The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime

by Michael Sims

  “You could get a temporary maid,” her friend suggested, in a lull of the tornado.

  The Cantankerous Old Lady flared up. “Yes, and have my jewel-case stolen! Or find she was an English girl without one word of German. Or nurse her on the boat when I want to give my undivided attention to my own misfortunes. No, Amelia, I call it positively unkind of you to suggest such a thing. You’re so unsympathetic! I put my foot down there. I will not take any temporary person.”

  I saw my chance. This was a delightful idea. Why not start for Schlangenbad with the Cantankerous Old Lady?

  Of course, I had not the slightest intention of taking a lady’s-maid’s place for a permanency. Nor even, if it comes to that, as a passing expedient. But if I wanted to go round the world, how could I do better than set out by the Rhine country? The Rhine leads you on to the Danube, the Danube to the Black Sea, the Black Sea to Asia; and so, by way of India, China, and Japan, you reach the Pacific and San Francisco; whence one returns quite easily by New York and the White Star Liners. I began to feel like a globe-trotter already; the Cantankerous Old Lady was the thin end of the wedge—the first rung of the ladder! I proceeded to put my foot on it.

  I leaned around the corner of the tree and spoke. “Excuse me,” I said, in my suavest voice, “but I think I see a way out of your difficulty.”

  My first impression was that the Cantankerous Old Lady would go off in a fit of apoplexy. She grew purple in the face with indignation and astonishment, that a casual outsider should venture to address her; so much so, indeed, that for a second I almost regretted my well-meant interposition. Then she scanned me up and down, as if I were a girl in a mantle shop, and she contemplated buying either me or the mantle. At last, catching my eye, she thought better of it, and burst out laughing.

  “What do you mean by this eavesdropping?” she asked.

  I flushed up in turn. “This is a public place,” I replied, with dignity; “and you spoke in a tone which was hardly designed for the strictest privacy. If you don’t wish to be overheard, you oughtn’t to shout. Besides, I desired to do you a service.”

  The Cantankerous Old Lady regarded me once more from head to foot. I did not quail. Then she turned to her companion. “The girl has spirit,” she remarked, in an encouraging tone, as if she were discussing some absent person. “Upon my word, Amelia, I rather like the look of her. Well, my good woman, what do you want to suggest to me?”

  “Merely this,” I replied, bridling up and crushing her. “I am a Girton girl, an officer’s daughter, no more a good woman than most others of my class; and I have nothing in particular to do for the moment. I don’t object to going to Schlangenbad. I would convoy you over, as companion, or lady-help, or anything else you choose to call it; I would remain with you there for a week, till you could arrange with your Gretchen, presumably unsophisticated; and then I would leave you. Salary is unimportant; my fare suffices. I accept the chance as a cheap opportunity of attaining Schlangenbad.”

  The yellow-faced old lady put up her long-handled tortoise-shell eyeglasses and inspected me all over again. “Well, I declare,” she murmured. “What are girls coming to, I wonder? Girton, you say; Girton! That place at Cambridge! You speak Greek, of course; but how about German?”

  “Like a native,” I answered, with cheerful promptitude. “I was at school in Canton Berne; it is a mother tongue to me.”

  “No, no,” the old lady went on, fixing her keen small eyes on my mouth. “Those little lips could never frame themselves to ‘schlecht’ or ‘wunderschön’; they were not cut out for it.”

  “Pardon me,” I answered, in German. “What I say, that I mean. The never-to-be-forgotten music of the Fatherland’s-speech has on my infant ear from the first-beginning impressed itself.”

  The old lady laughed aloud.

  “Don’t jabber it to me, child,” she cried. “I hate the lingo. It’s the one tongue on earth that even a pretty girl’s lips fail to render attractive. You yourself make faces over it. What’s your name, young woman?”

  “Lois Cayley.”

  “Lois! What a name! I never heard of any Lois in my life before, except Timothy’s grandmother. You’re not anybody’s grandmother, are you?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” I answered, gravely.

  She burst out laughing again.

  “Well, you’ll do, I think,” she said, catching my arm. “That big mill down yonder hasn’t ground the originality altogether out of you. I adore originality. It was clever of you to catch at the suggestion of this arrangement. Lois Cayley, you say; any relation of a madcap Captain Cayley whom I used once to know, in the Forty-second Highlanders?”

