Adventuress

by Beaton, M. C.

  Then there was surely more to learn that she had ever dreamt of in Bath. She had listened eagerly to the speech of the young London débutantes as they shopped in Oxford Street and was amazed to find that the fashionable method of speech was a babylike lisp. You became ‘oo’, walk became ‘walkies’, and drives ‘tiddle-poms in the Park’. It was all very baffling. She could not hope to master this strange lingo in such a short time, but provided she kept her voice free of cant and coarse expressions, she would survive.

  She thought of the earl and thought of his social position and reluctantly penned his name on the invitation. Emily did not aspire to wed an earl. A younger son of a peer, Sir Somebody, or a plain esquire would do very well.

  As the day on which the rout was to be held approached, Emily plunged into a frenzy of shopping until Joseph, who accompanied her everywhere, wailed that his feet were being ‘destroyed’. She bought jewels, she bought feathers, gloves, fans, and silk flowers. She ordered banks of hothouse flowers to decorate the rooms and, unaware that a rout was not usually blessed with either refreshments or entertainment, hired a small orchestra.

  She was rather puzzled that no one had called or replied in any way to any of her invitations, but assumed that was the way of the ton. If all these grand people were not coming, then they would have surely written to say so. Mr Goodenough had tried to reassure her by saying that many things were conducted differently in the country.

  The day of the rout was depressing. A soaking drizzle wept from the grey skies. Emily fought down the feeling that the weather was a bad omen. But she was ready for the whole of fashionable London, and the servants were behaving in a calm and unflurried manner.

  It was as well Emily could not hear the frantic discussion in the servants’ hall.

  ‘I really do not think poor Miss Goodenough knows what she is doing,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘She says she is expecting at least a hundred people. How can we fit one hundred into this tiny house?’

  ‘Crushes are fashionable,’ said Rainbird. ‘Society thinks a rout is a success if they have been crushed and beaten and trampled on.’

  ‘But what troubles me,’ said Mrs Middleton, her nose twitching in distress, ’is that I do not believe our Miss Emily knows anyone. No one has been to call, except that Fleetwood, and he only came because he thought he might take the house after all.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Joseph, coming in at the end of Mrs Middleton’s worries. ‘I’ve been round to The Running Footman, and Luke says—’

  ‘Luke says. Luke says,’ jeered Jenny.

  ‘He knows what’s he’s talking about,’ said Joseph huffily. ‘He has been talking to Lord Fleetwood’s butler, Giles, what is just come up from the country, his lordship having taken a house in Park Lane. Giles says his master got this invitation from Miss Goodenough and he overheard Lord Fleetwood say to his friend, Mr Fitzgerald, ‘I think it wiser not to go.’ And then Luke says as how Lord and Lady Charteris thought it presumptuous of Miss Goodenough to send them invitations when she don’t know them or anybody else. Then Lord Frankland’s valet says as how everyone’s saying, ‘Who is this mushroom?’ and how Brummell said in White’s t’other day, ‘I shall not go. Not good enough for me,’ which everyone thought was monstrous funny.’

  ‘But Miss Emily has spent a fortune on food and flowers and an orchestra,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘I wanted to tell her that all these things were not necessary for a rout, but she is rather cold and haughty, and I did not like to tell her what to to do.’

  ‘Yes, she has been very unapproachable and frosty,’ said Rainbird. ‘I wonder what brought that about. She did seem to have accepted my apology, but later, the day after that, she looked at me as if I had crawled in from the kennel.’

  ‘Reckon I know something about that,’ said Alice slowly.

  ‘Come on, Alice,’ urged Jenny. ‘What happened?’

  There was a long pause while they waited for Alice’s brain to crank into action.

  Then Alice said, ‘She was asking about the rat and the horses and all, and I told her lies about them. But then she asked me why Mr Rainbird had been so insolent and, well, I told the truth.’

  ‘You what!’ screamed several voices in unison.

  ‘Couldn’t think of a lie,’ said Alice. ‘Told her we thought she was being a bit cheap over the matter of the rent and that we feared she might be cheap with us, so we tried to get rid of her.’

