Penelope

by Beaton, M. C.

  Before they reached the town of Dover, Penelope glanced once more out to sea. The sky still stretched blue and cloudless as far as the eye could see, but the sea appeared to have abruptly changed to a gray metallic color which seemed to change to black, even as she looked.

  She pointed this phenomenon out to John, sticking her head out of the open carriage window and calling up to him as he sat majestically on his box.

  John promptly reined in his horses. “It’s like I told you, miss,” he said, twisting round on the box to look down at Penelope. “Storm’s a-coming. We’d best go back.”

  “Oh, no !” screamed Jane and Alice in unison, their black ringlets bobbing. “Miss Vesey, tell him we must go on.”

  “Very well,” smiled Penelope, amused at the girls’ enthusiasm for shopping, little realising that Jane and Alice had heard that Farmer Galt’s sons were visiting Dover and that they hoped to see them.

  Jane and Alice were dressed alike. Their warm pelisses and velvet dresses were of different colors, eighteen-year-old Jane being in blue and seventeen-year-old Alice in scarlet, but they were so alike in character that somehow they always looked as if they were dressed the same. Both were buxom, both had rosy cheeks. Jane had smaller eyes and a longer nose than her sister, but that seemed to be the only difference.

  “Perhaps we shall find a beau for you, Miss Vesey?” teased Jane. “You are so pretty, it seems a shame you are not married.”

  “I shall never marry,” said Penelope in a quiet voice, and both her charges fell silent, remembering their mother’s speculations that Miss Vesey was suffering from a broken heart.

  The sun was still bathing the cobbles of Dover in a warm, pale golden light when Penelope and the girls alighted from the carriage. But John, the coachman, was still muttering and prophesying bad weather, and after Penelope and her charges had left to look at the shops, he drove to the Green Man and bespoke rooms for all them for the night. He had a strong feeling in his rheumaticky bones that they would not be returning home that day.

  The town of Dover was very like other English seaport towns except that it was cleaner and had fewer ruffians hanging about. Penelope found it a very picturesque place. On one side of the town the old castle was perched on the top of a very steep hill. On the other side was a great chalk hill, very nearly perpendicular, rising up from sixty to a hundred feet higher than the tops of the houses which huddled at the foot of the hill. Penelope was amazed to see cows grazing on a spot apparently fifty feet above the tops of the houses and measuring horizontally not more than twenty feet.

  It made the perspective look excitingly and magically wrong somehow—like the perspectives in some early paintings. On the south side of the town stood the cliff described by Shakespeare in King Lear :

  How fearful

  And dizzy ‘tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

  The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

  Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down

  Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!

  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head …

  On a previous visit Penelope had stood on the cliff, watching the men gathering plants below and had then retreated quickly from the edge of the cliff, almost overcome with dizziness. It had not changed at all since Shakespeare’s day. She envied the cows and sheep that grazed, unconcerned, at the very edge of the cliff as if they were browsing in some placid valley.

  Penelope ushered the girls into Mr. Jobbin’s in the high street—to buy green tea on the one side of the shop and to examine silk ribbons on the other. The shop was pretty well filled. Shy farmers stood around the grocery counter, slicking down their hair and looking nervously out of the sides of their eyes at Mr. Jobbin’s smart young assistants who had on very fashionable cravats and leaped backwards and forwards over the counters, vaulting with amazing dexterity, their coattails flying behind them.

  Penelope had taken to wearing caps which she felt suitable to her governess position. While the girls were looking through a box of ribbons, Penelope bought herself a new cap and stood back to wait until the girls were finished. It was then, as their plump gloved hands turned over the silk ribbons, that Penelope saw a flash of gold-colored ribbon. All at once she was transported back in her mind to that night at Almack’s where she had worn the dress with the gold ribbons. She felt suddenly weak and faint and looked wildly round until she found a chair to sit down on. Gradually the faintness receded. She arose unsteadily and went to the silk counter to fetch her charges, but of Jane and Alice there was no sign.

