EQMM, September-October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Presumably at this point Georgiana's imagination transformed him from a thieving wretch into the handsome scion of one of the best families in the land, deprived by a cunning relative of his inheritance but not of his sense of propriety. Now he was ready to win and woo her like a Hyde Park beau, whereupon she would help him regain his title.

  So what Georgiana would have made of a real highwayman, stinking from his incarceration in Warwick Gaol, and so far from heroic as to be weeping as he knelt in chains at my feet, I do not know.

  While the rest of the country gossiped over the declaration that poor King George was to be replaced by his son as Regent, I had come to offer poor William the consolations of the next world, since he had so little time left in this. Indeed, he was to be hanged within the hour. The prison chaplain had already read the service to all the condemned men, but since William was one of my parishioners, and had, moreover, actually attended a few services, I wished to be there to offer my support and friendship.

  "I've done some bad things, Parson Campion,” he said. “And no doubt I deserve to hang. I've poached all my life, stolen a sheep or two, scrumped apples, and I don't know what besides. Three times the justice has let me off transportation with a warning.” I nodded —I knew the soft heart of that particular justice of the peace. “And three times I've let him down. And now I've come before the Assizes....” He wiped a tear with the back of his hand. “But I tell you straight, Parson, as God is my witness, I never took that there bauble. Here, let me lay my hand on that Good Book and swear it.” He suited the deed to the word.

  I believed him. But I said very sadly, “Alas, Lady Grenfell swore to the court that you did, William. And you admitted that you were after rabbits in the area when the coach was robbed—and at gunpoint, too."

  He snorted. “Can you imagine me touting a pistol? How would I afford one of they things? Taking game's one thing, Parson, but sending a fellow being to his death, that's a different thing—in my book at least."

  It was in mine, too.

  "What would I do with a diamond necklace, tell me that! I couldn't eat it. I wouldn't know where to sell it. I wouldn't even have hidden it where no one'd find it! What would be the point? And tell me this, Parson, how could she have recognised me when I'm supposed to have had a scarf pulled over my face and hat over my eyes?"

  I did not know. Taking his hand, I declared, “William, I will make one more appeal—"

  He shook his head. “Nay, Parson. Even if you did, for sure they'd transport me. Look at me—do you see me lasting out the voyage to Australia? Well, I'd rather have a swift death and a burial in good English earth than a lingering one and a watery grave. That'd be the worst thing.... But if you could spare a corner of the churchyard in Moreton St. Jude's, I'd be mighty grateful. I should like to feel close to everyone I know. And—one last thing—swear you won't let those anatomists or whatever they're called take up my corpse. Else how can I be there for the Last Judgement?"

  "No one but Dr. Hansard shall touch your body,” I declared.

  And with that he had to be satisfied. The bodies of felons were not permitted the dignity of being buried whole. Dr. Hansard, not just the kindly justice of the peace who had been merciful to William in the past but also the best doctor in the neighbourhood, was in fact the first to argue that advances in medical knowledge depended on surgeons dissecting their corpses. On this occasion, however, he had begged the courts for the right to examine William himself. Poor William had a growth Hansard was privately sure would soon have proved fatal, and he wished to examine its origins.

  There was a jangle of keys and the gaoler was upon us. It was time for the solemn journey to the scaffold, accompanied by the far from solemn jeers of the crowd. As we walked, we said together the prayer Our Lord taught us, and he died on the words “Deliver us from evil."

  * * * *

  I buried William the next day, bidding him farewell with a solemn knot of villagers who remembered his better days.

  As the grave was filled, Dr. Hansard took my arm and led me off. “Time for a glass of Madeira, Tobias. Now, dear Maria tells me that our cook has made your favourite soup, and that if you do not come to sup with us at Langley Park she will be deeply offended."

  "I fear I will not be good company."

  "What are friends for, but to support you in times of solemn reflection? And I must tell you, Tobias, that poor William could not have survived long.” As he propelled me towards his gig, he explained what had ailed him.