  “His daughter,” I answered, flushing. For I was proud of my father.

  “Ha! I remember; he died, poor fellow; he was a good soldier—and his”—I felt she was going to say “his fool of a widow,” but a glance from me quelled her; “his widow went and married that good-looking scapegrace, Jack Watts-Morgan. Never marry a man, my dear, with a double-barrelled name and no visible means of subsistence; above all, if he’s generally known by a nickname. So you’re poor Tom Cayley’s daughter, are you? Well, well, we can settle this little matter between us. Mind, I’m a person who always expects to have my own way. If you come with me to Schlangenbad, you must do as I tell you.”

  “I think I could manage it—for a week,” I answered, demurely.

  She smiled at my audacity. We passed on to terms. They were quite satisfactory. She wanted no references. “Do I look like a woman who cares about a reference? What are called characters are usually essays in how not to say it. You take my fancy; that’s the point! And poor Tom Cayley! But, mind, I will not be contradicted.”

  “I will not contradict your wildest misstatement,” I answered, smiling. “And your name and address?” I asked, after we had settled preliminaries.

  A faint red spot rose quaintly in the centre of the Cantankerous Old Lady’s sallow cheek. “My dear,” she murmured, “my name is the one thing on earth I’m really ashamed of. My parents chose to inflict upon me the most odious label that human ingenuity ever devised for a Christian soul; and I’ve not had courage enough to burst out and change it.”

  A gleam of intuition flashed across me. “You don’t mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that you’re called Georgina?”

  The Cantankerous Old Lady gripped my arm hard. “What an unusually intelligent girl!” she broke in. “How on earth did you guess? It is Georgina.”

  “Fellow-feeling,” I answered. “So is mine, Georgina Lois. But as I quite agree with you as to the atrocity of such conduct, I have suppressed the Georgina. It ought to be made penal to send innocent girls into the world so burdened.”

  “My opinion to a T! You are really an exceptionally sensible young woman. There’s my name and address; I start on Monday.”

  I glanced at her card. The very copperplate was noisy. “Lady Georgina Fawley, 49 Fortescue Crescent, W.”

  It had taken us twenty minutes to arrange our protocols. As I walked off, well pleased, Lady Georgina’s friend ran after me quickly.

  “You must take care,” she said, in a warning voice. “You’ve caught a Tartar.”

  “So I suspect,” I answered. “But a week in Tartary will be at least an experience.”

  “She has an awful temper.”

  “That’s nothing. So have I. Appalling, I assure you. And if it comes to blows, I’m bigger and younger and stronger than she is.”

  “Well, I wish you well out of it.”

  “Thank you. It is kind of you to give me this warning. But I think I can take care of myself. I come, you see, of a military family.”

  I nodded my thanks, and strolled back to Elsie’s. Dear little Elsie was in transports of surprise when I related my adventure.

  “Will you really go? And what will you do, my dear, when you get there?”

  “I haven’t a notion,” I answered; “that’s where the fun comes in. But, anyhow, I shall have got there.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, Brownie, you might starve!”

  “And I might starve in London. In either place, I have only two hands and one head to help me.”

  “But, then, here you are among friends. You might stop with me for ever.”

  I kissed her fluffy forehead. “You good, generous little Elsie,” I cried; “I won’t stop here one moment after I have finished the painting and papering. I came here to help you. I couldn’t go on eating your hard-earned bread and doing nothing. I know how sweet you are; but the last thing I want is to add to your burdens. Now let us roll up our sleeves again and hurry on with the dado.”

  “But, Brownie, you’ll want to be getting your own things ready. Remember, you’re off to Germany on Monday.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “’Tis a foreign trick I picked up in Switzerland. What have I got to get ready?” I asked. “I can’t go out and buy a complete summer outfit in Bond Street for twopence. Now, don’t look at me like that: be practical, Elsie, and let me help you paint the dado.” For unless I helped her, poor Elsie could never have finished it herself. I cut out half her clothes for her; her own ideas were almost entirely limited to differential calculus. And cutting out a blouse by differential calculus is weary, uphill work for a high-school teacher.

