The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘As there so often is, Madame Chloe. Too often!’

  ‘The copy was made in great secrecy, but not here, my lady, I do assure you. I as much as anyone worship at Monsieur Worth’s shrine, but even Monsieur Worth can be copied, as my lady well knows.’

  This last was said with a hint of steel, for Madame Chloe knew that Lady Violet would shortly be off to visit the House of Worth for the greater part of her own new season’s clothes.

  As the mannequins continued to glide past them in what looked to Mercy like mouth-watering gowns, Lady Violet kept making a little ‘hah’ sound, very brief and light, at this or at that costume or dress. It could not be translated, but it seemed to satisfy both Madame Chloe and herself, as if they both knew what she meant by the sound, and were of one accord regarding her reaction.

  ‘There are some very bad people about, Madame Chloe,’ Lady Violet went on, indicating with the brief raising of a finger that one of the mannequins might be allowed to approach so that she could stare at the material of her gown through a small eyeglass.

  ‘My lady, if we knew the whole, we would doubtless be unable to step out of our houses.’

  Again the ‘hah’ sound, this time followed by a nod of approval at both the mannequin and the dressmaker.

  ‘Quite so, quite so. You may send the last three costumes and dresses to the house for my stepdaughter. I am pleased to think that you will fit her out very well, Madame Chloe. I myself am off to Paris for fittings.’

  ‘Of course, my lady. No-one does Monsieur Worth so much credit as you, my lady – indeed I always think– –’

  Precisely what Madame Chloe always thought was lost for ever to everyone but herself, as the very last of the mannequins, modelling the ball gown of blue silk that had won Lady Violet’s approval, promptly fainted. And, as if fainting in front of the company were not embarrassing enough for all concerned, she hit her head as she collapsed and blood started to pour from her temple onto the floor, before Lady Violet’s amazed and objecting gaze.

  Mercy sprang to her feet and went at once to help. Oblivious of the blood she cradled the girl’s head in her lap, while Madame Chloe saw fit to do nothing but wring her hands and apologize to her stepmother, more sorry about the sight to which she had been subjected (blood! so unsuitable for her salon!) than for the unconscious young girl with the wound to her head.

  ‘Mercy! I think we must leave. And at once! Such a pity. I had hoped to lend you some jewellery to try against some of the materials. Always such a good idea, I think.’

  In between her ministrations Mercy glanced up at her stepmother, who was standing by with a look that was actually saying Stand up at once and leave her, a look which Mercy had no hesitation in pretending not to have noticed.

  ‘If Madame Chloe would be so kind as to call a hansom I will personally see her to a hospital.’

  ‘Your dress, quite ruined!’ Madame Chloe looked down at the skirt upon which the still unconscious girl lay. ‘I must make it up to you, Miss Cordel.’

  ‘You are not Florence Nightingale,’ Lady Violet said, lowering her voice. ‘It is not suitable for you to accompany this girl.’

  Yet they both knew that the case was a lost one, for since the age of six or seven Mercy had run a small animals’ hospital at the back of the stables.

  Here the grooms would bring her wounded birds, and animals of all kinds, and here she would spend days and weeks nursing them all back to health, only to keep some of them secretly as pets in her top room at Cordel Court where not even the servants ventured, for the maids never even bothered to dust her rooms, her brothers being the important children, and she being regarded by both upper and lower servants more as a friend to them than a member of the family to be waited on. They knew that Miss Mercy would always be willing to help them when they were short of a pair of hands, and it had to be faced that during her growing years she had finally become more a part of life below stairs than she ever had above them.

  ‘I must do my Christian duty as I see fit, Step-maman,’ Mercy murmured, holding her own lace-edged handkerchief to the girl’s temple.

  Lady Violet gave a tight little sigh which was edged with impatience. Everyone at Cordel Court had always bowed before Mercy’s Christian conscience – and very dull it was too, Lady Violet privately thought – and even her stepmother did not dare come between Mercy and what she thought of as her duty. It was a fact.

