by M C Beaton
At eight o’clock precisely on Wednesday evening, Kitty walked out into the London fog and with rapid steps made her way to the corner, where the hansom was waiting under a streetlamp. Inside was John Stokes, tightly clad as ever, resplendent in an embroidered waistcoat and a small diamond pin. He smelled overpoweringly of cologne and his hair gleamed with oil. He carried a silk opera hat on his chubby knees and was bubbling over with excitement.
When they descended from the hansom and into the full glare of the gaslight outside the music hall, John noticed his young companion’s appearance for the first time. “Couldn’t you have at least put your hair up, Kitty? You look like a schoolgirl.”
Kitty replied with some spirit, “How could I, John? Mother would have known there was something up.”
John gave her a sulky look. “Oh, very well, then. C’mon.”
They entered the music hall and Kitty immediately wished she had not come. John led her to a table on the balcony and all around, in the glare of the gaslight, rose the raucous sound of male voices with their screeching female counterparts. “Time you got her home in bed,” screamed the woman at the next table, pointing at Kitty, while the men with her all roared with laughter.
Kitty felt very self-conscious. Eyes seemed to be staring at her from every corner. Why? She could swear there were eyes boring into her back. She wriggled in the best silk dress, bravely embellished with velvet ribbons, and turned around to find herself looking straight into her father’s flushed and furious face.
“Get out of here,” he snarled.
“But I’ve paid for the tickets,” bleated poor John.
“Get out!” screamed Mr. Harrison, raising his fist as if to strike. “I’ll deal with you, Kitty, when I get home.”
The sorry pair made their way back out into the shivering fog. No cabby seemed to want to go to Hampstead and when they at last got one who said he would take them for double fare, John was too weary to argue.
In sulky silence he left Kitty at the corner of the road and, with a heavy heart, she returned home to parry her mother’s avid questions about her evening with the Worthings. Kitty knew at that minute she should confess all, but her small stock of courage had run out. She finally escaped to her room and lay staring at the ceiling with frightened, sightless eyes, waiting for the sounds of her father coming home. What on earth had her staid father been doing at a music hall? Perhaps he had been entertaining some of those business associates he always talked about.
In the early hours of the morning she heard a heavy pounding at the street door. Frightened, she ran to the head of the stairs in time to see her mother going to answer it. As the servants would have said, their wages were not enough to make them want to get out of bed on a winter’s night.
A policeman stood there with his heavy helmet under his arm.
As in a dream, Kitty heard his voice. “Mrs. Harrison? There’s been sort of an accident, mum. Well, that is, Mr. Harrison… he’s dead.”
CHAPTER TWO
The house of mourning lay shrouded in wait for the funeral. It seemed to Kitty as if winter himself had decided to move in. Everything was as cold and hushed and silent as the day outside. White-faced and grim, Mrs. Harrison moved about the rooms, bemoaning the cost of the mourning clothes, the price of the funeral meats, and the moneyless future ahead.
“He always said we had no money in the bank,” moaned Mrs. Harrison. “Thank goodness he had the foresight to pay for his own funeral.”
Before the cortège moved off to Highgate Cemetery, a brougham carrying four very expensively dressed men arrived. They had come to pay their last respects to “old Fred.” Kitty recognized them as being the men who were with her father that night at the music hall, but thankfully they did not seem to recognize her.
Frederick Harrison had dropped dead of a heart attack outside the music hall. “He must have been passing. I mean he would never have gone anywhere like that,” said Mrs. Harrison.
At the subdued funeral banquet, Kitty heard one of the men exclaim to her mother, “Surprised to see old Fred lived in such a style. Always thought he was a warm man.” But Mrs. Harrison took it as a compliment and wished heartily that the guests would leave so that the lawyer could read the will. Lady Worthing had not deigned to appear, to Kitty’s relief and Mrs. Harrison’s eternal disappointment.