  Thoroughly worried and harassed, Penelope asked the stately Mr. Jobbin himself if he had seen the girls. “I saw them stepping out just some minutes ago, ma’am,” said Mr. Jobbin with a low bow. “They said something to me about getting some fresh air and that they would be meeting you at the Green Man for tea.”

  “Oh!” said Penelope with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. “I believe the girls have gone to look for something less salubrious than fresh air.”

  Now, thought Penelope, standing outside the shop, if I were making an assignation, where should I go? The quay, that was it!

  As she walked down the steep hill towards the quay, she suddenly realised that great black clouds were massing on the horizon and a blustery wind had begun to blow from the sea. The tall, thin masts of the ships were bobbing and swaying as if some winter forest had come to life.

  It did not take her long to spy the buxom figures of her charges, giggling and laughing with Farmer Galt’s sons.

  Her charges accepted her rebuke with their customary good humor while the Galt brothers grinned and looked sheepish.

  Penelope marched the girls up the windy hill to the Green Man. The wind was now blowing with full force and as they came in sight of the inn, an icy squall of rain struck them and sent them scurrying for shelter.

  John was lounging at the entrance to the inn with a satisfied I-told-you-so look on his face.

  “We’ll not get home to Wold,” he told Penelope with obvious satisfaction. “I took the liberty of bespeaking rooms for you and the Misses Jennings. Also a snug private parlor.”

  Penelope could only thank him as she looked back at the rain-drenched street and up at the sky which was now boiling black above the town.

  By the time she and the girls were sitting over a substantial tea in their parlor, the rain was already changing to snow. Sea and town were blotted out as great sheets of snow roared in from the Channel.

  After tea she kept the girls amused with endless games of spillikins until it was time for dinner and then, after dinner, ordered them to bed.

  But Penelope could not sleep. The snow changed to stabbing arrows of ice which rattled ferociously against the leaded windows. The old inn creaked and struggled in the grasp of the storm and the bed candle’s flame wavered and danced in a multitude of scurrying drafts. The images of the Earl and Augusta and Charles danced in the black corners of the room.

  She thought for the hundredth time of the bitter complexities of the human character where a seemingly fastidious and honorable man such as the Earl, who had held her so passionately in his arms and promised her the world and all, should underneath be a weak and vicious philanderer.

  She could not help wondering if he ever thought of her at all, and groaned as she thought that at that very moment some other naïve debutante might be trembling in his arms and listening to all those speeches of love which she had trustingly believed had been for her alone.

  But there was no female present to console the unhappy and dispirited Earl who had returned from a fruitless visit to Bath. He had eased his feelings by giving the Misses Fry a piece of his mind, but now he did not know what to do.

  He was roused from his depression by his butler, Rourke, who entered the room and stood before him, looking shaken and nervous and not at all like his usual calm and urbane self.

  “What is it, Rourke?” asked the Earl testily.

  “I have betrayed you!” c
ried Rourke. “Oh, my lord, forgive me. It was the Fatal Tendency.”

  “What are you talking about, man?”

  “I gave you my solemn promise not to reveal the particulars of Lord Charles’s death,”said Rourke in a shaky voice, “but I failed you. A certain young footman called Snyle knew of my weakness for drink and filled me full of ale, plying me with questions the while. I had no recollection of telling him anything.

  “But Miss Harvey’s house is in an uproar. She has gone off to Dover to take a ship for France. She told the servants she was taking a short holiday, but it appears she has sold the house and left them without their wages. When I was talking to them, I learned that Snyle had been in her employ and had mysteriously disappeared on the day after I had been drinking with him. Well, Snyle had let several hints drop in the servants’ hall that he intended to make his fortune by finding out information about Lord Charles’s death. I cannot remember but I feel I must have let something fall when I was in my cups. Oh, my lord. I feel you can never forgive me!”

