by Edith Layton
“Oh yes,” the taller gentleman answered in an amused tone, “to be sure it is. Never fear, you have come to the right place.”
There was that in his voice, that undercurrent of sarcasm, that made Catherine look at him again. The mist, bored with veiling his face, drifted away, and she found herself looking into a pair of icy gray eyes that seemed as if they still held the depths of the fog in them. He was very handsome, Catherine thought with alarm, lowering her eyes from his frank stare, and very insolent.
As she turned to mount the steps, she heard him say again with amused cynicism, “You have come to exactly the right place, I believe.”
“Good day,” Catherine said firmly, sure that in some strange way she was being insulted and knowing one did not bandy words with strange men, friends of the duchess or not. She went up the stairs, lifted the door knocker, and rapped more firmly than she would have wanted to, in an effort to escape the two men’s attention. But when she turned to look down again at the street, she could only see their shapes receding in the distance.
The butler who took her card almost took her breath away with it. He was old, and large, and impeccable. He looked at her with no expression and yet made her feel as though she were standing in her nightdress. “Yes,” he said after he glanced at her card, “come this way.” Without further comment he led her into the largest hall she had ever seen. It was floored with marble, and lined with spindly chairs. And each chair held a woman, sitting erect, each with a reticule, and a packet of letters on each lap.
“Oh,” Catherine sighed to herself, her spirits sinking further than she had thought possible, for it seemed that every unemployed lady’s companion in the kingdom was there waiting to be interviewed, before her.
By the time the clock at the end of the hall had discreetly chimed four times, Catherine had gotten sufficient control of herself to observe the other females in the hall. She had a moment’s fleeting thought for Arthur, sitting chilled in the carriage outside, waiting, but she could no more have left than she could have asked the butler to dance. She was here now, she reasoned, and she would see it to the end.
There were twenty-three other females in the hall. Each one studiously ignored the other. Some stared into space. Some busied themselves with bits of needlework and some were browsing through small volumes that they had brought with them. They were representative, Catherine thought with sorrow, of the entire spectrum of women companions. There were some who were elderly and looked like timorous spinsters. Some were motherly-looking women, large in their persons and almost dowdily dressed. One or two were elegant-looking middle-aged females, who looked as though they themselves might be advertising for companions. There was one huge muscular woman who might have easily belonged behind a barrow, hawking turnips. Catherine wondered if she might drop a hint about the elderly Mrs. Oliphant’s search for a companion, for that woman looked as though she might be able to turn both her and her daughter in bed without a thought. But the women all sat silently, and she could no more speak to the female beside her than she could have whispered in church. None of the women looked happy, and all, she thought, wondering if there were some truth to Arthur’s lectures, looked downtrodden in some fashion. Worst of all was the realization that she alone was under middle age.
Miss Parkinson, Catherine thought frantically, would not have sent her if she felt she would have no chance. It was true that she had looked at Catherine and whispered, “Oh, dear. You are not at all what I expected from your letters.” But when Catherine had explained her mission, and convinced her that she had nursed her own late mother through her final illness, Miss Parkinson had said, filling out the cards, “Might as well have a try at it. But,” she had cautioned, “a lady’s companion is not an easy life, child.”
Looking at her fellow applicants, Catherine could well believe that. They all seemed resigned to their waiting, to their very lives.
After the butler had admitted two more prospective companions and seated them, he reappeared.
“The duchess,” he intoned, “is ready to begin her interviews.” And he motioned for the woman closest to a door at the end of the hall to come with him. She was a spry wiry woman with spectacles. With ill-concealed eagerness, she closed the book she was reading and sprang up to follow him. After a few minutes, in which Catherine had only time to smooth out two of her gloved fingers, the little woman reappeared. She seemed confused and walked the gamut between the outer circle of applicants and disappeared out the front door. “Obviously,” muttered a hawk-faced woman in black bombazine, “inferior references.”