Finally, the last black-gloved and black-hatted figure had disappeared and the lawyer had arrived and was closeted with Mrs. Harrison in the study. Kitty sat at the foot of the stairs, a pale, frail figure in her new black dress, and reflected that it was ironic indeed that her father had to die before she could get a new dress. She could not really mourn the brusque, unfeeling man she had never really known, so she thought instead of her father as he had been on that glorious day at Southend and forgot the years in between.
A scream from the study made her head jerk up. They must be ruined indeed. She scratched timidly at the door but only got a furious shout of “go away” from her mother. She returned to her seat on the stairs.
At last the lawyer left and her mother called her into the once-forbidden territory of her father’s study. Mrs. Harrison’s eyes burned with an unnatural glitter and her hands were shaking.
“Sit down, Kitty,” she said in a deceptively mild voice. She indicated a high-backed, red-velvet chair and as Kitty sat down primly on the edge, she pulled another chair close until their knees were nearly touching and taking a deep breath, she began.
“Mr. Harrison’s lawyer has just read me his will in which he leaves everything to me. Everything! And we are rich, Kitty. Very rich. Rich in stocks and bonds and property. Rich enough to take our rightful place in society.”
Her voice took on a harder tone. “Mr. Harrison expressed the wish in his will that we should live as thriftily as always.” Her thin bosom swelled and the edges of her corset stood out sharply against her mourning black silk.
“Pah!” Kitty recoiled as her mother spat full on the papers on the desk. “Thriftily indeed! The old miser. Well, may he turn in his grave but we are going into society and you my dear are going to marry, a title. We shall have a house in the West End and the best of everything and may Lady Worthing rot in the suburbs till she dies.”
Mrs. Harrison’s hairpins rattled on the worn linoleum as she jabbed her head backward and forward in excitement. Her pale eyes burned with ambition.
“We shall have a carriage and—and—ladies’ maids and gorgeous gowns and—”
Kitty was frightened. “Couldn’t we wait in Hampstead a little bit longer,” she interrupted, “just to get used to the idea?”
“I am already used to poverty,” snapped Mrs. Harrison. “I do not intend to endure slovenly servants, cold rooms, and bad food for a minute longer than need be. I should have known you would snivel in that cowardly way of yours. Just remember, my girl, after all the sacrifices I have made for you, I intend to see you well-married as my reward.
“And you will marry the man I choose.”
Kitty bowed her head. The flame of rebellion flared up and died. Her mother sat staring into space, her lips moving soundlessly, as Kitty backed slowly from the room.
She desperately felt the need of a friend to talk to. Hetty Carson had been her close friend at school, but, as Hetty’s father ran the local bakery, Mrs. Harrison had cut the “undesirable connection.”
Coming to a decision, she put on her coat and hat and started to walk down the hill to the Carson home in Gospel Oak. A wild wind was rioting over the Heath as if blown in from some faraway summer country. Puddles were forming in the hard crust of snow and flocks of rooks wheeled and danced under the rushing clouds. Two children ran past her down the hill, bowling their metal hoops in front of them and leaving thin tracks in the slush. Another party of youngsters were sledging on the Heath. They all piled up in a heap at the bottom and fell into the wet snow, roaring and laughing, oblivious of the damage to their clothes. Kitty tried to imagine a household where children were allowed to arrive home
wet and muddy, but failed.
The Carsons’ trim, two-storied terrace house was ablaze with light in the darkening evening. Hetty herself answered the door and looked in amazement at her old schoolfriend.
“Why, Kitty!” she exclaimed. “What is the matter, you poor thing? Your papa was buried just today. What are you doing here?”
“Please, let me in, Hetty,” said Kitty. “I’ve got to talk to someone.”
Hetty led the way into a little parlor in the front of the house where a fire was blazing cheerfully and refused to let her friend speak until the tea tray with its load of pastries from the bakery had been brought in.
She was a plump, pretty girl with masses of shiny brown ringlets and a perpetual air of surprise in her wide, blue eyes.
As Kitty unfolded her tale of how the Harrisons were going to be rich and live in the West End, a flicker of jealousy darted across Hetty’s eyes.
“Honestly, Kitty. The things you complain about. I swear if you’d been told you had no money at all, you would have been happier.”