  “Dover,” said the Earl, his face white and set. “I tell you, Rourke, you shall easily repair any damage you have done by serving me in this way. You shall accompany me to Dover and aid me in hunting down Augusta Harvey. Our name is worth nothing should this traitor go free … for I feel sure Augusta is a traitor.

  “The roads will be bad, so we will need to ride. Have four of our best mounts saddled up and we shall take with us two of the burliest footmen. Now, bustle about man! We are no longer interested in the damage that has been done but how we can best mend matters. Mayhap Augusta knows the direction of her niece and I shall choke that information out of her—before I kill her!”

  Penelope gave up trying to sleep. Her thoughts were too anguished and the noise of the storm too loud. She decided to go along the corridor and make sure that the girls were safely tucked up.

  She put on her wrap and picked up her bed candle and quietly opened the door. The narrow corridor was very dim, lit only by the light of a small oil lamp hanging from a bracket on the wall halfway along. Then she heard the sound of another door being opened and drew back into the doorway of her own bedroom, not wanting to run into another guest while she was in her night attire. She cautiously peered round the doorjamb and then stood rigid, the candlestick tilting dangerously in her trembling hand. Augusta Harvey came quietly out of a room, went a little way down the corridor, and vanished into a room at the end.

  “I’m going mad!” thought Penelope wildly. “My nightmares are coming true!”

  But an innate common sense told her terrified brain that what she had seen was a real-live person. Like a sleepwalker, Penelope moved along the corridor until she reached the door through which Augusta Harvey had just disappeared.

  “Well, what news?” came the unmistakable harsh voice of Augusta.

  To Penelope’s surprise another voice she recognised answered her aunt.

  “We shall not be sailing tonight, Miss Harvey. The storm is too fierce and Captain Jessey says it may be a few days before we have a fair wind for France.”

  It was the Comte!

  Penelope stayed rooted to the spot, almost leaning against the door, although the voices carried easily above the roar of the storm.

  “Gad’s ‘oonds!” said Augusta furiously. “I feel like a trapped rat! What if Hestleton should have changed his mind and come looking for me!”

  “Hestleton is too proud,” replied the Comte in his familiar sibilant tones. “He will do all in his power not to besmirch his family escutcheon. He would not have it known that his young brother blew his brains out because he was a Bonapartiste spy. Which reminds me, you played your cards wrong over that little affair.”

  “How so?” snarled Augusta.

  “Well, when you had found out from the late and unlamented Snyle that Lord Charles had left a letter explaining that you had been blackmailing him so that he would introduce Penelope to his brother in the hope that the Earl would marry her, the Earl naturally thought Penelope was part of the blackmailing scheme.

  “Now, had you convinced him she was not, I feel sure he would still have married her because, if ever I saw a man head over heels in love, that was the Earl.”

  “Oh, I knew that,” said Augusta impatiently.

  “Then why …?”

  “Because,” said Augusta patiently while Penelope’s poor heart and mind seemed to be doing somersaults, “he would have married her, but I would have never been allowed to set foot in any of his households and the only reason I wanted that little baggage to marry him was to afford me a social entrée. Why should I spend money on her and not benefit myself, heh!”

  Penelope leaned forward and pressed her ear against the door. She must write to the Earl, she must tell him all she could find out.

  The Comte’s voice came again, sounding faintly amused. “Dear Miss Harvey, you are always describing the horrors of hellfire so accurately. Do you never fear them yourself? After all, you are a murderess, a poisoner, in fact— hélas, poor Snyle, I knew him well—a traitor, and, who knows, perhaps a double murderess if the luckless Penelope should starve.”