  "All the same, Edmund,” I protested, “a man is entitled to die in his bed, not have life snuffed out on someone's false accusation!"

  "Such men as poor William do not have the luxury of a four-poster or a half-tester!” he snorted. “And he would have soon been in such pain that even my skills could not have prevented the most extreme suffering."

  "So we are to thank Lady Grenfell for her part in what you see as an act of euthanasia?” I demanded bitterly.

  "Indeed no! In fact, Tobias, one of the things we shall talk about tonight is how we will right this patent injustice."

  * * * *

  There were some who put it about that I was estranged from my family, but that was not the case. My father had certainly not wanted his youngest son to turn his back on success in this world and become a mere country parson; he spoke many harsh words. But they were not unforgiving—or unforgivable—words. Through the good offices of my dear mama, my family at last welcomed me back to its bosom—if not exactly as the prodigal son, because I in no wise repented my new life. Indeed, for the first visit or two, we had tiptoed round each other, as if performing a complicated Cotillion, with the steps of which no one was totally familiar. The sigh with which they bade me farewell was certainly one of regret, but I was not sure that it was not also one of relief.

  However, if I was to find justice for poor William, it was to my family's milieu that I must return. The Grenfells were—like my family—part of the ton, the upper ten thousand families who controlled, for better and often worse, the lives of the rest. Lady Grenfell, whom even her fellow aristocrats considered decidedly high in the instep, would certainly not receive as a caller a humble country parson, but if I were staying in my father's London house, in Berkeley Square, and my mother were to accompany me, I might be positively welcome. Lady Grenfell might see it as an indication that I was at last in the marriage mart, and if my memory served me she had no fewer than five ill-favoured daughters to dispose of. My heart was by no means engaged elsewhere, I told my mother as I handed her from her carriage, but unless there had been divine intervention, I would not be seeking the hand of any one of them.

  "But it would be a charitable act, my dear,” Mama declared with a twinkle—she was the only one of my family who dared tease me about my calling.

  "I do not think the Almighty demands my martyrdom,” I responded. “Or if he did, I hope he would ask it in somewhere other than Mayfair. The very least I would hope for is to be boiled alive in Africa."

  "But are you going to flirt with one of Almeria's girls?"

  "I shall not mislead them—not a single heart will be even chipped, let alone broken, if I can help it. But if the only way I can speak to Lady Grenfell is when she is chaperoning her daughters, then so be it."

  * * * *

  Lady Grenfell had enjoyed ill health for as long as I had known her. Fading behind voluminous trailing shawls, without a wisp of energy to pick up something six inches from her hand, she ruled her household with a rod of iron, thinly disguised as the vinaigrette vital to deal with her palpitations. When she had her own way, of course, there was no sign of the ill health that Dr. Hansard would surely have diagnosed as chronic boredom and acute selfishness.

  This morning there was no sign of the offending diamond necklace, nor should there have been, for neither Lady Grenfell nor my mama would have had any hesitation in stigmatising diamonds as vulgar if worn during the hours of daylight. There were daughters a-plenty, however, all plain and simpering, a
part from Miss Honoria, the next to youngest. She was quiet to the point of surliness, and in other circumstances I would have devoted myself to drawing her out, and perhaps even making her smile. But that would have been construed as flirting, and if I were to flirt with anyone it must be with someone whose heart I believed incapable of pain. The pallor of Miss Honoria's cheeks, emphasized by the dress of vicious mustard yellow she had for some reason chosen to wear, suggested feeling deeper than anything her invalidish mother had ever known.

  As is the custom, we exchanged nothingnesses for precisely half an hour, at which point, correctly declining refreshment, we prepared to depart. But something was arousing Lady Grenfell from her fluttering inertia: We were the recipients of an invitation to an evening party.

  "Nothing formal. Perhaps cards, perhaps three or four couples standing up to dance. You would be so welcome—” she murmured.

  We bowed our acceptance and went on our way.

