Refining Felicity

by Beaton, M. C.

  She balanced the book once more on her head, and looked in fixed disdain straight ahead.

  ‘Too rigid,’ said Amy. ‘This time bridle and sway slightly as you walk.’

  Amy kept her at it for an hour before she was satisfied. But she would not allow Felicity to escape. ‘I am now going to give you a lecture on good manners,’ she said. ‘This does not mean saying “please” and “thank you”, it means having consideration of other people’s sensitivities, whether you are talking to a lord or a shopkeeper.’

  In vain did Felicity protest. Amy invented and staged situations from buying silks from a stammering shopkeeper to meeting a boring and deaf dowager. Had Felicity not been so furious, she might have found Amy’s acting very funny indeed. But as it was, she found nothing amusing in Amy’s behaviour. Felicity obeyed her as best she could while a deep resentment burned inside.

  By evening, Amy was feeling exhausted. There was a nagging pain in her back, and pouches of fatigue under her eyes. She dropped into her sister’s bedroom to say good night. Effy could only mumble a reply as she lay against her lacy pillows looking like a Gothic nightmare. Her face was covered in a mud pack, her white hair was rolled in clay rollers, and she had a chin-strap wound tightly round her head and under her chin.

  Amy went off to her own room, where Baxter was waiting to put her to bed. One of the sisters’ very first moves had been to rescue their late aunt’s lady’s maid from the workhouse.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open that?’ asked Baxter, as she took the pins out of Amy’s hair and began to brush it.

  ‘Open what?’ asked Amy sleepily.

  ‘That parcel in the corner. It arrived for you early this evening.’

  ‘Oh, James, the footman, told me it was from Mr Haddon, and I decided not to tell Miss Effy so I would have the pleasure of opening it by myself.’ Amy yawned.

  She rose and went over to where the large square parcel stood, picked up the card on top, and read it.

  ‘Dear Miss Amy,’ Mr Haddon had written, ‘The enclosed is a memento of my stay in India and I would very much like you to have it.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t send anything to Effy as well,’ murmured Amy. ‘She is too damn proprietorial about Mr Haddon.’

  She wrenched open the top of the box and then leaped back, her hand to her heart.

  Baxter took a look and then screamed and rushed and seized the poker and went to smash the contents of the box.

  ‘No, no,’ said Amy, grabbing the maid’s arm. ‘It must be stuffed.’

  Amy lifted it out. It was a stuffed cobra. A malevolent-looking thing with wicked glass eyes.

  Baxter put down the poker. ‘If that ain’t the nastiest thing I ever did see,’ she marvelled. ‘What’s that Haddon doing to send sich a thing to a lady?’

  ‘Mr Haddon to you,’ growled Amy. ‘It’s quite clever, really, you know, once one gets over the initial shock. But where can I put it? Put it in the drawing room and we’ll frighten every caller away.’

  Baxter shuddered. ‘Why not send it to that Mr Desmond Callaghan, him that stole my mistress’s affections away? Two snakes should get on well together.’

  ‘No, I’ll keep it,’ said Amy.

  Baxter continued her ministrations, but keeping a wary eye all the time on the stuffed cobra. It was so very lifelike with its gleaming eyes and spread hood.

  She turned back the blankets. ‘Get into bed, Miss Amy,’ she said, ‘and try not to rise at dawn as you usually do or you’ll wear yourself to a frazzle.

  ‘Lovely bed,’ sighed Amy luxuriously. She stretched her large bare feet down under the covers and stiffened, her face a mask of horror.

  ‘What is it?’ cried Baxter.

  Amy threw back the blankets.

  When Lady Felicity made an apple-pie bed, she made it properly. Amy’s toes were sunk into a very large apple pie. Juice, broken pieces of pastry, and bits of stewed apple were already staining the sheets.

  ‘I’ll kill her,’ snorted Amy, identifying the culprit without any trouble.

  ‘Who, mum?’

  ‘Felicity. Help me up, Baxter, and clean this bed while I go and murder her.’