  ‘Oh, very well, if you see it as your Christian duty, but take Clarice with you to wherever it is. I must change before noon. I have a luncheon which I must attend – the highest personage requires me – but there, if you must go with this girl, I have Mildred at home to help me dress, so do not fret yourself on my account.’

  They both knew that ‘the highest personage requires me’ was code for the Prince of Wales’s commanding her attendance at some perhaps informal occasion. Mercy, looking up at her stepmother, smiled briefly.

  ‘Of course, Step-maman. I perfectly understand.’

  Lady Violet swept out, leaving Mercy surrounded by a clutch of young mannequins hurrying towards her with newly wrung out cold flannels and bandages for the poor wounded girl, whose head was still lying in Mercy’s bloodstained lap.

  Eventually the hansom cab arrived, and Mercy and the rest of the girls helped the still unconscious sufferer into the hansom, where she lay against the leather upholstery, murmuring unintelligibly.

  Mercy directed the driver to the only hospital she knew – Sister Angela’s Nursing Home, a place where Mercy herself had once been operated on as a child for poisoned tonsils, and which she remembered only dimly for its pretty name and the kindness of the nurses into whose care she had been delivered whilst her parents holidayed on their yacht in the South of France.

  ‘This is it, ladies,’ the cab driver called up to them, opening the door, and he helped the young mannequin down from the cab, draping her arm around his neck, and then handing her over to Mercy and the maid.

  The driver was paid by Clarice, who followed Mercy up the wide stone steps of Lady Angela’s establishment and through the polished mahogany doors murmuring ‘Mon dieu, mon dieu’ but,

  happily, still clutching Lady Violet’s precious Gladstone bag.

  ‘Ma’mselle Mercy, this is enough, enfin?’

  Poor Clarice must have said this a dozen times, and each time Mercy smiled at her kindly, but firmly. She indicated to one of the more senior nurses that she wanted the young girl admitted at her own expense, and watched while two young men carried her to a room which was more like a room in a private house than anything any ordinary person would associate with a hospital.

  The young mannequin, who now looked barely in her teens, lay on the bed, her eyes unseeing, but before lapsing once more into deep unconsciousness she said what sounded like ‘My lord, my lord’.

  ‘She is very pious, huh?’ Clarice asked, of no-one in particular, from the corner of the room, as Mercy waited for some attention from a doctor, or at least a senior nurse.

  Mercy took one of the poor girl’s hands in her own cool one.

  ‘There will be someone to help very soon.’ No sooner had she sought to reassure the girl thus than the door was opened by a tall young nurse wearing an immaculate uniform: long white apron covering a long dark dress, and a hat of stiffened organdie delightfully perched on her head of beautiful blonde hair. The whole simplicity and purity of her uniform somehow seemed to set off her astonishing beauty to an even greater degree than if she had been dressed in something more sumptuous.

  She curtsied to Mercy, and smiled. Mercy was amazed, for the nurse’s beauty was such that it had to take away the onlooker’s breath. But it was her eyes that were the most astonishing. Mercy had never seen eyes of quite that colour before. As deep a blue as the sea in Italy, or at least how she had always imagined that the Italian sea would look.

  ‘I am Mercy Cordel. My stepmother, Lady Duffane, was choosing some costumes and ball gowns for me when this poor girl fainted and hit her he
ad on the corner of a table as she fell. She is in quite a bad way, I am afraid.’

  Leonie looked down at the young girl on the bed and then put out a practised hand to feel her pulse.

  ‘She is suffering from a very bad blow,’ she agreed. ‘We will dress the wound, and watch her very closely for the next few hours. Would you like to come back this evening?’

  ‘I will certainly call back, nurse, but can you tell me how you think she will go on?’

  Leonie looked down at the prostrate girl.

  ‘It is difficult to tell. She is not conscious at the moment and the wound looks quite deep. The wound we can dress, but the damage she might have done with such a blow to the temple we cannot yet tell. Blows to the head, as you may appreciate, Miss Cordel, vary to such a degree. She has very thin skin, as you can see – the veins show straight through to the surface. There is very little cover for the poor child, very little to cushion such a blow.’

