The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  How poor Kitty longed for warm, pretty, and feminine clothes!

  She brushed her fine brown hair till it crackled down to her waist. If only she could wear it up. But mama said she must not put it up until her coming-out, but how and where she was to come out was a mystery since the Harrisons were obviously in very straightened circumstances.

  The house on the edge of Hampstead Heath in North London was of elegant proportions, but the heavy Victorian furniture was old and worn and the curtains and carpets, threadbare. Unlike their wealthier neighbors, the Harrisons only kept a small staff, one general cook-housekeeper, one parlor maid, and a “daily” to do the heavy work.

  Mrs. Harrison was already fussing around the dining room when Kitty made her entrance. She was a thin, angular woman with peculiarly light, colorless eyes. Her heavy iron-gray hair was swept up on top of her head and anchored in place by a battery of ferocious steel pins which were forever escaping from their moorings and rattling to the floor. She wore a long tweed jacket and skirt, more suited to the winter’s day than Kitty’s best silk.

  The meager breakfast was spread among a selection of tarnished silver dishes on the sideboard. Selecting two pieces of kidney and a thin sliver of toast, Mrs. Harrison turned to her shivering daughter. “I do wish we could persuade Mr. Harrison to let you have a length of wool for a winter dress, my dear. But as it is, I am afraid you must wear your silk. We must always remember to keep up appearances in front of Lady Worthing for, although we cannot aspire to her level of society and must always know our place, I know she appreciates our efforts to be always well-dressed.”

  Kitty edged toward the tiny fire in the grate that seemed unable to combat the stuffy cold of the overfurnished room with its heavy marble nudes—bought at an auction at Jobson’s in a rare extravagant mood by Mr. Harrison—the heavy red, plush chairs, the draped mantel crowded with photographs and ancient seaside shell mementos, the dining table swathed in three heavy cloths and the massive, threadbare velvet curtains with their dingy bobbles framing the winter’s scene of the Heath. Various oil paintings in need of cleaning decorated the walls with their massive gilt frames. Hot and airless in summer and cold and suffocating in winter, it seemed a fitting room for the massive, heavy Harrison meals of cuts of cheap meat and tired vegetables bought for a few pence at the end of the day, in the stalls of Camden Town market.

  Mrs. Harrison was wont to bemoan the fact that no amount of solid feeding would plump out Kitty’s delicate, slim figure into the rounded hour-glass mold which was so fashionable. Mrs. Harrison had long put away dreams of getting a foot into high society by means of a dazzling marriage for her daughter. In her eyes, Kitty was plain and depressingly timid. The fact that her own overbearing personality had brought about the latter fault never once occurred to her and the more shy Kitty became, the more raucous and bullying her mother grew.

  With a martyred sigh, she finished her breakfast. “Come along, Kitty. Don’t dawdle. Have you got your Bible? Now do remember to smile when Lady Worthing addresses you. It is a most important connection for me. “She hustled Kitty before her and out into the hallway, past the study door where her father sat alone with his mysterious accounts, and then into the freezing air of the winter’s day.

  The frozen trees on the Heath stood mournfully under their coating of hoar frost and raised their twisted limbs up to the leaden sky as if praying hopelessly for spring.

  Mrs. Harrison hurried up the icy road pushing Kitty in front of her like an angry mother hen with a recalcitrant chick. Kitty’s long tweed cape was insufficient to keep out the bite of the wind, sweeping over the frozen ponds on the Heath from Highgate. The way other people dreamt of riches or power, Kitty dreamt simply of warmth. Only listening with half an ear to her mother’s complaining monologue, she conjured up visions of enormous blazing fires burning merrily in bright uncluttered rooms.

  “Kitty, you are not attending.”

  “Yes, Mama. The housekeeper…”

  “Exactly. It is a disgrace. Mrs. Bennet wants 70 pounds a year. Ridiculous, I told her. Servants these days are getting so uppity. I told her there were only three of us to care for and…”

  Kitty went back to warm her hands at her dream fire. Cook-housekeepers came and went—each one more slovenly than the last. Mrs. Harrison always referred to each new addition as “our old retainer.”