  “I do what is right,” came Augusta’s sulky voice, while Penelope’s brain reeled under the onslaught of this most recent information. “I wreak vengeance in His name. Yea, verily, I come with a sword …”

  “It was rat poison in poor Snyle’s case,” said the Comte, sounding much amused. “Dear Miss Harvey, you are an original. And while we’re on the subject of originals, may I have my snuffbox back? The one you have just slipped into your reticule? Ah, I thank you. Now, let us have some wine and relax. Nothing can be achieved by worrying …”

  Penelope crept off down the corridor and into the safety of her room. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst through her throat.

  She sad down shakily on the edge of her bed, her thoughts as wild as the storm outside. Even the Comte, whom she had believed to be a kindly man, had turned out to be Augusta’s accomplice.

  She was very shocked and very afraid, but somewhere in all the confusion was a small kernel of comfort. She knew now why the Earl had behaved so.

  After sleepless hours of thought she made up her mind. She would send an express to the Earl, telling him about Augusta. He would somehow know what to do. She would send the girls back home in the morning and somehow manage to stay at the inn without Augusta seeing her. If Augusta was about to set sail and the Earl had not arrived, then she, Penelope, would have to stop her somehow.

  * * *

  In the morning the sky was still steel gray, but the snow which had changed to rain during the night had ceased to fall.

  Penelope told the puzzled Jennings girls that she had to remain in Dover on urgent business and scurried back to the safety of her room as soon as the Jenningses’ cumbersome carriage had rolled out of sight.

  Now all she had to do was wait …

  Chapter Twelve

  TWO DAYS LATER, Penelope was still fretting in her room. The wind had died down and the sky was clear but the sea was still stormy with tall white-capped waves churning across its surface.

  It was late afternoon and the light was already fading and Penelope had resigned herself to another long night’s vigil, when she heard the sound of voices in the corridor. The Comte and Augusta!

  She pressed her ear against the panel of the door and listened. “Then it appears we may sail tonight?” Augusta was saying.

  “We may have to pay the good Captain more,” the Comte replied. “I fear that …” But whatever the Comte feared was lost to Penelope’s listening ears as he turned a bend in the corridor.

  Penelope hurriedly donned her cloak, grateful for its concealing hood which she drew about her face. She crept to the top of the stairs and listened. The Comte and Augusta were standing at the entrance to the inn. “I have had our trunks corded and put aboard,” the Comte was saying. “So it is only a matter of getting Captain Jessey to take us on board as well.”

  They moved off a
nd Penelope followed behind, keeping at a safe distance as they went down the windy hill to the quay.

  The ships were still bobbing wildly at anchor. Penelope hid behind a bale of goods on the quay and peered cautiously round in time to see the Comte and Augusta boarding a schooner called the Mary Jane.

  She waited for what seemed like a very long time, trembling with cold and excitement, and wondering what to do should the couple not return to dry land.

  At last they appeared on the gangplank, looking very pleased with themselves. Behind them stood the squat figure of the Captain.

  “I thank you, Captain,” the Comte was saying, his voice carrying on the slight breeze. “We shall return in less than an hour with our personal belongings.”

  Penelope suddenly could not bear it any longer. She threw back her hood and ran forward, crying wildly, “Oh, stop them! Stop them! Traitors! Bonapartistes!”

  Augusta stood stock-still, clutching the rope rail of the gangplank. The Captain stood with his mouth open.

  Several fishermen stopped working on their nets and came to stand and stare.

  The Comte was the first to recover. “She’s quite mad,” he said loudly and clearly. He took Augusta’s fat arm’in a strong grip. “Come, my dear, and pay no attention to the town idiot.”

  “That man’s a Frenchie,” said one of the fishermen, a great burly fellow. “I vote we take them to the roundhouse and let them all tell their story there.”

  This was accepted as the judgment of Solomon by the ever-increasing crowd who advanced threateningly towards the ship.

  Captain Jessey rapped out some sharp orders and his crew began to make the ship ready to set sail. The Comte nipped quickly back on board. Augusta threw one terrified look at the crowd and made to follow the Comte as the mainsail of the Mary Jane flapped and cracked as it slowly moved up the mast.