  Mercy knew that the nurse could not be any more than her own age, and so when she referred to the patient as a ‘poor child’ it meant that she must agree with Mercy that the girl was indeed yards younger than she was meant to be taken for. In other words, Madame Chloe, like so many dressmakers and people who made their living from fashion, employed girls who should still be at home with their mothers, girls who might, even now, be being sought by their distraught parents.

  ‘Clarice, if you might wait outside?’

  Mercy, always conscious of gossip among the servants, waited for the maid, still clutching the Gladstone bag, to go outside the room, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Miss ...?’

  ‘Miss Lynch, Leonie Lynch.’

  ‘Miss Lynch, I am interested in what you have to say, very interested. You see,’ Mercy lowered her voice even more, ‘I too think this girl is in fact a child. I do not think she should be working for Madame Chloe––’

  ‘Madame Chloe? Is she a mannequin there, at Madame Chloe’s?’

  ‘Yes. Why? Is she known to you?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Miss Cordel. My godmother, Mrs Dodd, is a close acquaintance of hers, and besides, I have only recently been purchased some costumes and gowns there.’

  The two young women stared towards the bed, and then looked up at each other.

  ‘Of course any expenses will be paid for by myself,’ Mercy said suddenly, as if she wanted to distract from the way she imagined both their thoughts were racing – the guilt they both undoubtedly felt at the idea that this girl, hardly more than a child and probably employed for sweatshop wages, had only recently been showing off gowns which they themselves were about to wear with pride.

  ‘I do not think that such very young girls should be used in shops,’ Leonie volunteered, suddenly finding herself wondering whether she really wanted all her costumes and gowns after all, whether they were not in some way contributory to the suffering of the poor patient in front of them.

  ‘God knows, nor do I,’ Mercy agreed with sudden vehemence, adding wryly, ‘but then, Miss Lynch, in case you had not noticed, God, when He came down to earth, did not come down as a woman.’

  For a second the nurse looked shocked, and then she smiled.

  ‘I fear you are right, Miss Cordel.’

  ‘And I also fear Clarice will be keeping my stepmother waiting.’

  With a sudden rush of conscience Mercy had realized that Lady Violet’s jewels were in the case which Clarice was so faithfully guarding, and that her stepmother was some ten minutes away across the Park. She fled back to the hansom cab in company with Clarice, but too late. When they arrived back at the Cordel family mansion it was to find a note from Lady Violet.

  Your absurd bleeding heart has meant that I had to lunch with the future King of England minus my jewellery! VC

  Mercy sighed. Happily, she would be out again at Lady Angela’s before her stepmother returned, and then Lady Violet would be out to dinner and an opera before Mercy herself returned. With any luck they would not catch sight of each other again for some long while, by which time Lady Violet would doubtless have quite forgotten the incident and would be on to some new item of interest – such as who had the eye of the future king, a now middle-aged man in poor health who nevertheless, by all accounts, still appreciated women.

  ‘Step-maman will be sure to have amused the Prince of Wales by now, and that is all that matters!’

  With that reassuring thought Mercy took herself off to her room and her books.

  ‘There is no good news, I am afraid, but then there is no bad news either.’

  Miss Lynch looked across at Mercy before they both looked down at the poor young girl on the bed.

  To Mercy – and perhaps she was being fanciful, she certainly hoped so – she might not be worse, but she certainly looked much paler, and although Mercy could see her breathing was regular it also seemed to her that the breaths were more shallow, which she remarked on to Miss Lynch.

  ‘I am afraid I really rather agree, Miss Cordel, and I said as much to the doctor, but’ – she hesitated, her eyes suddenly wary, as if she was wondering whether she could trust Mercy – ‘but you know how it is? Doctors are not in the habit of listening to nurses, which is strange, for we spend more time with the patients than they do. We observe more of their actual physical condition from hour to hour. We notice tiny changes which are all-important.’