Kitty desperately tried to catch her old friend’s sympathy. “But Mama says I’ve got to marry the man she chooses for me.”
Hetty looked at the frail, delicate figure with some irritation. “With your mama’s ambitions, she’s likely to find you an earl or a lord. Why, you’re the luckiest girl in Hampstead.”
Kitty sighed and began to collect her handbag and gloves, preparatory to leaving. Hetty obviously thought she was a fool.
But Hetty was shrewd. If little Kitty Harrison was moving up to the West End, she had better hang on to the friendship. Hetty put her arms around the girl.
“I see I haven’t really understood what’s bothering you, dear. Tell me about it all over again.”
Kitty hesitated but the unaccustomed sympathy was too much for her. She took Hetty, step by step, through the events leading up to the reading of the will; her fears for the future, her dreams about Lord Chesworth, and meeting him in the church.
Hetty gasped and exclaimed appreciatively and Kitty felt soothed and at home. As she left, she hugged her friend. “I’ll never forget you, Hetty. I’ll always know I have one real friend.”
Hetty smiled mistily and pressed her hand warmly. But as the door closed behind Kitty’s slim back, Hetty muttered to herself, “And don’t you forget it, Miss Kitty Harrison. I’m going to need you one day.”
Kitty hastened toward home. The streetlamps were already lit and the freakish summer wind had fled the Heath leaving it still, white, and frozen, the slush lying in hard-packed, ankle-breaking ruts.
There was a dark little shop next to Carson’s bakery which contained a fascinating jumble of the flotsam and jetsam of the recently-fled Victorian age. The shop was closed, but in the blazing light from the bakery next door, Kitty could make out the objects in the window. Various mementos of the Crystal Palace Exhibition rubbed shoulders with wax fruit entombed in cracked-glass cases. Heavy pinchbeck and paste jewelry winked in the light from the baker’s and a moth-eaten stuffed owl gazed out at the winter Heath with his huge glass eyes.
In the center of the window was a picture. It was of two young children, a boy and a girl, running through a meadow of waving, green grass and poppies. The boy was laughing and waving his sailor hat in the air and the little girl was turning to look down at a Scottie dog that was tugging at the edge of her small crinoline dress. Behind them ran a young nurse, the streamers of her starched cap flying in the painted wind and beyond the sunny meadow peeked the roofs of a thatched cottage. To Kitty it represented the very essence of magical childhood. Peering closer, she could see a small price tag in the comer. Five shillings. She simply must have that picture. Surely now that they were so rich, five shillings was a mere trifle.
She broached the matter at dinner, expecting a rebuff, but Mrs. Harrison was trying to break the habits of twenty-five married years of parsimony and gave her a whole pound note for herself. Not only that, she smiled—actually smiled—as she handed it over.
Kitty went up to her room in a happy daze to find another surprise. A fire was blazing merrily on the hearth and the scuttle beside it was topped up with a generous supply of coals. Feeling dimly that it was wrong to be so comfortable on the day of her father’s funeral, Kitty went to bed. She would not have been so happy had she known the plans in her mother’s head.
Mrs. Harrison was shrewd enough to know that money alone would not allow her into the hallowed circles of top Society. She would need a sponsor—some impoverished female of impeccable background. Without consulting any of her local acquaintances who would have considered it vulgar and indecent on the day of her husband’s funeral, she had gone to the offices of the Times and had had an advertisement inserted in the personal column. She would await the results of that, before making her next move.
Making sure the curtains were tightly drawn, she picked up a bottle of her husband’s best brandy and poured herself a generous goblet and, with a pleasurable feeling of sin, threw an enormous shovel of coal on the already blazing fire.
The next week produced a surprising number of replies to Mrs. Harrison’s advertisement. With a gimlet eye on Burke’s Peerage, she vetted every name until she came to that of Lady Amelia Henley. Lady Henley was the wife of the late Sir George Henley, a Tory M.P. of apoplectic disposition, who had died the previous year at the opening day of Ascot races. Mrs. Harrison remembered the gossip at the time in the newspapers and subsequent mention of Lady Henley at various society events. She was sure this was an answer to her prayers and, with a trembling hand, penned a letter to Lady Henley asking her to call.