  “I would turn her off tomorrow but one must look after old servants,” unaware that everyone knew that the old retainer had been with them only a few months.

  At last they reached the church. Kitty waved to several of her old schoolfriends and got a lecture from her mother. “You must cut these connections, Kitty. Not at all the thing. Miss Bates’s seminary may have been excellent for the money, but do remember these are the daughters of shopkeepers. You must try to get more elegant connections.”

  Kitty bowed her head and followed her mother into the church. The familiar Anglican smell of oil heaters, damp prayer books, and incense greeted her. With a sinking heart, she noticed that Lady Worthing was already ensconced in her pew with her two daughters, Ann and Betty. As usual, she was unseasonably hatted. Her puglike face stared round the church from the shadow of a broad-brimmed straw hat that was topped up with a plethora of shiny, hard, wax fruit. The dead skins of several small ferrety animals hung around her ample bosom, their glass eyes gazing fixedly at the congregation in a ludicrous parody of their owner’s stare.

  The Reverend James Ponsonby-Smythe was reading from the Old Testament and the passage he had selected seemed entirely composed of who begat whom. Kitty sat on in an agony of boredom. Her despised friends were giggling and whispering and passing each other notes. “What fun it would be to be part of it all,” thought poor Kitty. “Must I always be condemned to live in this sort of social isolation—neither belonging to the one class or the other?”

  There was a sudden stir at the back of the church. Heads began to turn and even Lady Worthing’s glassy eyes lit up with a sort of unholy glee. Kitty was about to risk a parental rebuke and turn and stare, when she noticed that her mother was twisted round in the pew, blatantly staring herself.

  The object of all this attention was standing at the back of the church, leaning languidly on his cane. Her first impression of him was that he was extremely handsome. Her second, that he had one of the cruelest and most decadent faces she had seen outside the covers of a history book. Above his long, frogged, beaver coat, his face stood out against the dimness of the church with the translucent whiteness of alabaster. His hooded eyes surveyed the suburban congregation with weary contempt. His black, luxuriant curls were worn slightly longer than the common fashion and in his long white fingers, he carried a pair of lavender gloves. Suddenly, Kitty realized that he was looking straight at her. A mocking light flashed across his pale gray eyes, and he unmistakably winked.

  “Well, really,” said Kitty’s mother, bridling. “Turn round this instant, miss. That man is nothing but a—a—masher.”

  Kitty dutifully turned around. Secretly she was pleased. Mrs. Harrison had dinned into Kitty day and night about how plain she was and how undistinguished. It was nice to get a tiny bit of attention from one of that mysterious opposite sex.

  As they rose to leave the church, Mrs. Harrison drew Kitty close to her to prevent the “masher” from making any further overtures and then stopped on the church porch with a cluck of dismay, for there was that very gentleman being positively beamed upon by Lady Worthing. Kitty tried not to giggle. Lady Worthing was presenting one daughter after another to the gentleman, in feverish rotation. “This is my little Betty. And this is dear Ann. Did I introduce Betty? Now you must meet Ann. Betty have you…”

  She broke off with a frown as she saw Mrs. Harrison approaching and gave a small, imperious wave of her plump hand encased in a dog-skin glove, in an attempt to dismiss the approaching distraction. But Mrs. Harrison was made of sterner stuff.

  “My dear Lady Worthing,” gushed Mrs. Harrison, sailing forward as
majestically as King Edward’s yacht at Cowes. “I was just saying to Kitty this morning—was I not, Kitty?—that if my dear Lady Worthing is not in church then somehow Sunday will just not be Sunday.”

  “Indeed,” said Lady Worthing, reluctantly giving Mrs. Harrison two fingers to shake. She then turned her broad back to screen Mrs. Harrison from the gentleman, but he demanded in a lazy drawl, “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Lady Worthing?”

  Lady Worthing turned slowly, her protruding eyes holding an expression which boded ill for Mrs. Harrison’s future social ambitions. “Mrs. Harrison—Lord Chesworth—Lord Chesworth—Mrs. Harrison.” His lordship gave a slight bow and turned his eyes questioningly at Kitty. “Oh, er…” humphed Lady Worthing, “this is her daughter, Kitty. Now as I was saying….” She again presented her back to the Harrisons, but Mrs. Harrison nipped around her and faced Lord Chesworth, smiling and fluttering. “What brings you to our Hampstead church. Lord Chesworth?” gushed Mrs. Harrison while her mind deftly flicked the pages of the peerage. She had got it! Lord Peter Chesworth, third Baron Reamington. Unmarried!