  Once again Mercy felt the inward helpless feeling that had been so familiar to her when she nursed animals, when try as they might there was nothing more that they could really do.

  ‘We have been trying to find out if she has some sort of family, but so far it appears she has not,’ she told the young nurse.

  ‘Miss Cordel...’ Again the nurse hesitated, but seeming once more to think that she could trust Mercy, she went on, ‘I think a great many of these girls – and they are often country girls – are lured to work in these couture houses. I understand certain women make a practice of meeting them on the big London stations when they arrive in the capital, and of course, being innocent, they are duped into going along with the women, who offer them free lodging in return for going out to work in all sorts of dubious capacities.’

  ‘Miss Lynch, I too am only just up from Somerset, and quite likely to be as ignorant as this poor girl here!’

  ‘But not as likely to be bought by the promise of a few dresses, I would have thought.’

  The nurse laughed and Mercy laughed with her, looking down at her own shabby coat which was only just holding together. ‘I could do with some, though, as you can see! As a matter of fact, I often think I could be bought with just the promise of a case full of books.’

  Leonie caught on to the game straight away.

  ‘And I with flowers, so many flowers, great banks of flowers,’ she said, sighing just a little. ‘I must tell you, though – and I know you will not be upset by this – I do not like to think that the girls’ employers might be in league with such women. I cannot think that they would be, can you?’

  ‘No, of course not. They would not be in league, but they might, if they had to do with the clothing trade like Madame Chloe, they might hire girls who had already been trapped into some terrible situation.’ Mercy’s eyes were full of indignation at the very thought. ‘Mannequins come from every walk of life. Some are young widows needing to keep themselves, some are, as you say, young girls fresh from the country who have lost their way somehow.’

  Leonie stared across at the slender young woman in her faded countrywoman’s clothes, and could not help remarking to herself on the sincerity of expression in her large eyes, eyes that did not drift over everything in a deceptively dreamy manner as Leonie’s had the habit of doing, accepting life, if, she hoped, nevertheless undeceived by it. Miss Cordel’s eyes were quite different. They were searching for something rather wonderful and magical to happen, for life to wake up and prove that it could be beautiful. Unlike Leonie, brought up in Eastgate Street, Mercy Cordel was obviously innocent and naive to a touching degree, but
not affectedly so. She was just, as Leonie’s foster mother might say in her down-to-earth way, as innocent as a kitten, dear, or as mad as a bat – and I sometimes think there is no difference.

  ‘Miss Lynch, I am not, as you are, a nurse– –’

  ‘Nursing, I am nursing. Not yet a nurse, by any means, Miss Cordel.’

  ‘But I have nursed, at home, in Somerset, where I come from. It is very uninteresting to talk about oneself, and I only do so with your forbearance because, you see – well.’ She began again. ‘Well, once I had to nurse a young village girl whose mother had died in a farm accident, an accident in which the girl herself was knocked unconscious, and for many days it seemed likely that she would die. After about a week, I really did not know which way to turn, and it was an embarrassment too, because my family had not wanted to take the girl in, and I had to bribe the servants who had hidden her condition from them, all of us fearing that the estate manager would send her to some asylum or institution for such cases, where she would assuredly die from lack of attention.

  ‘So we kept her out of sight in one of our cottages, but in our village was one of those old witchety women. I expect you know the kind? She had no end of remedies and potions and a good record of curing, I might say. At any rate I went to her, and she directed me to the girl’s feet. To put ice from the ice house on the girl’s feet was what she told us; and so that is what we did. You can imagine, it took two footmen to carry the lead-lined box to the cottage which was some few miles away! And all this without my family discovering! Well, it worked, Miss Lynch. Truly. It took some time, but the girl was sitting up and drinking broth within a few hours. Had I not seen it for myself I would have said it was some sort of exaggeration. But just as keeping feet warm can stop a patient’s condition declining, it seems that sometimes cold works too, and can bring them out of a state of unconsciousness.’