  "Did you ever see such surprise as was on the faces of those pasty-faced dowds?” my mother demanded. “And poor Honoria in that hand-me-down that would have disgraced a nursery maid."

  "I fancy all was not well with her,” I mused, handing my mother into the carriage and looking significantly at the footman. My mother and others of her class enjoyed the sublime belief that persons from the lower classes were deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid. My work had shown me that the reverse was true. “Do we have any other calls to pay?"

  "To Hatchard's in Piccadilly, if you will. I have lent my copy of The Lady of the Lake to your aunt, and find I cannot survive without it another instant...."

  * * * *

  I was too much in demand as a dancer to have a chance of speaking to Lady Grenfell at her soirée, or I might have commented on the diamonds sparkling like new about her surprisingly unlined neck. The promised three or four couples had metamorphosed into twenty or thirty, though females in the form of her five daughters heavily predominated. Even Stourton, her son, whose debts were rumoured to outstrip his father's, graced the room for a whole ten minutes, though he did no more than lean against the wall, in what he no doubt conceived to be a Byronesque way. Naturally I could not slight the poor wallflowers, and it was thus left to my mother, kindly gracing an occasion that held absolutely no charm for her, to sit in the ranks of the dowagers and chaperones and whisper behind her fan to her hostess. From the way my partners’ eyes lit up at the sight, it was clear that they believed our joint futures were being discussed—each daughter smiled as voraciously as a hyena each time she caught my eye. Each except Miss Honoria, whose smile was at very best perfunctory.

  The ballroom was no place to solicit confidences, so to her as to the others I addressed mere commonplaces, agreeing truthfully that the refreshments were excellent and lying about the quality of the Champagne. Of bigger issues, of the poor king's health, for instance, or wars overseas, there was no mention.

  It was not until my mother summoned me to her boudoir and dismissed her dresser that I asked what her conversation had uncovered.

  "Uncovered, Tobias? What an agricultural term! I heard a great deal about Almeria Grenfell's hideous ordeals, including the hideous strain of having to depose to the Warwick Assizes that her necklace had been veritably torn from her neck by a most vicious highwayman, clearly the William Scroggins who stood before her in the dock."

  "Torn from her neck? She stated it was removed from the jewel case she concealed beneath the carriage cushions. And what were her servants, her postilions, her outriders doing the while? Do not tell me that they were too terrified by poor William's fearsome demeanour to protest! Why, the man would have been blown over by a good yell!"

  "With a gun pointed inches from your employer's bosom, perhaps even a yell is too great a risk,” she said drily.

  "On the contrary, it would have been very good value, in my book,” I retorted. “And what other on-dits were you privy to, Mama?"

  "Would it bring you to the blush to learn that Lady Grenfell considers you most eligible?"

  "I hope that you disabused her. But Mama, you joke with me. Your eyes are twinkling like her diamond necklace. Did you hear anything to arouse your suspicions?"

  "Only what I have told you—that Lady Grenfell has you in her sights, my love. For, I gather, one or other of the girls must marry soon. It is clear that Grenfell is expecting the duns any moment."

  I reflected on the cost of the Champagne, however inferior. “And they waste all that money on entertainment! And on a new diamond necklace."

  "On investment, my love—for you must know that a hostess must present her best looks to a prospective son-in-law."

  "Son-in-law!"

  "News of an engagement would certainly stave off Grenfell's creditors."

  I hung my head. “It was altogether wrong of me—"

  "Nonsense! You do no more than pay a morning call and you become the property of one of her dreadful daughters? Leave them on the shelf where they have been gathering dust this age, my love."

  "But what of Miss Honoria? Why is she so melancholy? She is not old enough to have been too long on the marriage mart."

  Although the room was empty, Mama looked about her with the air of a conspirator. “There is a rumour—but not circulated by Almeria Grenfell, I do assure you—"

  "By one of the other tabbies you were talking to?"