At the time fixed, a hansom deposited Lady Henley outside the Harrison home. Mrs. Harrison took gleeful note of the hansom from behind the lace curtains of the parlor window. So Lady Henley had no private carriage!
Lady Henley stood on the pavement outside for a few seconds, surveying the house. She was a huge, massive woman encased from throat to heel in chinchilla. A pair of small black eyes surveyed the world from under the eaves of a black fur hat. She kicked open the gate with her smart buttoned boot and came lumbering slowly up the path like some rare species of bear.
Her first words of greeting were, as Mrs. Harrison was later to learn to her cost, entirely in character.
“Poky little place you’ve got here. You sure you’ve got money?”
Mrs. Harrison smiled sourly and ushered her into the parlor and then set about to impress Lady Henley with the exact magnitude of the Harrison fortune.
“Quite a tidy sum,” said Lady Henley, stuffing a cream cake into her capacious mouth. “Well, do you want me or not?”
“It depends on your terms,” replied Mrs. Harrison, hypnotized, as cake after cake disappeared into Lady Henley’s maw. She gave the impression of inhaling pastry rather than eating it.
“My terms are this,” she said indistinctly through a barrier of cream sponge. “I’ve got this great house on Park Lane and I can’t afford it. You take it over, servants and all, and I’ll make sure you’re presented everywhere. As for what you’ll pay me—leave that to m’lawyer to settle. There’s a girl y’ say?”
“My daughter, Kitty,” said Mrs. Harrison, ringing the bell. The parlormaid slouched in. “Lumley fetch Miss Kitty.” Lumley stood for what seemed an age with her mouth open until the request was ponderously sorted out in her slow brain and slouched out again.
“An old retainer, you know,” simpered Mrs. Harrison. She spoke to deaf ears. Lady Henley was bent over the cake stand. Contrary to custom, instead of starting with the thin cucumber sandwiches on the bottom and working her way up through the layers of buns and tea cakes and scones to the cream cakes at the top, Lady Henley had started eating the other way around. As Kitty entered the room, Lady Henley seemed surprised by the empty cake plate and moved her huge hand down to the fruitcake on the plate below.
She straightened up with a slice of cake halfway to her mouth and stared at the girl in the doorway. Kitty stood there, looking ques
tioningly at Lady Henley, with her big gray eyes. Lady Henley felt a twinge of resentment. This stockbroker’s daughter had a natural elegance, a natural breeding, which under the circumstances, she had no right to have. Lady Henley posted the cake into the mailbox of her mouth and reached for another tea cake, keeping her eyes fastened on Kitty.
“Lots of material there. But raw. Very raw. Needs polishing. Well, when I’ve finished with you, you’ll marry a lord.”
Mrs. Harrison hesitated. Could she endure living with this woman?
She addressed Lady Henley. “My name is Euphemia.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Since we are to become friends, I shall call you ‘Amelia’ and you may call me ‘Euphemia.’”
There was a silence as light colorless eyes met small black ones. Lady Henley recognized the steel in Mrs. Harrison’s voice. After all, she heard it in the voices of her creditors nearly every day. “Euphemia,” she said sourly.
The first hurdle was over.
“We met Lord Peter Chesworth at church one Sunday,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I gather he is not married?”
“No,” replied Lady Henley, her voice nearly drowning in Bath bun. “Furthermore, he’s looking for a rich wife. Told me so the other day. He loves nothing but that great pile of his at Reamington. But it eats up the money and he’s talking about taking out a mortgage.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Harrison with a sidelong glance at Kitty. “Indeed.”
“I can get your daughter invitations to everywhere he goes during the season,” said the remains of the Bath bun.
The next hurdle was over. Both middle-aged women stared at each other in silent agreement.
“Then I think we should discuss the matter of money in more detail before broaching it with our lawyers. Don’t you agree… Amelia?”
Lady Henley looked at a cucumber sandwich and sighed. “Oh, all right.”
