Lady of Spirit

by Edith Layton

  “Oh, well,” said the boy equitably, laying down the cudgel, “why din’t you say that in the first place?”

  6

  “’Ere we are, your lordship,” the boy said magnanimously, flinging the door to his rooms wide. “Now I expect you’ll be a bit more comfortable ’ere. And a deal more private too. Now, Bobby, you fetch that carpetbag down to ’is lordship’s carriage, smartly now. And, Sally, you take Baby in t’other room, I think ’e needs seeing to.”

  “Oh, but, Alfie,” the little girl said at once, hoisting the baby higher on her shoulder, “I just did, ’member? Just afore we came into Miss Victoria’s room, ’cause you said as he smelt high as last week’s fish then.”

  “That was then,” her brother said pointedly, glaring at the girl, “and this ’ere is now, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Yes, Alfie,” Sally replied at once, instantly obedient, turning to go into the other room, and then, catching herself, paused and dipped such a low curtsy to the gentleman that she wavered and bobbed under the weight of Baby as she attempted to straighten from it. But as soon as she had, she turned around and went directly into the next room. Baby bobbled over her shoulder, giving the gentleman a glimpse of a lone emergent white tooth in an enormous damp smile of farewell, before his sister turned to present his round rump and her own wistful face as she closed the door behind her.

  “Now, then,” the fair young gentleman said decisively, pushing the one chair in the room to his guest, “’ave a seat, your lordship, and we’ll see if we can’t sort things out.”

  The earl seated himself, crossing his legs as casually as if he were in his club instead of a low-ceilinged cramped and ill-furnished hovel, and politely waited for his host to speak what was obviously on his mind. The boy took a few turns around the room, which, considering the size of it, was not a very long time, and then he spoke.

  “Now, as I understand it, she’s sick as a ’orse, right?”

  “She’s ill, yes,” the earl replied seriously, “but we have every hope that it’s not a mortal taking. We haven’t even bled her yet, for if some sleep and potions bring the fever down first, the doctor thinks it best to let nature mend her. He is a very good physician,” the earl mused.

  “And speaking man to man, if you don’t mind the liberty, your lordship,” Alfie said gravely, “I understand she din’t take up your dishonorable offer neither?”

  “Not that offer, no, most emphatically not,” the earl replied just as calmly, “and I haven’t had an opportunity to proffer my second, more correct one to her.”

  “Ah well,” the boy breathed sadly, shrugging his thin shoulders as if nothing in the strange old world could surprise him any longer, “can’t say as I’d blame you for being put out wiv ’er. There’s not many around ’ere as would nay-say you. You’re a fine-looking gent and it prolly was a fair arrangement you’d set up. But she’s a lady, see, even if she ain’t precisely one. It’s just that ’er sort would rather starve to death in a gutter than take up wiv you in silk and satin, if you get my meaning. But I’m sure she din’t mean insult.”

  “I quite understand, no insult taken,” the earl replied with an admirably solemn expression.

  “When do you suppose she’ll be able to come back to us?” Alfie asked after completing another turn around the room.

  “It’s difficult to say precisely when,” the earl replied, and was about to say more when the door to the room burst open again.

  “Oh, Alfie, you ort to see!” the young boy who’d been introduced to the earl as “m’ bruvver Bobby, ’e’s eight,” cried as he rushed as breathlessly into the conversation as he’d entered the room. “What a rig, ’e’s got! Four fine Arabians ’e’s got, matched blacks, black as midnight they are, spanking ’uns, and a ’normous carriage wiv curtains and red velvet cushions, and a raft of servants dressed fine as guards at t’ Tower. Oh, Lud, Alfie, ’alf the street is out, lookin’ their eyes out. Come see!”

  “I am talking to ’is lordship, thank you,” Alfie said with barely contained fury, “and I’ll thank you to get in t’other room wiv Sally and Baby if you please, till I’m done, if you know what’s ’ealthy for you, that is.”

  “Yes, Alfie,” the other boy said, deflating immediately and creeping off meekly into the other room, as wretchedly as though it had been brickbats and not words his brother had thrown at him.