The next woman to be called, a heavyset elderly woman, left the room after what seemed like moments, looking puzzled. And after that the succeeding applicant stalked out angrily after what could only have been a moment, muttering, “She’s mad.” The remaining women began to mutter among themselves. One by one the applicants disappeared, only to reappear after an indecently short time.
“She could be deranged,” whispered a timid-looking woman sitting near Catherine. “But then,” she added with a smug little smile, “my last was quite gone in the head and I stayed with the poor soul until the end.”
“I,” said one of the elegant women, “shall not work with a mad person. An eccentric perhaps, as my last dear lady was an eccentric, but charming withal. But not a raving lunatic.”
One by one the others were shuffled in and out so quickly that Catherine doubted they had the time to present their credentials at all. The duchess, she reasoned, must be relying very heavily upon first impressions. And when the muscular woman went in, and returned so quickly that she must not have had time to have said a single word, Catherine was convinced of it. As she sat and watched, it seemed that only the two more stylish-looking applicants were given time for any decent conversation in their interviews. And yet the last one left very angrily, stating firmly to those who remained, “You are all wasting your time; this whole interview is a farce.” And then Catherine was called.
Remembering to remain calm at all costs, Catherine walked slowly across the room in the wake of the butler. He opened a door, and Catherine found herself within a room facing the duchess.
She must be a duchess, Catherine thought dazedly, for I should know her for a duchess anywhere.
The room was small, but richly furnished. It had been the duke’s study at one time, and it still had a very masculine air. The duchess stood ramrod straight in back of a huge mirror-polished walnut desk. She stared at Catherine. And Catherine, bereft of speech, could only stare back. The duchess was tall, and thin, and very old. Her hair was white, not the commonplace snowy white of most elderly persons Catherine had met. It was rather the color of ice, as were the two direct cold eyes that fastened upon Catherine. The duchess had a great long imposing nose and gaunt slightly rouged cheeks. She wore a gray dress and was altogether the most imposing, imperious woman Catherine had ever seen. She looked almost as though the title “duchess” was too insignificant for her; rather, Catherine thought, she should be addressed as “Your Highness.”
“Well,” the duchess brayed in a loud nasal voice, quite shattering the image, “now this is more like it. How did a poppet like you get in? Who are you, my gel?”
Catherine fumbled her papers out and laid them carefully on the desk. “Catherine Robins, Your Grace,” she said in a low voice.
“Speak up,” the duchess commanded. “If you want to companion me, you must be more forthcoming. Why does a young thing like you want to be companion to an old woman?”
“I need to find a position, ma’am,” Catherine said, in a clearer voice.
“And how does your family feel about it? Got any family?”
“I have a sister—well, actually a half-sister and a brother-in-law—in Kendal, ma’am. He, my brother-in-law, does not want me to go, but my sister does approve—that is, of my desire for independence.” Lord, Catherine thought, I’m making a muddle of this.
“Can’t blame your brother-in-law, he must feel like a
fox in a hen house. Can’t blame your sister neither for wanting a good-looking baggage like yourself out of harm’s way.” The duchess chortled.
Catherine wondered whether she should hotly defend Arthur or Jane or herself, but the duchess was actually smiling benignly at her now, and she wanted the position so badly she let the comment pass.
“Tell me, my gel,” the duchess asked, unbending enough to sit, and motioning that Catherine do the same, “got any experience?”
“Here are my references, ma’am,” Catherine said, spreading out the papers. “From the vicar, and the schoolmaster, and the others from my home—”
“Not those,” the duchess cut her off. “I mean, any experience of life?”
“Well, yes, ma’am,” Catherine faltered, not knowing quite what the duchess was getting at.
“You’d travel with me,” the duchess went on. “I travel a good bit. I meet a lot of people, all kinds of people—you ain’t a shy one, are you?”
“Not at all,” Catherine replied, for in truth, she was not a shy person.
“Not frightened of men, are you? Or prudish? I can’t stand a prude.”