  Felicity lay in bed reading, a little smile curving her lips. She had heard Baxter’s earlier scream on seeing the cobra and had assumed it to be the sound of Amy screaming when she found the apple pie. Felicity had plenty of pin money and had slipped out to a pastry cook’s that afternoon and bought the biggest apple pie in the shop. Serve the old trout right, thought Felicity. Pity Ravenswood wasn’t in residence, or she might have played a trick on him as well. He had barely looked at her and had not even troubled to say goodbye. Felicity thought she knew now the reason for his odd interest in the sisters. The portraits of the Tribbles’ ancestors all bore a startling resemblance to the present Marquess of Ravenswood. Therefore it followed he was related to the Tribbles and instead of keeping them in funds had sent them out to work. Felicity had not been let into the secret of the servants. The marquess’s servants in Town had a different livery from the ones in the country, and so Felicity assumed they were the Tribbles’ household staff.

  The romance Felicity was reading was one of the first she had ever opened, her father having a great contempt for all such literature. It was the story of a persecuted heiress who finally managed to flee her captors, aided and abetted by a loyal and brave chambermaid.

  But engrossing as the tale was, Felicity’s eyes began to droop. She blew out the candle and turned over on her side to go to sleep.

  She heard the door open quietly but remained as she was. No doubt it was Amy come to harangue her. Something heavy landed on the foot of the bed and then Felicity heard the bedroom door close again.

  She struggled up and lit the bed candle and looked at the foot of the bed.

  At first it was like a nightmare. She opened her mouth wide, but only choked little noises of fright came out.

  An Indian cobra was reared up at the end of the bed, its hood extended, its glittering eyes boring into her own.

  Then she found her voice and screamed and screamed. The door opened, Amy marched in, seized the stuffed cobra and marched out again, and slammed the door. Felicity continued to scream, her face white, her eyes dilated. Servants came running, and then Effy. Felicity screamed louder, not recognizing Effy behind the mud pack but thinking some ghoul had risen from the grave to carry her off to the nether regions.

  It took a full half-hour to calm her down, by which time Amy had arrived and was leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb.

  ‘You’ve had a nightmare,’ said Effy, who had briefly retired to remove mud and chin-strap and emerge as herself again. ‘There are no snakes in London. You have had a bad dream. Have you been drinking again?’

  ‘I have had nothing stronger than lemonade!’ said Felicity, anger beginning to replace fear. ‘Someone has played a vicious and nasty trick on me.’ Her angry eyes glared at Amy.

  ‘It is your imagination,’ said Amy. ‘Good heavens. Who in this household would play such a trick on you? We are all mature people. It is only nasty little girls who play such tricks.’

  Felicity took a deep breath. So that was it. Amy had retaliated.

  Amy finally shooed everyone off to bed and then stood looking at Felicity, her arms crossed.

  ‘You behave like a good little girl in future,’ said Amy. ‘D’ye hear? You treat me bad, I treat you worse. You deserve to be horsewhipped. Next time, it’ll be a crate of spiders. Good night, dear Lady Felicity. Pleasant dreams.’

  Felicity lay awake for a long time, shaking with rage. Never had her will been crossed so much before. Never had she been afraid of anyone before.

  But now she was afraid of Amy Tribble, and hated her accordingly.

  Christmas passed, January came and went, and the Marquess of Ravenswood did not return. Felicity was subdued and obedient. She had one great accomplishment. She played the piano very well, having a natural talent, and because her father had liked her to play to him in
the evenings. Remorseful Amy was particularly nice to Felicity, feeling she had given the girl much too bad a fright. But Felicity was watching and waiting and biding her time. Lady Baronsheath had called on two occasions but had turned a deaf ear to Felicity’s complaints. The countess was impressed by the house and by the fact that Ravenswood would be using it as a base. Felicity had hoped to convey her misery to her mother by being meek and biddable, but all that did was to ease the countess’s worry. Timid and shy herself, Lady Baronsheath thought her wayward daughter was learning sense at last.

  One day, when pale sunlight was flooding the London streets and a frisky wind had blown away the winter’s fogs, Effy and Amy were sitting in the morning room, enjoying a brief period of peace and quiet. Felicity was out walking with her maid, Wanstead. Wanstead, in Felicity’s terms, had ‘gone over to the enemy camp’, which meant the maid was trusted to see that she did not get into any mischief.

  It was then that the butler broke the sisters’ temporary peace by announcing Mr Desmond Callaghan.