  “It’s not easy dealing wiv ’em, but they’re very young, don’t you know,” Alfie said apologetically as the door closed softly behind his brother, and the earl nodded sympathetically, waiting for him to go on.

  “Well,” the boy finally sighed, “I’m glad as you’ve got ’er now as she’s sick, for there’s not much we could do for ’er ’ere. But the thing of it is, your lordship, that she and us, well, we ’ad an arrangement too, y’ see.”

  Alfie folded his arms and stood before the earl in almost the same attitude as the earl had stood before him not moments before, legs apart, and frowning. It was such excellent mimicry of a mature gentleman with a poser on his mind that in that moment the earl almost forgot it was a pale fair youth of an admitted eleven years of age, dressed in threadbare castoffs that confronted him, and not his own mirror image.

  “So though I’m glad that she’s fallen on ’er feet, so to speak, I’m sorry too,” Alfie went on, “’cause the truth of it is, your lordship, that she can’t rightly take you up on any offer ’cause she’s got a prior”—he paused to let the deliciously legal sound of the word he’d dredged up sink in before he went on—“a prior arrangement wiv us. We’re in the way of being ’er employers, that is to say,” he explained.

  When the gentleman only gazed at him quizzically, the boy said with great care, “That is, you see, we arranged that she instruct my sister and brother and Baby in gentle ways, and in return I’d see to her room and board, meanwhile. It’s a sad blow,” he said, shaking his flaxen head, becoming more the gentleman employer by the moment, even to the point of now enunciating his “aitches” exquisitely, “to find she’s not to be with us for some time.”

  “Aha. I believe I see the whole of it now,” the earl said, nodding wisely, “but surely you would let her out of her contract if certain financial details were worked out so that you could find a replacement?”

  The earl reached into his jacket and withdrew a purse, and then withdrew a sum from that purse. The sight of the bills in the gentleman’s hands seemed to catch the boy’s breath up in his throat, for he had to clear it and swallow once before he was able to speak again. But when he did, it was the earl who became speechless. For, “No,” Alfie said firmly, “I can’t sell Miss Dawkins’ contract to you, my lord, much as I can use the blunt, as well you know it.

  “Thing of it is,” the boy said at last, and boy he seemed now, for he’d become very pale and his voice was far less confident, “the way I sees it, you’ve a use for her one way or t’other. And that’s your business and her business, never mine. But whichever business it is, there’s no way I can match it. So I’d tell her to go wiv you, one way or t’other, both ways leads to a good life for her, no mistake, and I’ve a care for her. Even if I din’t, I ain’t going to pretend to sell you somethin’ we both know I ain’t got, not really. But mark me well, I’m not a beggar. Not me. I don’t take nothing for nothing in return. But I can sell you something you ain’t got. And it’s not her. It’s me.

  “Listen, your lordship,” Alfie said quickly and quietly, deadly earnest and extremely pallid now. “It’s certain you’ve a grand house and stables and what-all. It’s sure you’ve got a job of work, some position somewhere in there for me, maybe two, maybe one for my brother too. There ain’t nothing I can’t learn to do, and quick, too. I could handle your horses or clean up in the kitchens, or what-all, I could.”

  “And the money?” the earl asked softly.

  “Ah, the money’s good, no mistake,” Alfie said in agitation, his blue eyes never leaving the earl’s face. “And there’s a lot of folks hereabouts would
call me a nodcock for not snapping it up. In fact, they’d be reserving a nice room in Bedlam for me right now if they heard me. But I ain’t lived here all my life, and I know a few things they don’t. I’m no Miss Dawkins—it ain’t just my noble nature makes me turn it down. But don’t you see, that money’s just a one-time thing, no matter how much it is. And when it’s done, it’s gone. But a job means money on the barrelhead every month, and a future, and I’ve got a family to think of.”

  “Ah,” the earl said, appearing to think deeply. “And if you come with me, for it is indeed quite possible that I can find some sort of useful employment for you, what of the others? Who’d look after them?”