  ‘And what did she say to that?’ asked Mrs Middleton faintly.

  ‘Says something like, don’t do it again, and looks relieved.’

  ‘How can we help the poor girl now?’ said Rainbird crossly. ‘If we try to advise her as to how to go on, she will think we are plotting against her.’

  ‘Pity she isn’t someone who has to keep her background a secret, like in those books I read,’ said Lizzie dreamily. ‘You know, like she’s really a foreign princess in disguise.’

  ‘Worth a try,’ said Angus MacGregor. ‘Thae tottyheids in society would believe anything, provided someone told them it was a secret.’

  ‘You really mean we should go ahead with it?’ asked Rainbird, amazed.

  ‘Why not?’ said Angus with a shrug. ‘I dinnae want to see all this food go tae waste.’

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Miss Emily does not seem to know that it will be considered very odd in her, should anyone at all turn up, not to be accompanied by a female companion. A young lady, hopeful of marriage, should always be launched by some female.’

  ‘Wait there!’ said Rainbird. ‘First I must go and see if I can melt Miss Goodenough’s icy manner or we will not get anywhere at all. There’s the door. See who it is, Dave.’

  Dave came back, looking puzzled. ‘It’s Luke,’ he said. ‘And he wants to speak to you, Mr Rainbird.’

  ‘Not Joseph?’

  ‘No, you.’

  Rainbird went to the door. After only a few moments, he returned, looking highly amused. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Wonders will never cease. That was Luke asking permission to walk out with Lizzie.’

  Lizzie blushed and avoided Joseph’s startled look.

  ‘I said I’d think about it,’ said Rainbird, ‘and sent the whipper-snapper on his way. Come along, Joseph. No need to sit there looking as if you’ve been struck by lightning. Clean the silver while I soften Miss Goodenough’s flinty heart.’

  Emily’s face set in a hard and haughty mask as Rainbird entered the room. After her relief at Alice’s revelation had worn off, Emily felt that she, Emily, had not behaved in a proper manner. She should have reported the servants to Palmer and found somewhere else. But jewels and fine feathers could be sold should the Season prove to be a disaster. An enormous rent would have drained a significant amount of their capital away, and although they had a great deal of money, Emily always reminded herself it was Mr Goodenough’s money, and it was her duty to cut a dash and yet be as thrifty as possible. So she had stayed, but had tried to convey her displeasure to the servants by being as chilly and aloof as possible.

  ‘Yes, Rainbird?’ she demanded.

  ‘Where is Mr Goodenough?’ asked Rainbird.

  ‘He is resting in his room. Do you wish to speak to him?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I wish to speak to you in private. I apologized to you for my previous insolence, but Alice has only just told me that she had explained the reason for my insolence. I am here to apologize again.’

  ‘I shall consider your apology,’ said Emily loftily. ‘Whether I accept it or not will depend on your future behaviour.’

  ‘But we have no time to wait for my future behaviour to prove my good intentions,’ said Rainbird. ‘Miss Goodenough, you are desperately in need of our help now.’

  ‘Why, pray?’

  ‘Because no one is going to come to this rout this evening,’ said Rainbird. ‘They don’t know who you are and they consider it impertinent of you to have even invited them.’

  ‘No one is coming?’ whispered Emily, t
urning white. ‘No one?’

  Rainbird shook his head.

  ‘Then there is nothing to be done,’ said Emily, trying not to cry.

  ‘But there is,’ said Rainbird eagerly. ‘First, you must leave it to us to make you fashionable. Secondly, you must have a female companion. No young lady launches herself on a Season.’

  Emily was too upset and bewildered to keep up her haughty front. ‘But I don’t know any gentlewomen!’ she wailed.

  Rainbird thought quickly and then his face cleared. ‘Mrs Middleton!’ he cried. ‘The housekeeper. She is of genteel family and knows how to go on. She will serve for this evening as chaperone.’

  ‘But what is the point of her serving as anything,’ said Emily dismally, ‘if no one is going to come?’

  ‘They will! They will!’ said Rainbird.

  ‘But how? I know . . . you are going to spread gossip about me to excite their curiosity. What gossip? I must know, Rainbird.’