  ‘Tell that rat we are not at home,’ said Amy. ‘The cheek of the man. To steal Auntie’s inheritance from us and then come calling as bold as brass.’

  Mr Callaghan was just turning angrily away in the hall when Lady Felicity arrived. He swept her a low bow.

  ‘I am sorry to find the Misses Tribble not at home,’ he said crossly.

  Felicity surveyed him with an imp of mischief dancing in her eyes. She thought Mr Callaghan the most dandified fribble she had ever seen, from his enormously high beaver hat to his nipped-in waist and high-heeled boots with fixed spurs. His face was highly painted and his petulant mouth rouged.

  ‘I am sure there must be some mistake,’ said Felicity sweetly. ‘The Misses Tribble are most definitely at home. Come and I shall introduce you myself.’ And ignoring the butler’s outraged stare, she led the way upstairs.

  She opened the door of the morning room and ushered him inside. ‘This delightful gentleman was wrongly told that you weren’t at home,’ said Felicity blithely. She shut the door on Mr Callaghan and on the Tribbles’ outraged faces and went on up to her room, whistling merrily.

  ‘You shouldn’t ought to have done that,’ growled Wanstead, following her. ‘You did that out of spite and I hopes Miss Amy makes you pay for it.’

  Felicity remembered the cobra and felt a momentary stab of fear. She was sure the thing had been stuffed and had correctly assumed that it had been a present from that elderly nabob, Mr Haddon. But her fright on that terrible evening had been so great, she still had nightmares about it. Then she shrugged. She would get the better of Amy yet and, in fact, was almost ready to make her escape.

  Felicity, for all her odd upbringing, was very much a young lady of this second decade of the nineteenth century. Amy was, on the contrary, very much of the eighteenth, where ladies had been as broad-spoken as men, and even the highest aristocratic dames in society were as tough as old boots. Felicity was used to despising her own sex as being weak and feeble-minded and had not yet realized quite how tough the Tribble sisters could be. Nor did she realize that it was perhaps Effy she had more to fear, and that delicate and fragile Effy could make a nastier enemy than her mannish sister any day.

  Felicity had been working on a susceptible chambermaid, having got the idea from the romance she had been reading. The chambermaid, Charlotte, was a young Cockney girl, easily flattered by Lady Felicity’s confidences. She listened wide-eyed as Felicity fed her stories of persecution at the hands of the Tribbles and how they meant to force her to marry the wicked Lord Ravenswood. Finding that Charlotte could read, Felicity lent her the romance, which was all that was needed to make sure that the gullible girl believed every word. Since the apple-pie-bed episode, Felicity was never allowed to leave the house unchaperoned.

  Downstairs in the morning room, the atmosphere was arctic.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Callaghan, and state your business,’ said Amy.

  ‘You have stolen my inheritance,’ said Mr Callaghan.

  ‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed Effy. ‘The man is quite mad. It was you who stole our inheritance, Mr Callaghan.’

  ‘Mrs Cutworth left nothing but debts and more debts,’ said Mr Callaghan. ‘By the time I sold the house and contents, there was nothing left for me. I know now why the poor dear lady died penniless. You wicked pair had been cajoling vast sums out of her.’

  ‘Fiddle,’ said Effy. ‘We believed her to be rich as well.’

  ‘Mrs Cutworth told me you had not a penny,’ said Mr Callaghan. ‘She used to laugh about it. I once came and studied your house. Not a servant in sight. I asked in society. It was well known neither of you had a feather to fly with. But now you live in magnificence and there can only be one answer. I saw that maid of Mrs Cutworth enter here earlier. Ho! Yes! I have been watching your comings and goings. With her help, you stole Mrs Cutworth’s jewels and tormented the poor woman on her deathbed into giving you her money.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ said Amy, getting to her feet.

  Mr Callaghan rose as well.

  ‘I shall prove you are thieves and liars if it takes me to my dying day,’ he said passionately.

  Felicity was descending the stairs when the door of the morning room opened. Amy came out holding Mr Callaghan by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his neck. As Felicity watched, Amy frog-marched him down the steps, the butler leaped to open the street door, and Amy threw the beau down the steps, where he rolled over the pavement and into the road.