  “Gawd, with money in hand, there ain’t no one I couldn’t get the hire of to look in on the little ones,” Alfie said fervently, all intent, bending forward, as if he wished the earl to commit himself immediately through the sheer tension of the moment.

  “And your mama, of course, will agree to this?” the earl asked softly, watching Alfie closely.

  “Ah, yeah, oh sure, o’ course,” Alfie answered quickly.

  “Well then, I think we may indeed strike some sort of bargain,” the earl said, rising to his feet. “May I just have a word with your mother before I say more? It’s only right, after all, and though you did say she was resting in the other room, as your brothers and sister are already in there, surely she must be awake now.”

  “Ah, it ain’t necessary. She’s feeling so poorly these days, you see,” Alfie said nervously, backing toward the closed door to the other room, “I know she wouldn’t want a fine gent such as yourself seeing her, as bad as she looks now, don’t you know.”

  The dark gentleman stood very still and then asked gently, “How long has she been gone, Alfie?”

  “She tole you?” the boy asked in disbelief, despair plain on his thin face.

  “Miss Dawkins? No, not a word. But it was the fact that there was not a word that tipped me the clue, Alfie. For she sent her love to all of you and never mentioned your mama, and Miss Dawkins,” he said with a wry smile, “as we all know, is most proper. Then too,” he added, “if your mama were here, I should think you’d very much want her to meet me. I’d think seeing your employer would comfort her, no matter how she felt about her lost looks.”

  “Lawd,” Alfie sighed, settling back till he rested against the worn table, “you ain’t just whistling. A real earl in ’er own ’ouse? She would o’ been amazing pleased.”

  Then he stood and faced the earl, a certain sad dignity upon him, and he looked up straight into the dark gentleman’s fathomless eyes as he spoke, for the first time with neither affectation nor guile. “She died January past. It was a fierce winter, remember, and she hadn’t been feeling too clever since Baby was born. It was consumption, I think, or it could’ve been something else, it don’t matter really. But the lucky thing in it was she din’t die here. She was taking in sewing, piecework, to do at home. I was to meet her across town, at the dressmaker’s, to help her carry the goods home. But when I got there, she was already down in the street, with a great crowd gawking at her.

  “Well,” Alfie went on, dry-eyed, all emotion firmly suppressed, “she din’t last long after they got her inside. The luck in it was that no one round here knew of it. She’s in potter’s field under her born name, so’s nobody could find out. I figure she don’t mind, and ’er maker knows ’er, whatever name I gave to the beadle. But that way I could keep us all together, don’t you see.”

  When Alfie paused, for inspiration or for the purpose of getting himself in control again, the earl reflected that the boy could speak very well when he wished, but that emotion of any sort caused him to lapse into the argot of the streets.

  “There were no relatives?” the earl said gently.

  “Nah, none, she came to town from the country when Da died, ’e was a sailor, she was once a lady’s maid, and there was only just the two of them. And don’t tell me about the orphan ’omes,” Alfie blazed, before he remembered that this was a gentleman and someone he wished to please. He quickly subdued himself so that he could go on in a quiet, almost wheedling voice, “Have you seen them, sir? Workhouses are better, I think. I even went up to Guildford Street to have a look in at the best one, the foundling hospital there. Gawd, give me Newgate instead! So I decided that since no one knew our mum was gone, no one had to know. Mrs. Rogers and t’others could believe they always just missed her coming in and going out, and when they began to ask too much, why then Mum could always get sick with something they din’t want to get too near.

  “Do you know what ’appens to kids who ’ave no one to look after ’em, your lordship?” Alfie asked, before he answered himself in a voice of disgust. “Our Sally’s only six, and yet there’s a ’ouse not two blocks from ’ere, where they’d be ’appy to have ’er wiv others just like ’er they got on staff. ’Cause there’s gents find little girls ’er age just right for their pleasure. And they ain’t blokes from round here, neither. And Bobby, ’e’s small for his age, but if they din’t find him pretty enough for bedwork, or if he wasn’t snapped up for a thieves’ ken, why it would be up the chimney wiv him in a trice, and a nice fire under his feet, for the sweeps is always looking for likely lads wiv no one to speak for ’em. And Baby? ’Oo wants another baby? Lucky if ’e’d last out a month, ’e’d be. And me, why I can take care of myself, but the thing is, I got to take care of them.

