing at you.”

  The company roared with delight as Mr. Maguire looked stupidly around like a large bull at the sound of two wives.

  That did it. The young things had found a new sport. It was open season on Americans.

  Catcalls, jeers, bread-throwing surrounded the bewildered Mr. Maguire. He looked slowly down at his wife, who was in tears, and then at Cuthbert Postlethwaite, who was laughing the hardest. He walked slowly toward Cuthbert and stood behind that young man’s chair. He gently picked up the huge Cuthbert as if he were no more than a rag doll, and with one massive sweep of his great arms, threw Cuthbert through the French windows and into the garden. Fortunately for Cuthbert the windows were open, but unfortunately the gardeners had been re-edging the flower beds and he landed on a border of razor-clam shells like a ton of bricks.

  Molly sat in a daze of pain and hurt. Lord David was laughing at her father, great tears of mirth rolling down his face. He recovered and was about to turn to Molly and say, “Your father is absolutely splendid, Molly, I’m going over there to shake him by the hand,” when Molly walked away—over to where a large jelly stood quivering on a sideboard. She picked it up very carefully, walked over to Cynthia, and placed the bowl of ice-cold jelly upside-down tenderly on top of Cynthia’s immaculate coiffure.

  The guests came out of their state of shock and joined battle. Lady Fanny screamed and wept as ice cream, lobster patties, cream cakes, and the rest of what had been a sumptuous buffet went flying around the room.

  It was a long time before the guests realized they were fighting each other.

  The Maguire family—and Bernie—had gone.

  A thin, watery sunlight broke through the clouds as the good ship Titania eased its way out from Southampton docks.

  “Good-bye, England!” said Molly viciously.

  “I hope I never set foot in this cursed country again.”

  A thin drizzle was still falling. Mrs. Maguire had gone to lie down in her cabin and was watched over anxiously by her husband.

  Bernie, having ascertained that Molly would not consider marrying him, had cheerfully turned his attention to the prettiest girls on board.

  The ship moved farther away.

  “Look!” cried Mary. “Oh, look!”

  The town band of Hadsea had rapidly debouched from a charabanc and were plunging into the resounding strains of “Rule Britannia.” It seemed to be the only tune they knew. Two little boys, recognizable even in the widening distance as Bobby and Jim Wheelan, were hoisting a banner in front of the crowd of townspeople. “What does it say, Molly?” gasped Mary.” I can’t read. I’m crying.”

  Molly read slowly, “It says, GOOD LUCK TO THE MAGUIRES. COME BACK HOME SOON.”

  Molly felt her own eyes fill with tears. The townspeople cheered and waved and she suddenly found herself cheering and waving back.

  “There’s Mrs. Pomfret…and Billy, I do declare,” said Mary, wiping her streaming eyes.

  The girls waved and waved until they could no longer see the figures on the dock.

  “Well, I never,” said Molly Maguire, wiping her own eyes. “It just goes to show. I don’t think we ever really knew them.”

  “It was so lovely,” said Mary. “The whole town must have been there.”

  The whole town, except two certain gentlemen, thought Molly, with a wrenching wave of sadness. “They’ve probably forgotten we exist,” she said. Mary nodded her head sadly. She did not even have to ask who Molly meant by “they.”

  “Well, that’s that,” said Roddy, turning away.” I still think we should have gone down to the front of the dock and waved or something.”

  “Why?” asked Lord David moodily. “Take it from me, dear boy, our romances were never meant to blossom. Of all the dashed self-sufficient girls…. Not an ounce of understanding for other people in her whole makeup. And she was downright cruel about poor Mrs. Pomfret. Look at the old Dowager Marchioness of Blexley. She married a young chap only this year.”

  Roddy looked at his friend uneasily. “It’s not quite the same, you know,” he ventured.” That sort of thing always went on in our set. It’s different for people like Mrs. Pomfret. I mean, it’s scandalous somehow.”

  “Snob!”

  “Well, it is… different, I mean,” said Roddy stubbornly. “That old postmistress will come to grief. The townspeople don’t like it one bit. She’ll lose her job.”

  Both men had remained at the back of the crowd of townspeople as the boat bearing the sisters back to America had sailed away. Both felt obscurely that they should have done something more dramatic.

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” said Lord David gloomily. “Too much difference in race and culture.”

  “What? Mrs. Pomfret and Billy?”

  “No, you ass! Us and the Maguires.”

  “It’s that difference that’s so intriguing,” said Roddy. “There’s a freshness, a charm, a—”

  “Shut up. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Anyway, think of all the times you’ve been in love. You’ll fall for someone by next week. You usually do.”

  Roddy eyed his tall friend out of the corner of his eye. There were times when Lord David made him feel as if he, Roddy, were back at school, tagging along at David’s heels and hanging on the older boy’s every word. He felt a little spark of rebellion. He no longer knew whether he was in love with Mary or not. All he knew was he had never felt so miserable or lost in his life.