  By Monday I had papered and furnished the rooms, and was ready to start on my voyage of exploration. I met the Cantankerous Old Lady at Charing Cross, by appointment, and proceeded to take charge of her luggage and tickets.

  Oh my, how fussy she was! “You will drop that basket! I hope you have got through tickets, viâ Malines, not by Brussels—I won’t go by Brussels. You have to change there. Now, mind you notice how much the luggage weighs in English pounds, and make the man at the office give you a note of it to check those horrid Belgian porters. They’ll charge you for double the weight, unless you reduce it at once to kilogrammes. I know their ways. Foreigners have no consciences. They just go to the priest and confess, you know, and wipe it all out, and start fresh again on a career of crime next morning. I’m sure I don’t know why I ever go abroad. The only country in the world fit to live in is England. No mosquitoes, no passports, no—goodness gracious, child, don’t let that odious man bang about my hat-box! Have you no immortal soul, porter, that you crush other people’s property as if it was blackbeetles? No, I will not let you take this, Lois; this is my jewel-box—it contains all that remains of the Fawley family jewels. I positively decline to appear at Schlangenbad without a diamond to my back. This never leaves my hands. It’s hard enough nowadays to keep body and skirt together. Have you secured that coupé at Ostend?”

  We got into our first-class carriage. It was clean and comfortable; but the Cantankerous Old Lady made the porter mop the floor, and fidgeted and worried till we slid out of the station. Fortunately, the only other occupant of the compartment was a most urbane and obliging Continental gentleman—I say Continental, because I couldn’t quite make out whether he was French, German, or Austrian—who was anxious in every way to meet Lady Georgina’s wishes. Did madame desire to have the window open? Oh, certainly, with pleasure; the day was so sultry. Closed a little more? Parfaitement, there was a current of air, il faut l’admettre. Madame would prefer the corner? No? Then perhaps she would like this valise for a footstool? Permettez—just thus. A cold draught runs so often along the floor in railway carriages. This is Kent that we traverse; ah, the garden of England! As a diplomat, he knew every nook of Europe, and he echoed the mot he had accidentally heard drop from madame’s lips on the platform: no country in the world so delightful as England!

  “Monsieur is attached to the Embassy in London?” Lady Georgina inquired, growing affable.

  He twirled his grey moustache: a waxed moustache of great distinction.

  “No, madame; I have quitted the diplomatic service; I inhabit London now pour mon agrément. Some of my compatriots call it triste; for me, I find it the most fascinating capital in Europe. What gaiety! What movement! What poetry! What mystery!”

  “If mystery means fog, it challenges the world,” I interposed.

  He gazed at me with fixed eyes. “Yes, mademoiselle,” he answered, in quite a different and markedly chilly voice. “Whatever your great country attempts—were it only a fog—it achieves consummately.”

  I have quick intuitions. I felt the foreign gentleman took an instinctive dislike to me. To make up for it, he talked much, and with animation, to Lady Georgina. They ferreted out friends in common, and were as much surprised at it as people always are at that inevitable experience.

  “Ah yes, madame, I recollect him well in Vienna. I was there at the time, attached to our Legation. He was a charming man; you read his masterly paper on the Central Problem of the Dual Empire?”

  “You were in Vienna then!” the Cantankerous Old Lady mused back. “Lois, my child, don’t stare”—she had covenanted from the first to call me Lois, as my father’s daughter, and I confess I preferred it to being Miss Cayley’d. “We must surely have met. Dare I ask your name, monsieur?” I could see the foreign gentleman was delighted at this turn. He had played for it, and carried his point. He meant her to ask him. He had a card in his pocket, conveniently close; and he handed it across to her. She read it, and passed it on: “M. le Comte de Laroche-sur-Loiret.”

  “Oh, I remember your name well,” the Cantankerous Old Lady broke in. “I think you knew my husband, Sir Evelyn Fawley, and my father, Lord Kynaston.”