  “But January’s a long time gone,” Alfie said, brooding, “and I began to see that Mum couldn’t stay in her room forever. When Miss Dawkins moved in I watched her close, and it wasn’t long before I decided she’d do, she’d do fine. We needed a grown woman with us for the look of it. And since I soon saw she didn’t know the time of day around here, it was clear she needed us just as much as we needed her. In a few weeks, I thought we’d all move along to new rooms together, to a lodging house a long way away, and we’d put it about that she was our sister and that she had a rough young husband in the navy, so’s no one would get funny ideas, and we’d have done fine. Yes, we would’ve. But now I s’pose that’s all over.”

  Complete quiet settled over the room then. Sally and Bobby, both with their ears to the door, looked at each other in wild surmise as the silence grew, but neither the tall gentleman nor the fair-haired boy noted it, each being too busy with his own thoughts.

  “The foundling hospital is a worthy place. I’ve donated money to it myself,” the earl said at length, and went on, oblivious of the snarl forming on the boy’s lips, “but aside from the fact that I doubt you’d be around long enough for the ink used in your name to dry on their register, I’ve a fondness for the place and hardly think it right to bring it down about all those innocent children’s ears.

  “Alfie,” the earl then said decisively, slapping his gloves against his palm before he extended one long well-tended hand to the boy, “I believe I understand you very well and that I’ve a position for you, if, that is to say, you’re willing to sign on with me.”

  “I believe,” Alfie said with admirable control, as he spat in the palm of his own chapped hand and proffered it to the earl to shake to seal the bargain, “that I am. Aye, sir, I believe that I am.”

  *

  The eighth Earl of Clune’s town carriage pulled up in front of the door to his London residence. When his tiger let the steps down, an odd little procession disembarked. A usually stolid footman swung the ornate doors to the town house wide, as his eyes seemed to open wider, and even the earl’s butler, one of the best men in London town, a man who had once seen a previous employer run through by a swordsman and had only drawn in his breath sharply as the weapon was withdrawn, with all the life’s blood, from his master’s breast, now forgot himself so much as to gasp aloud.

  “Mama,” the Earl of Clune said pleasantly, with a great deal of high humor lurking in the depths of his black eyes as his mother paused on the stair to stare at the new arrivals in her son’s train, “may I present to you the Johnson family? This
is Alfred…and here is Robert…may I make known Miss Sally Jane…and this is Baby, more properly known as…ah…”

  “’Arold!” cried Robert, rising from his bow as his brother called out, “James!” even as the little girl holding the infant stammered, “R-Roger, mum.”

  “Harold James Roger Johnson,” the earl repeated with great pleasure. “Children, this is my mother, Mrs. Haverford. The Johnsons will be staying on with us for a while, Mama.”

  And as his mother eyed the quartet of children with something very akin to her son’s vast pleasure in her own dark eyes, he bent to her and whispered softly, “They followed me home, Mama, may I keep them? I promise to take care of them, and I swear they won’t eat much.”

  *

  A small fire grumbled comfortably in the grate in the study, warding against any slight chill in the late-spring evening. A few lamps were lit to burnish the long twilight, and the gentleman at his ease in the deep leather chair looked up from his book lazily as his guest entered, bringing drafts and noise and a sulky expression in with him.

  “Oh, no, don’t get up, why trouble yourself,” the young man complained as he flung himself down upon a chaise, causing the piece of furniture to squeal in protest at his invasion. “You can be easy, sitting and looking as though you hadn’t a care in the world, and no doubt you haven’t, for your mama is snug in another house, while you live as you please here, rich as Croesus. It’s not fair,” the young gentleman moaned, looking to the table where a decanter filled with something ruby red sat surrounded by crystal goblets.