  ‘We are going to say you are a foreign princess who has kept herself alone for fear of being beset by adventurers and mushrooms.’

  ‘No one will believe such a thing!’

  ‘They will,’ said Rainbird. ‘Oh yes, they will.’

  ‘But won’t they want to know which country I am princess of?’

  ‘No one will dare offend you by asking. Should anyone do so, you laugh and say you are nobody but plain Miss Goodenough. They won’t believe you.’

  Colour slowly came back to Emily’s cheeks. ‘If you think such a lie would work,’ she said cautiously. ‘Only my uncle must not know of it. He is not strong.’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘So, my wise butler, have you any suggestions as to how I should behave to give credence to this lie?’

  Rainbird looked at the small stately figure, at the beautiful face and luxuriant hair. ‘I would say simply behave like yourself, Miss Emily. You look like a princess.’

  Emily began to laugh and she was still laughing when Rainbird bowed and left the room.

  A princess? Why not? Emily wiped her streaming eyes. If she was going to be an impostor, she might as well do things in style!

  ‘Are you sure you are determined not to go to Miss Goodenough’s rout?’ asked Fitz later that day. ‘I have not been invited, so I need you to take me.’

  ‘I am going to the opera instead,’ said the earl. He swung about. ‘Giles,’ he said to his butler. ‘Stop shuffling around in that furtive manner and pour Mr Fitzgerald a drink, and then you may leave.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Giles. He was bursting with all the gossip he had just heard at The Running Footman about Miss Emily Goodenough. He knew his master would not listen to any servants’ gossip and furthermore would be annoyed to learn his butler had passed most of the day in a public house instead of visiting the wine merchants where he was supposed to have been.

  That butler, Rainbird, had been extremely kind to Giles. Quite like an old friend the way he had confided his worries about his mistress. Giles had promised to help, but how could a butler help when he was not supposed to gossip?

  He slowly poured Mr Fitzgerald a glass of canary while he wondered how to introduce the subject.

  ‘Are you still here, Giles?’ came his master’s voice.

  ‘I was wondering, my lord,’ said Giles, ‘if your lordship would object to my taking the evening off.’

  ‘I don’t think I shall need you this evening, Giles. Are you succumbing to the temptations of London this early in the day?’

  ‘No, my lord. I met the butler from Number Sixty-seven Clarges Street and he asked me to call on him this evening.’

  ‘Number Sixty-seven? No, you may not go. I happen to know they are holding a rout there and their butler will have no time to entertain you. He is simply trying to get some unpaid help.’

  ‘On the contrary, my lord,’ said Giles, ‘he does not expect to be working at all. It is well known that no one is going to attend Miss Goodenough’s rout.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because no one has ever heard of her. Perhaps if they knew she was really a foreign princess . . . but alas, they consider her a Nobody. Mr Brummell was heard to say that Miss Goodenough was not Good Enough for him. Quite a laugh it caused in the club.’

  ‘Enough! I am not interested in the tittle-tattle of dandies. You may leave.’

  ‘And may I have the evening off?’

  ‘Poor little Miss Goodenough,’ murmured Fitz. ‘That settles it. If no one who is invited is going, then she will be glad to see someone who is not. I shall go. Is she really a princess, do you suppose?’

  ‘Not for a moment,’ said the earl. ‘Oh, very well, Fitz. We shall both go, but I shall not stay above ten minutes. You may have the evening off, Giles, but you are not to work, and if the Clarges Street servants are busy, then you must return here.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Giles.

  ‘A good man, that,’ said the earl after his butler had left the room. ‘But he has had no previous experience of London and I don’t want him led astray by London servants. At least he does not gossip.’

  ‘And how did you get on with old frosty-face?’ asked the first footman, Silas, as Giles entered the servants’ hall.

  ‘I’ve got him to go,’ said Giles triumphantly. ‘And I’ve got the evening off meself so I can see all the fun. Managed to drop that bit about her being a princess. Tell you what, Silas, let’s help that Rainbird fellow a bit further. Drop round next door to Lord Allington’s servants’ hall and have a bit of a gossip . . .’