  The Count looked profoundly surprised and delighted. “What! you are then Lady Georgina Fawley!” he cried, striking an attitude. “Indeed, miladi, your admirable husband was one of the very first to exert his influence in my favour at Vienna. Do I recall him, ce cher Sir Evelyn? If I recall him! What a fortunate encounter! I must have seen you some years ago at Vienna, miladi, though I had not then the great pleasure of making your acquaintance. But your face had impressed itself on my sub-conscious self!” (I did not learn till later that the esoteric doctrine of the sub-conscious self was Lady Georgina’s favourite hobby.) “The moment chance led me to this carriage this morning, I said to myself, ‘That face, those features: so vivid, so striking: I have seen them somewhere. With what do I connect them in the recesses of my memory? A highborn family; genius; rank; the diplomatic service; some unnameable charm; some faint touch of eccentricity. Ha! I have it. Vienna, a carriage with footmen in red livery, a noble presence, a crowd of wits—poets, artists, politicians—pressing eagerly round the landau.’ That was my mental picture as I sat and confronted you: I understand it all now; this is Lady Georgina Fawley!”

  I thought the Cantankerous Old Lady, who was a shrewd person in her way, must surely see through this obvious patter; but I had under-estimated the average human capacity for swallowing flattery. Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile, Lady Georgina perked herself up with a conscious air of coquetry, and asked for more. “Yes, they were delightful days in Vienna,” she said, simpering; “I was young then, Count; I enjoyed life with a zest.”

  “Persons of miladi’s temperament are always young,” the Count retorted, glibly, leaning forward and gazing at her. “Growing old is a foolish habit of the stupid and the vacant. Men and women of esprit are never older. One learns as one goes on in life to admire, not the obvious beauty of mere youth and health”—he glanced across at me disdainfully—“but the profounder beauty of deep character in a face—that calm and serene beauty which is imprinted on the brow by experience of the emotions.”

  “I have had my moments,” Lady Georgina murmured, with her head on one side.

  “I believe it, miladi,” the Count answered, and ogled her.

  Thenceforward to Dover, they talked together with ceaseless animation. The Cantankerous Old Lady was capital company. She had a tang in her tongue, and in the course of ninety minutes she had flayed alive the greater part of London society, with keen wit and sprightliness. I laughed against my will at her ill-tempered sallies; they were too funny not to amuse, in spite of their vitriol. As for
the Count, he was charmed. He talked well himself, too, and between them I almost forgot the time till we arrived at Dover.

  It was a very rough passage. The Count helped us to carry our nineteen hand-packages and four rugs on board; but I noticed that, fascinated as she was with him, Lady Georgina resisted his ingenious efforts to gain possession of her precious jewel-case as she descended the gangway. She clung to it like grim death, even in the chops of the Channel. Fortunately I am a good sailor, and when Lady Georgina’s sallow cheeks began to grow pale, I was steady enough to supply her with her shawl and her smelling-bottle. She fidgeted and worried the whole way over. She would be treated like a vertebrate animal. Those horrid Belgians had no right to stick their deck-chairs just in front of her. The impertinence of the hussies with the bright red hair—a grocer’s daughters, she felt sure—in venturing to come and sit on the same bench with her—the bench “for ladies only,” under the lee of the funnel!

  “Ladies only,” indeed! Did the baggages pretend they considered themselves ladies? Oh, that placid old gentleman in the episcopal gaiters was their father, was he? Well, a bishop should bring up his daughters better, having his children in subjection with all gravity. Instead of which—“Lois, my smelling-salts!” This was a beastly boat; such an odour of machinery; they had no decent boats nowadays; with all our boasted improvements, she could remember well when the cross-Channel service was much better conducted than it was at present. But that was before we had compulsory education. The working classes were driving trade out of the country, and the consequence was, we couldn’t build a boat which didn’t reek like an oil-shop. Even the sailors on board were French—jabbering idiots; not an honest British Jack-tar among the lot of them; though the stewards were English, and very inferior Cockney English at that, with their off-hand ways, and their School Board airs and graces. She’d School Board them if they were her servants; she’d show them the sort of respect that was due to people of birth and education. But the children of the lower classes never learnt their catechism nowadays; they were too much occupied with literatoor, jography, and free-’ and drawrin’. Happily for my nerves, a good lurch to leeward put a stop for a while to the course of her thoughts on the present distresses.