  “I was passing,” said Lord Chesworth, “and felt in need of spiritual guidance.” His eyes raked over Kitty with near insolence, taking in the shabby tweed coat and depressing felt hat. Kitty was suddenly aware of the darns in her gloves and pulled down her sleeves with a jerk.

  Lady Worthing laughed indulgently. “We have a nice little congregation here. Smells a bit of the shop but worthy people for all that.”

  Again the mocking gleam came into Lord Chesworth’s eyes. “I met your late husband a few years ago, Lady Worthing. He gave me a very interesting lecture on the cotton mills of Lancashire.”

  Lady Worthing flushed an unlovely shade of red. Sir Jacob Worthing had made his money out of his mills and some unkind people had said that he had bought his knighthood. Since his death the previous year, Lady Worthing had lived with the polite fiction that their money came from “[their] estates in the north.”

  Small, powdery flakes of snow were beginning to fall from the leaden sky. Kitty shivered.

  “We shall all catch pneumonia if we stand here chatting,” said his lordship. “Good day to you, ladies.” With that, his tall figure strode off.

  The ladies watched him mount into a high-strung brougham outside the churchyard gate.

  The coachman cracked his whip, the footman sprang up behind, and the party watched in silence until the erect figure of Lord Chesworth had disappeared around the corner.

  Lady Worthing turned to Mrs. Harrison with a look of undisguised venom. “I never thought that you would be so encroaching, Mrs. Harrison. We have often talked about various types not knowing their place.” And before Mrs. Harrison could reply, she swung her small animals around her thick neck, marshalled her two insipid daughters in front of her, and marched to her carriage.

  It was Mrs. Harrison’s darkest hour. Lady Worthing’s voice had carried around the churchyard. She had been humiliated in front of the very people she despised. Two spots of color burned on her thin, yellowish cheeks and in some obscure way, she felt the fault was Kitty’s.

  “This would never have happened,” she snapped, “if you had not been making sheep’s eyes at his lordship in church.”

  “But I didn’t, Mama,” cried Kitty.

  “Nonsense. Of course you did. A gentleman like that would not take notice of a little girl like you, otherwise. You’re bold, Kitty, that’s what you are.”

  “You said he was a masher,” said Kitty, feeling for the first time a small spark of rebellion.

  “How dare you answer me back!” said Mrs. Harrison, taking Kitty’s arm in a painful grip. “That was before I knew he was a Baron!”

  Luncheon was a gloomy affair. Cold mutton followed by cold ham followed by cold pudding. Mrs. Harrison had tried to persuade the servants to serve hot food on Sundays, as they now did in the more fashionable households, but her small staff were underpaid and knew it. Although they were afraid of Mrs. Harrison’s bullying manner, they knew to an inch what they could get away with. And so unfashionable, cold food lay untouched in front of Mrs. Harrison’s jaundiced eye. She tried to tell her husband of her woes, but Mr. Harrison retreated to his study with his usual rejoinder, “Wish you had more money, don’t you. Well, you ain’t getting any.”

  Kitty suddenly remembered a summer’s day when she was ten years old and her father had taken her to Southend. What a jolly, affectionate father he had been then! How the sun had shone and the water had sparkled and the band had played. There had been another lady there, very young and pretty, who had enjoyed the day as much as Kitty. But by evening, her father and the lady had had some kind of disagreement and ever since, he had become the taciturn, withdrawn man, she knew now.

  Sometimes on Wednesday evenings there was the spark of the old Frederick Harrison. He always went out on Wednesday evenings without fail, resplendent in the glory of two waistcoats and a ruby pin and returned long after Kitty had gone to bed. Once, when she had crept down in the early hours of Thursday morning to get a glass of milk from the kitchen, she had met him coming home. He had been standing in the doorway of the hall, swaying slightly. He had looked at her in surprise as if he had never seen her before and suddenly taken an orchid out of his buttonhole and handed it to her. As she had stood there in amazement, looking at the beautiful flower, he had rapped out harshly, “Well. What y’ standing there for. Get to bed.”