  Rainbird, Joseph, and Angus worked The Running Footman, which was the upper servants’ pub, in shifts, gossiping and gossiping. Like a stone dropped in a pool, the gossip spread outwards and outwards in ripples, as servants talked to servants, and servants then talked to masters and mistresses.

  Mrs Middleton was closeted with Emily, being dressed to look like the companion to a foreign princess. At last she was attired in a combination of her own wardrobe and Emily’s, in purple silk and purple turban and with one of Emily’s new diamond necklaces about her neck, Emily not knowing that diamonds were completely exploded. Everything that was no longer in fashion was said to be ‘exploded’.

  Mrs Middleton looked so imposing and at the same time so reassuring that Emily decided to ask her for help.

  ‘My mother was a very great lady, Mrs Middleton,’ lied Emily, ‘but did not give birth to me until she was in her forties. Consequently her speech was still coarse – it was fashionable to be coarse in Mama’s youth – and I unfortunately am subject to slips. Please be on your guard to cover up for me should I forget myself.’

  Mrs Middleton readily agreed. Inside, she was feeling as nervous as Emily and hoped that the gossip would not work and that no one would come.

  FIVE

  My dear Lady—! I’ve been just sending out

  About five hundred cards for a snug little rout – But

  I can’t conceive how, in this very cold weather, I’m

  ever to bring my five hundred together . . . in

  short, my dear, names like

  Wintztschitstopschinzoudhoff

  Are the only things now to make an evening smooth off—

  So, get me a Russian – till death I’m your debtor—

  If he brings the whole alphabet so much the better.

  And – Lord! if he would but in character, sup

  Off his fish-oil and candles, he’d quite set me up!

  Au revoir, my sweet girl – I must leave you in haste—

  Little Gunter has brought me the liquors to taste.

  THOMAS MOORE

  ‘Will she be expecting you, do you think?’ asked Fitz, as he and the earl strolled along Curzon Street.

  ‘I do not know, my friend.’

  ‘Surely you gave some reply to her invitation?’

  ‘I never reply to invitations unless they be to dinner. I either go or don’t go.’

  ‘I confess to certain tremors of excitement,’ said Fitz
. ‘Is she really so beautiful?’

  ‘Miss Goodenough is extremely beautiful and very much out of the common way.’

  ‘What is this ridiculous story about her being a princess?’

  ‘It is a usual practice,’ said the earl, ‘when some hostess fears people will not attend her festivities, to send her servants out gossiping and spreading lies to excite curiosity.’

  ‘You make me feel like a flat. I had not heard of such a practice.’

  ‘My late wife, Clarissa, once created a sensation in Grosvenor Square by having it put about that she intended to display a two-headed monkey at her rout. There was no such animal, but silly society fought and pushed and screamed to get into my house. So determined were they to have a new piece of gossip that a remarkable amount of them claimed to have seen this monkey and even fed its two heads with nuts.’

  ‘So even if no one believes her to be a princess, they will insist she is until a better piece of tittle-tattle comes along?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Perhaps this Miss Goodenough will turn out to be the bride for you,’ said Fitz, with a sidelong look at his friend’s handsome face.

  ‘Too young and too beautiful. I am looking for a lady of mature years, but not too old to bear children, and of good intelligence and dignity. If they are young, they are silly, and if they are beautiful, they are empty-headed and vain, having never had to make the least push to entertain.’

  ‘Are you not afraid that some of the house’s notorious bad luck will stick to you?’

  ‘Not I. I am not superstitious, but then, I am no gambler.’

  ‘It all looks very quiet,’ said Fitz as they turned the corner into Clarges Street. ‘No carriages, no crush.’

  ‘Then the princess tale has not taken,’ said the earl. ‘Society must be becoming more sophisticated. And I must be getting old. I am beginning to wish I had stayed quietly at home with a book. The relief of finding myself in comfortable surroundings after the noise of Limmer’s Hotel makes me reluctant to go out anywhere.’

  ‘I wish you had stayed long enough at Limmer’s to find out how that fellow, John Collins, makes that delicious gin concoction of his.’