  Amy dusted her hands and then turned to the butler. The butler was explaining something. Amy turned and looked up to where Felicity was standing. Felicity backed up the stairs to her room. How would Amy retaliate?

  Felicity woke with a start that night, immediately aware there was someone in her bedroom. Amy, was her first thought. ‘Who is there?’ she cried sharply.

  A scared whisper answered her. ‘Charlotte.’

  Felicity lit the bed candle from the rushlight. Charlotte, the chambermaid, was standing there, holding something behind her back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Felicity. ‘And what are you hiding?’

  Charlotte began to sob. She brought her hand out from behind her back and held it out. She was clutching several pairs of garters.

  ‘What are you doing with my garters?’ asked Felicity.

  ‘I was taking them away,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, my lady, I was feared you would do yourself a mischief.’

  Felicity felt a sharp pang of conscience. A maid in one of the neighbouring houses had, only the other day, hanged herself in her garters, a very common form of suicide. Felicity felt she should not have played on the innocent chambermaid’s sympathies with her lies of persecution.

  Then she hardened her heart. The Tribbles must be punished and she had a simply marvellous plan and Charlotte was important to that plan.

  ‘Do not cry, Charlotte,’ she said softly. ‘I am going to escape and you are to help me.’

  ‘How, my lady?’ asked Charlotte, mopping her eyes with a corner of her apron.

  ‘I used to wear men’s clothes in the country,’ said Felicity, ‘but I was not allowed to bring such apparel to Town. I shall furnish you with money and bit by bit you must buy me an outfit suitable for a young man about Town. You must go to the very best of the second-hand clothes shops, for I do not want to wear dirty and soiled things.’

  ‘Oh, my lady, what if I am caught? Jobs are hard to find.’

  ‘I shall look after you. It is your duty to help me, Charlotte. I cannot trust any of the other servants, as they have probably been with the Tribbles for a long time.’

  Charlotte hesitated. She knew very well that she and the other servants belonged to the Marquess of Ravenswood. But Mr Humphrey, the butler, had made her swear on the Bible along with the others never to reveal this secret.

  ‘I shall help you in any way I can, my lady,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Good,’ said Felicity, lying back. ‘Leave my garters and go.
’

  Felicity lay awake for some time after the maid had gone, thinking with pleasure of the Tribbles’ shame and consternation when they found her gone. ‘Mother will never send me back,’ said Felicity to the candlestick. ‘Never. I shall make sure of that. She will never trust me to the Tribbles again. But they seem to be coming to their senses. I was so sure Amy would think up some punishment to revenge herself on me.’

  She did not know she was being discussed at that very moment. Amy was lying in bed, crying, while Effy held her hand.

  ‘I feel I cannot go on any longer,’ said Amy, taking out a handkerchief the size of a bed sheet and blowing her nose with a great trumpeting sound.

  Effy felt a hardening inside her as she looked at her weeping sister. Felicity must be schooled, and she, Effy, would do it. She patted Amy’s hand. ‘Do nit wirry, eh will d’ sumthin abitit.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ snapped Amy, rallying. ‘Take off that chin-strap. I cannot hear a word you are saying.’

  Effy unfastened the chin-strap and said clearly, ‘Do not worry, I will do something about it. I am surprised you are so overcome.’

  ‘It was such a piece of petty spite,’ said Amy. ‘She knew Callaghan had been told we were not at home.’

  ‘Yes, and subjected us both to a most distressing scene,’ said Effy. ‘Lady Felicity shall be punished, never fear. It serves him right after all his plotting to end up with nothing. It serves him . . .’ Effy began to giggle. ‘Oh, Amy,’ she said. ‘He was so very angry.’

  Amy looked at her in surprise and then she began to laugh as well. She laughed so hard that she quite forgot to ask Effy how she planned to punish Felicity.

  A surprised Felicity was awakened two mornings later at seven o’clock and ordered to present herself in the drawing room in half an hour.

  Too sleepy to protest, she allowed Wanstead to dress her and made her way downstairs.

  Effy was sitting in the drawing room with a middle-aged gentleman in a clerical collar.

  ‘Sit down, Lady Felicity,’ said Effy. ‘This is the Reverend Tobias Jiggs, a very famous evangelical preacher. Mr Jiggs, Lady Felicity Vane. You may begin.’