  Lord David swung himself into his new toy—a Lanchester automobile. He had fondly imagined bowling along the country roads with Molly Maguire, watching the sun on her hair and listening to the fascinating twang of her American accent. But the Maguires had gone and taken the summer with them.

  “Never mind,’ he said to Roddy. “Think how super London will look after Hadseal’”

  But somehow the wretched Maguires seemed to have tainted London as well. The prettiest of debutantes seemed insipid, the wittiest of remarks, mere social posturing.

  His flat in town looked dark and gloomy and overly masculine, with its heavy mahogany furniture and framed hunting prints. Every morning he flicked hurriedly through his mail, looking for an American postmark and feeling weary and dejected when there was none.

  After two months had passed since the Maguire sisters’ departure, he noticed with an almost clinical interest that the pain had not lessened. He had not seen Roddy for some time and began to wonder if his friend were avoiding him.

  One of the least p
leasant reminders of the summer, he reflected, was that Jennifer Strange girl, who seemed to have an uncanny knack of popping up like a rabbit every time he set a foot outside his door. Girls like Jennifer, thought Lord David sourly, positively seemed to relish being trodden on. The worse the snub or set-down, the more devoted she seemed to become.

  His reverie was broken by the entrance of his man, who informed him that “two persons were desirous of seeing him.’”

  “I would have turned them away, my lord,” said the gentleman’s gentleman with awful hauteur, “but the female person claimed acquaintanceship with you, my lord. Said she met you last summer.”

  Lord David’s harsh features softened in an almost angelic smile. “Show her in, man. Show her in!’ he cried.

  He should have known it wouldn’t be Molly, he thought dismally, as a shrinking Mrs. Pomfret was ushered in, followed by the lumbering bulk of Billy.

  “Oh, my lord,” twittered Mrs. Pomfret. “So kind. I had no one else to turn to. People are awful…” Here she burst into noisy tears, while Billy stood on one foot and grinned and looked vacantly around the room.

  “Here, now,” said Lord David, ringing the bell and ordering tea and smelling salts. “You shall have some refreshment and then you will tell me all about it.”

  He waited patiently until the distressed postmistress had blown her nose and taken several gulps of tea. “I just had to ask for help, my lord. They have taken my job away from me!”

  Lord David waited patiently until the next paroxysm of sobs had died away. “What happened?” he asked gently.

  Piecing together Mrs. Pomfret’s disjointed speech, he gathered that the townspeople did not approve in the least of her proposed marriage. They had been looking for an excuse to get rid of her and finally found one. Old Mr. Apple, who had delivered the post for half a century, was due to retire. She had suggested that Billy should have the job. The townspeople had managed to get Mr. Apple to write a letter to the postal department, complaining that he was being ousted from his job.

  “So I lost mine,” hiccuped Mrs. Pomfret. “They would not even see me at the head office. What am I to do? I don’t want charity, my lord. I know Miss Maguire would have helped me and I was going to write to her, but then I saw that item in the social column of the Daily Mail. Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. So I—”

  “What!” yelled Lord David.

  “Now I-I’ve made you angry,” wailed Mrs. Pomfret. Up came the handkerchief and out came the sobs.

  Lord David turned in exasperation to Billy. “What’s all this about? I mean—what’s happened to Miss Maguire?”

  “Dunno!” said Billy laconically, looking out the window.

  Lord David set himself feverishly to calming Mrs. Pomfret again and drew the story from her bit by bit.

  The Maguires were ruined. Faulty speculations on Wall Street had taken every penny of their fortune, but the newspaper article had not said what had become of them.

  Lord David sat very still. Yellow fog was pressing itself against the window panes and the high metallic pipe of a starling seemed to intensify the cold of the winter’s day outside. A coal shifted and fell on the hearth and he realized Mrs. Pomfret was saying something about America.

  ”Billy’s ever so keen on Westerns and he’s a good worker and I thought, my lord, since various titled gentlemen have been buying ranches in the states, perhaps you know of someone who would be willing to employ Billy.”

  Lord David swung around to look at Billy Barnstable. “Do you agree with this idea, Billy?”

  “Sure,” grinned Billy, twirling two imaginary shooting irons. “Pow! Pow!”

  “I think it could be arranged,” said Lord David slowly. “And you must allow me to pay your fare. No! I insist. Come back at the same time tomorrow and I will let you know what I have arranged. May I have a word with you in private, Mrs. Pomfret?”

  She twittered and fussed over Billy, straightening his tie and pulling down his jacket, before she allowed him to be led away.

  Lord David settled back in his chair and tried to push the picture of a starving and destitute Molly from his mind.

  “Ah, Mrs. Pomfret,” he said, searching for the right words. “Are you sure this is a good idea of yours? The wild West is not the same country that Billy finds in his books. He will find it very rough—hard work and long hours.”