“Not at all,” Catherine replied, thinking she was more frightened by the duchess than by any man she had ever met.
“Didn’t think you were with a saucy face like yours. So you’ve come to London to see the queen, eh? And hope to be my companion. Well, you’re more in the line of what I’m looking for than any of those biddies out there. You have an air of real gentility. Related to anybody important?”
“My father was a younger son,” Catherine said, putting up her chin. “And we were related to the Earl of Dorset.”
“Then what are you doing out looking for a position as lady’s companion?” the duchess cried out ringingly, looking angry and affronted for no reason Catherine could fathom.
“We never corresponded with the family much after my father’s death,” Catherine admitted, “and not at all after my mother’s remarriage, which they did not approve of.”
“Black sheep? Better and better.” The duchess smiled.
“What would your family think of you flying across the Continent with me, meeting all sorts of people?” she challenged.
“As I said,” Catherine went on, “there’s only my sister and brother-in-law, and they want only what would make me happy.”
“So they’re cutting line from you? Don’t blame them. What I’m saying, with no more roundabout,” the duchess said, leaning over and looking keenly at Catherine, and cutting off her indignant reply, “is, are you free and footloose? Are you ready for a lark?”
“Yes,” Catherine said, wondering why a companion would find life a lark, but feeling that if any came along she’d be quite ready.
“Get up,” the duchess suddenly barked, and, startled, Catherine did so.
“Turn, no, turn that way. You are a good-looking gel in any light,” the duchess said impassively. “But I’ll bet you’ve been told that by the gentlemen before.”
“No, of course not,” Catherine protested, totally at sea, and wondering if the duchess were in fact, a little deranged.
“Haw. You’re a good little actress. Sit down,” the duchess said, “and I’ll put the proposition to you. You can let down your hair now and be frank. Your job would be to travel with me and to accompany me on my rounds. And to make sure I’m comfortable. I have a lot of friends. A lot of gentlemen friends, and I’d expect you to make them comfortable too, in a different way. You get my meaning?”
Catherine didn’t at first. The first meaning she thought of was clearly preposterous and she was ashamed of herself for even thinking it. But she certainly was conversable and tactful enough to chat up any old gentlemen the duchess entertained to put them at their ease. So she nodded, so many thoughts crossing her mind that she was momentarily speechless.
“Good.” The duchess sighed. “I thought I was right about you. My usual companion, Rose, the lazy slut, has gone off and left me. And Violet, who sometimes travels with me, has gone and got herself another position. So I’m left in the lurch and I’m off to Paris in a month and demned if I’ll go alone or with any of those old crows out there. So, gel, you understand?”
“Paris?” breathed Catherine, unable to take in her good luck. Was she being offered the position, in Paris?
“But let us get it clear. I travel in a fast set. You are very young. Perhaps you haven’t understood. Are you worried about what people will say of your reputation?”
Catherine had the giddy instant thought of a group of old gentlemen and ladies being pushed rapidly in their invalid chairs or gambling wildly in their nightcaps while their attendants and nurses stood waiting to take them home to bed.
“My reputation?” Catherine thought quickly, searching for a precise answer that would satisfy the duchess as to her maturity and independence and put an end to this odd interview and perhaps win her the position she so desperately wanted. “My reputation,” she said loftily, “is my own concern.”
Seeing the wide grin on the duchess’s face, she hastily added, “That is to say, it is excellent. It is widely known.”
“All the better.” The duchess beamed. “Fine then, gel, you’ve got the position.”
Catherine was so dizzy with happiness that she could only sit and stare at the duchess, who was smiling at her in the most conspiratorial, friendly way possible.
* * *
In a study very similar to the one that Catherine and the duchess sat in, one, moreover, only three doors down the street, two gentlemen sat in front of a cozy fire and smiled at each other in a conspiratorial, friendly way.