  "Tabbies! I am bosom-bows with some of them! But not with Lady Cotteridge, who declared, almost unasked, that Honoria had entered into a most unsuitable liaison—with a gamester to whom her brother, that young scapegrace Stourton, introduced her. He even acted as go-between, would you believe?"

  "He is far more than a scapegrace, Mama—well on the way to being a rake, by all accounts. And who was the man in the case? Did you discover that?"

  "A Frenchman. The Comte de Valliers. Oh, he is no more a count than I am, Tobias, but a charming gamester. Beware of accepting one of his invitations to play at White's, I beg you!"

  "Mama, a country parson plays with no one at White's, let alone an ivory turner. Now, I must bid you goodnight."

  She held me at arm's length as I bent to kiss her. “Nay, these are country hours indeed, Tobias—and if you want to understand Miss Honoria's plight, should you not speak to the villain in the piece himself? Here.” She reached into a drawer in her dressing-table. “You will not find this comte at White's, of course—such a club is far too respectable. I understand from Lady Cotteridge that he is to be found at a discreet little hell in St. James's."

  "Populated by card sharps with loaded dice!"

  "Indeed. But you must know,” she said so serenely that I wondered what my elder brother had had in his youth to confess, “that the first time a young man presents himself they let him win for quite some time before they begin to cheat.” She pressed a heavy purse into my hand.

  "So that he is lulled—"

  "Just so. Promise me just one thing! Quit the table the instant you lose so much as a penny. For that purse holds a goodly part of my pin money, and I should not like to have to apply to your father for more, not, at any rate, with a truthful explanation of how it disappeared."

  * * * *

  The soi-disant Edmund Hansard—I had not only borrowed my mother's money, I had assumed my best friend's name—presented himself at a discreet door, naming my father as a guarantor. Papa would have been apoplectic had he known any of the night's doings, but perhaps most of all at this appropriation of his good name. I stammered that I was but a distant cousin of his lordship, but that he had encouraged me to taste the delights of the town before I returned to my village.

  My card skills had never been more than third-rate, even when I played regularly, but I was not surprised to see a steady stream of guineas coming my way. I was being gulled, softened up. With what I hoped was a suitably rustic grin, I called for a bumper for all those playing, even covering with bravado my wince as I understood the cost.

  I soon found young Stourton at my elbow. There was an inner room, kept for a sel
ect few, he whispered, evincing no surprise that a man seen but two hours ago leading his sister into the dance should now be indulging in ludicrously high play. But he had dipped too deep to make rational judgments about anything. He did not even demur when I pumped him full of the expensive but throat-burning brandy I was now persuaded to buy.

  Despising myself, I turned the conversation to his sisters. Like a man seeing a far distant shore with but a thin spar before him, he seized my arm and began to extol their virtues, displaying an imagination quite creditable in one so far gone.

  "But Miss Honoria—” I shamelessly interrupted a disquisition on the eldest. “Tell me about her."

  He raised his eyes to the heavens. “Damn me if she isn't quite in the basket."

  He belched. “Shouldn't have said that. Forget it."

  "Of course. Do you mean that she has behaved without discretion?"

  "Fine discretion getting yourself in the family way!"

  I did not have to feign my shock and horror. Such a lapse is not uncommon amongst country lads and lasses, though I have tried most strongly to discourage such behaviour. But for a gentlewoman to betray herself—truly, I was appalled.

  "And the man in question—?” I prompted, as if he were one of my flock.

  "Would marry her, but for one thing.” He rubbed his fingers to suggest a fat dowry.

  "But does her mother—?"

  "No, no! Of course not."

  "Her condition will manifest itself ere long,” I pointed out.

  "And that's the devil of it. Antoine has slipped out of the country—things were getting a bit hot for him when they discovered how he loaded the dice. When he returns, I make no doubt that he will make an honest woman of her—egad, I shall call him to account if he does not—even if I have to buy the marriage licence myself!” he concluded, with an air of positive generosity, which he rather spoilt with another belch.