  Fine snow was beginning to pile up on the window ledges of the dining room. “Perhaps we should not go to Camden Town today, Mama,” ventured Kitty. But Mrs. Harrison was still smarting from Lady Worthing’s snub and the only way to heal the wound was to enjoy her usual Sunday pastime.

  “I am so very cold, Mama,” said Kitty. “Can’t I put on something warmer?”

  “Certainly not,” snapped Mrs. Harrison. “We must always look our best before our social inferiors.”

  Kitty sighed as she thought of another Sunday afternoon with the poor Pugsleys, who lived in a crowded tenement in Camden Town, and who always seemed to have another baby.

  At least I will be warm, she thought, as she marched behind her mother carrying a heavy earthenware pot of soup. People like the Pugsleys knew how to keep warm in winter even if they had to burn the furniture.

  By the time Mrs. Harrison had delivered herself of her usual homily on the disease of poverty and the Pugsleys had accepted the soup with all the necessary resentful gratitude, it was growing dark. In an unexpected fit of generosity, Mrs. Harrison took a hansom home and warmed herself considerably with a spirited altercation with the cabby who wanted a whole shilling.

  As Kitty went to bed that night, she was haunted by a thin white face and drooping eyelids. Well, she would dream about him and pretend that he was her Prince Charming. Goodness knows, there was no one else.

  By Monday morning, the light snow had stopped falling and left enough to be uncomfortable and not enough to be dramatic. Mr. Harrison departed for the city and Mrs. Harrison, thinking that perhaps her daughter had charms that she had failed to perceive, sent her off to the drapers in the high street to buy brown-velvet ribbons to embellish that Sunday silk dress.

  The draper’s son, John Stokes, was busy stacking up bales of cloth as Kitty entered the dark shop. She was the only customer.

  John Stokes was a plump young man with a penchant for tight clothes. Everything he wore was tight, his waistcoat, his trousers and his gloves. When he wore his hat on Sundays, even it was so tight, it left a red ring impressed on his chubby forehead. Although only two years older than Kitty, he liked to play man-of-the-world whenever she came into the shop.

  “Do you know where I went last night, Kitty?”

  Kitty shook her head shyly.

  “Went to the music hall. I had the best time ever. What’s say you come along with me one evening this week?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” said Kitty much alarmed. “Mama would never let me go anywhere unchaperoned and she would never, never let me
go to a music hall.”

  “C’mon, Kitty. What about Wednesday night? You’ll be safe with me. All you’ve got to do is say you’re staying the evening at a friend’s.”

  “I’m not allowed any friends,” said Kitty bitterly. “Unless you count having Lady Worthing’s daughters sneer at me.”

  “Why, that’s it!” said John. “Say you’re staying with Ann and Betty. Lady Worthing isn’t going to speak to your mother again. We all heard her on Sunday. She’ll gladly let you go and when Lady Worthing doesn’t speak to her next Sunday, she’ll just think she’s gone cranky again. Let’s go. You never get any fun. Think of it. All the music and lights and the people all dressed up.”

  The shop bell clanged and he turned away to serve the new customer, leaving Kitty with her thoughts. Somewhere in that other world of the heart of London was Lord Chesworth and, with the new Edwardian freedom, the aristocracy had been known to frequent music halls—even some of the ladies. John Stokes was a bit silly, but she had known him all her life and it would be just like going out with a brother.

  Kitty stared out unseeingly at the snowy high street. The little spark of rebellion which had been there on Sunday grew to a small flame. This might be her only chance to have some fun. She took a deep breath and after the customer had left, said firmly, “Yes, John. I would like to go with you very much.”

  “That’s the ticket,” said John. “I’ll pick you up in a hansom at eight. No! Not at the house. I’ll wait down at the corner.”

  Kitty lived through each hour until Wednesday night in a fever of apprehension. Mrs. Harrison had delightedly swallowed the story, but to Kitty’s horror, had bragged about her forthcoming visit to the Worthings to all and sundry. It was too late to retract.