“Sinjun,” cried the younger one, waving a brimful brandy snifter at his friend, “a toast to the luckiest of chaps. I swear you are. Did you see the eyes on that filly? Blue as a summer sky. And moving in here right under your nose. All I have on my street are retired army gentlemen, and Sir Howard with two of the ugliest daughters known to mankind. And you’ve got the dowager and her lovelies right on your doorstep.”
“I’ve also,” drawled the taller man, putting down the papers he held, “got all this work you’ve brought me. And if I’ve read it right, it means I have some traveling to do.”
“But not immediately, dear fellow. You’ve time to set things up. We don’t expect you to hop off immediately. And in the meantime, what a lovely diversion you’ve got right here. ‘Is this the Duchess of Crewe’s address?’ she says. Why, that means she’s practically under your roof already. You just have to nip down the street and collect her.”
“I don’t,” the taller man said, stretching out his long legs, “traffic with the duchess’s companions.”
“But in her case, you could make an exception, Sinjun. She’s a stunner, and new on the town too.”
“If she’s in the duchess’s employ, I doubt it. At any rate, Cyril, I seldom pay for what should be free.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were purse pinched,” the younger man laughed. “That’ll be news to La Starr. How did you acquire that new bracelet she was sporting last week, for nothing?”
“I don’t pay cash on the line.” The taller man smiled. “Because I don’t like to stand in line, and the dowager’s doxies traffic in volume, as you know.”
“What a lost opportunity for you then,” Cyril mourned. “Still, a toast! To the fairest wenches in London, to the dowager’s doxies.”
“I think not,” his companion demurred.
“Then one to the old lady herself: to the dirty dowager.”
“No,” his friend said gently.
“Then curse it, Sinjun, you propose a toast. I’m desperate for a sip of this ’94.”
“Very well.” The taller man took his glass in hand and intoned, “A toast: to work.” And he handed the papers to his friend. Cyril groaned. “To work,” he sighed, and dashing down the drink, he bent over the papers.
Chapter II
The Dowager Duchess of Crewe sat back in her late husband’s favorite chair and waved
her butler away. She lifted the glass of port that he had brought her and raised it in a silent salute before she allowed herself a sip of it. And then, alone in the study, she leaned back in her chair and sat, eyes closed, smiling to herself. Even in repose she retained her air of dignity and power. Even while relaxing she maintained her rigidly imposing countenance. With her gleaming white hair pulled back to show her strong features, seated behind the massive gleaming desk, she presented the perfect picture of a woman of consequence, a rich stone in an exquisite setting. She was a fine figure of a woman. It had not always been so.
For all women, and men as well, there is one point in life when they are beautiful, truly beautiful. There are some rare fortunate few who retain beauty all through life. But for most, they must make do with that one moment of physical beauty. And no matter how ill favored, every person experiences that moment. Nature is kind in that fashion, but she is unpredictable.
Thus, when the midwife cries in delight, “It is a girl, and a perfect, beautiful girl!” there are times when that is strictly true. At that moment, never to be repeated, the baby is indeed one of the most beautiful infants ever seen. For others, their summit of physical perfection comes in the toddler years. Still others are graceful, beautiful children and visitors will often comment, “She is a beautiful child; she’ll be a real heartbreaker when she’s grown.” Alas, that is often not true. For that particular child the epitome of beauty may exist only in that one afternoon of childhood. Later the snub nose may lengthen, the plump jaw grow rather like a lantern, the bright hair dim, and the glowing promise never be realized. For her, the moment came and passed in early childhood.
Still others are the envy of all their acquaintances in the years of early youth. For one brief incandescent time, the girl is lovely. But it is only for that time, never to be repeated. Others do make beautiful brides and the assembled wedding guests may swear they have never seen a lovelier bride and not perjure themselves. Yet, let as little as a few weeks go by and the vision is gone. Some are beautiful in the months of impending maternity, some as young mothers have an unearthly radiance that rivals religious paintings, some reach a glowing peak of ripened beauty in their middle years. For all, if they but live long enough, the moment will surely come. But it did not come for the Duchess of Crewe for almost seventy long and barren years.