  “I have great faith in Billy,” said Mrs. Pomfret proudly. “I am not afraid of going to a new country. I am sure it will all be very exciting. In Sage Sunset the heroine, Annie MacPherson, is a simple country girl from England and she copes marvelously. ‘You gotta learn to shoot straight and hold your head high in this here country,’ she says, tossing her russet hair from her eyes and looking across the sage brush. Now, I am not young, my lord, and my hair is gray, but it is still quite the same thing, is it not?”

  “Quite,” said Lord David, thinking that Mrs.

  Pomfret might come up against some bad shocks. But she seemed determined to go through with her marriage to Billy, and the chap was a farm worker, after all.

  “So long as you know what you are doing,” he said heavily. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

  He waved aside her frantic thanks, desperate to get rid of her so that he could turn his mind to the problem of Molly.

  After Mrs. Pomfret had twittered her way out, he seized his hat and cane and headed for his club in St. James’s.

  He found the Marquess of Leamouth buried in the depths of an armchair, a copy of the Daily Mail lying open on the table in front of him.

  “Heard the news?” asked Lord David, taking the chair opposite.

  Roddy nodded. “Happens to a lot of these American big shots,” he said indifferently. “One minute they’re all over the Riviera and the next minute they sink without a trace.”

  Lord David examined the great ache in his own heart with the clinical detachment of a surgeon and looked at his friend with some surprise. “And?” he demanded.

  “And what?” said Roddy. “I say, have you seen the latest beauty, Deborah Willinton-James? Tremendous girl. Biggest eyes you’ve ever seen and a magnificent pair of shoulders. I met her…”

  Lord David’s thin black brows snapped together and his long mouth was set in a hard line. “I should have known,” he said bitterly. “You’ve got a heart like a damned butterfly, and I’m dashed well not going to sit here listening to you waffling on about some bally little society tart.”

  He strode from the room, snatching his hat and cane from the cloakroom on the way out and muttering curses under his breath.

  He, Lord David Manley, would settle Mrs. Pomfret’s boring problem by purchasing her steamship tickets at the shipping office, and while he was there he would damn well purchase one for himself and then he would scour every street in New York City for Miss Molly Maguire and he would drag her back to England by the hair if need be.

  Roddy stood at the window of the club and watched the tall figure of his friend striding off into the fog. He was glad to see him go. He did not want any more lectures on the fickleness of his heart. He did not want his somewhat overpowering friend to know that only that morning he had rushed out and impetuously bought a steamship ticket.

  Molly was able to take care of herself. But Mary! He thought of Mary’s fragile beauty. He thought of her penniless in the midst of that terrifying city and he hoped to God he could get there before it was too late.

  Jennifer Strange waited until Lord David had left the steamship ticket office and then went in. Yes, said the fussy little clerk, his lordship had just bought a ticket for the liner Triton, which was sailing tomorrow. Did miss want a ticket also? No, miss did not. She wanted to go home that minute and write to Molly Maguire. Jennifer had an American friend in Brooklyn Heights, who, she felt sure, would find Miss Maguire’s address and make sure the letter was delivered. It was the least she could do!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Where on earth have you been, girl? Of all the stupid days to take time off. I
declare I don’t know what servants are coming to.”

  “The snow is falling quite heavily,” said Miss Mary Maguire. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “Sorry! You’ll be a lot sorrier, my girl, if you do anything to wreck my dinner party,” snapped Mrs. Carter III. “This is the most important evening of my life. Go to Jenkins immediately and he will tell you your duties.”

  Mary reflected dismally that she had not expected Americans to treat their servants so. In retrospect, Lady Fanny’s army of servants seemed to have led a life of luxurious ease.

  She had accepted the position of parlormaid in Mrs. Carter’s Brooklyn Heights’ mansion because she had fondly remembered parlormaids as being somewhere quite high up the servants’ social scale. But they always seemed to be three mysterious servants short and the job was a long, long day of heavy labor, performing the duties of housemaid, scullery maid, kitchen maid, and parlormaid all rolled into one. It was always, “Just fill in for today, Mary, until Beth…or Amy…or Maggie comes back.” But the missing servants never materialized, and the heavy work went on.

  She walked down the steps to the servants’ quarters to find, to her surprise, that the black cook had been supplanted by a French chef and two assistants. Jenkins, the butler, looked up as Mary came in.

  “Thank God you’re back. Nearly lost your job. But I put in a word for you.” Jenkins was always “putting in a word” for Mary, and Mary had initially been grateful to him until she had realized that Mrs. Carter III would never fire a parlormaid who did so much work for such low pay. The servants in the neighboring brownstones had often urged Mary to find a more comfortable position. But Mary was afraid that a lessening of work would mean an increase of heartache.

  “What’s all the fuss?” she demanded, taking a clean cap and apron out of the cupboard. “I didn’t mean to be late. But the snow’s falling like anything, and all the traffic and everything’s jammed up along Fulton Street.”

  “Good,” said Jenkins with gloomy relish. He was a thin, cadaverous New Englander who seemed to thrive on disaster. “Maybe his lordship won’t turn up and it’ll serve her right.”