by Joan Aiken
The sisters were aghast.
“She’s not run out again? Are you certain, Miss Delphie? Have you looked behind the curtain—behind the sopha? I’d be ready to swear I’d not taken my eyes off the stair the whole blessed afternoon!” Jenny declared agitatedly.
“You forget, Sister, the time the funeral passed by and you was so anxious to run out and discover whose it was!” Miss Anne tartly reminded her sister. “And it was just then that I was obliged to go to the stock room for a new bale of sprig-muslin—depend on it, that must have been when Missus must ha’ cut and run for it!”
Despairingly, Philadelphia remembered that she had passed a funeral procession herself, at the top of Greek Street, very shortly after leaving home. If her mother had managed to slip out while the cortege was passing the Baggott establishment, she must have been gone for a very long time, and there would be little use in hunting for her among the streets close at hand. There were a dozen places she might have reached by this time—the Pantheon Bazaar in Grafton House, where she might take it into her head to order a hundred yards of Irish poplin for housemaids’ dresses—or Mudie’s library, where she might bespeak the most expensive new publications—or Bond Street, which offered a terrifying range of temptations to a lady who seemed to have completely forgotten her penurious situation. Or there was another Mecca, more dangerous still. To this resort of enterprising and disengaged females, Philadelphia first turned her steps. It was in Orchard Street, and was known as Heiresses’ Haven, though in fact its proper appellation was Duvivier’s Tea and Domino Salon. Here ladies of somewhat doubtful respectability and others with too much time on their hands repaired to drink Bohea and play ecarte and preference, and here it was that Mrs. Carteret, during the previous year, had contrived to expend a larger and larger proportion of their slender resources.
So it was with a failing heart that Delphie climbed the familiar narrow stairs, and looked around the somewhat shabbily furnished rooms.
“Has my mother been here?” she inquired of Mme. Duvivier, who was presiding at the table nearest the entrance. Madame was a formidable-looking lady in a sky-blue turban, enough diamonds to buy up Kensington Palace, if they had been real, and a highly powdered countenance. She gave Delphie a very sharp look.
“No—Mrs. Carteret has not been here, Miss—not this afternoon. If she had, it would have been my painful duty to remind her that she is owing five guineas on account of—”
“Thank you! I cannot give it you at the moment,” said Philadelphia hastily. “But I will see that you are paid within the week.”
“Stop, Miss—stop!” exclaimed Mme. Duvivier as she turned to leave.
“I cannot stop; my mother is at this instant somewhere in the streets and likely to catch her death from chills,” Delphie called back, and ran down the stairs.
Next she went to Bond Street, and investigated all its jewelers and hat shops, incurring the various coarse remarks and incivilities to which an unescorted lady in London was liable; these, however, she turned off with such a practiced air of haughty, cool reserve that none of the accosting males dared pursue their advances any further.
But she did not find Mrs. Carteret. One or two of the jewelers were known to her, for it was in their emporiums that she had been obliged to dispose of some of her mother’s few last good pieces; but they all denied having set eyes on her mother.
Nor, apparently, had Mrs. Carteret ordered any provisions at Fordham’s, in Piccadilly—which was something of a relief—nor had she been to Hatchard’s bookshop nor to Allardyce’s library.
Delphie began to fear that she must have taken the opposite direction; once or twice in the delirium of her illness she had been heard to murmur that she “must very soon pay a visit to my brokers in the City”; no such brokers, to the best of Delphie’s knowledge, existed; certainly Mrs. Carteret had had dealings with none in the last fifteen years, but if she had taken it into her head to proceed in the direction of Threadneedle Street or Petty Cury, the hope of discovering her was scanty indeed, for the older part of London was such a warren of small thoroughfares that a person might be lost within them for weeks on end.
To add to Delphie’s despair, a thin rain was beginning to fall.
“Perhaps she may take a hackney cab home,” Delphie thought. The expense would be a crippling addition to their strained exchequer, but better that than the poor lady should be soaked through in her flimsy silk and muslin.
Delphie herself was insufficiently equipped for a wetting, and she turned homeward, somewhat hopelessly scanning the Oxford Street shops and the stalls of Brewer Street market again as she passed. Most of the stall-holders knew her, but none of them were able to give her tidings of her quarry.
At last, very despondent, she arrived back at the rooms in Greek Street and saw at once, from Miss Anne’s downcast look and Miss Jenny’s expression of guilty despair, that her mother had not returned while she herself had been out.
“Should we inform the constables?” quavered Jenny. “She has not been out for so long since her illness! Indeed and indeed I’m sorry, Miss Delphie—I could beat my head in the dust for shame—but there! What good would that do?”
“Not the least bit of good in the world!” snapped Miss Anne. “You had better by far brew Miss Delphie a cup of Bohea; she looks worn to a thread-paper.”
“I do not like to call in the constables unless the case seems desperate,” said Delphie, gratefully accepting the proffered beverage, which was indeed welcome, for she had had nothing since her scanty breakfast of one piece of bread and butter. “I know Mamma would be dreadfully ashamed and overset to think we had taken such a step. I will wait a little longer. When I have drunk my tea I shall put on a pelisse and search around Seven Dials and Drury Lane; I have not yet looked in that direction, knowing Mamma’s preference for the more fashionable part of London.”
“Oh, no, Miss Delphie, you didn’t ought to think of going out again!” scolded Jenny. “Why, you are quite fagged out already—white as cheesecloth, ain’t she, Sister, and your bonnet all soaked. That straw will never be good for anything after this!”
“But I must go out,” said Delphie. “I cannot bear to think of her, perhaps lost, somewhere in this downpour”—for the rain had come on more heavily and was turning to a real spring deluge.
Out, despite all their remonstrances, she went, clad in a worn old tartan pelisse, and wearily made a reconnaissance of Charing Cross, Covent Garden, and Drury Lane, even going so far east as Holborn and Chancery Lane. Once or twice she thought what a fortunate occurrence it was that many of the families whose children were her pupils had at present gone out of town for the Easter Holiday; at least it meant that lessons were few and far between. Her income, in consequence, was sadly depleted, but no indignant pupils were being deprived of their tuition while she scoured the streets for her straying parent.
Presently dusk began to fall, early because of the rain, and Delphie was forced to acknowledge to herself that it was quite useless for her to continue the search; a few of London’s streets were now gaslit, but the majority were not; and in general the illumination was dim, flickering, and inadequate; there was no possible chance any longer of spotting the lost lady. Delphie herself, by this time, was soaked and shivering; all she could do was turn homeward once more.
There, the Baggott sisters received her with distressed and contrite looks; urged her to come into the back parlor, where they had built up a roaring fire, and revived her with what Miss Jenny called “a little drop of summat ‘ot”—a very little brandy and a great deal of lemon, sugar, and hot water, which in the circumstances was highly welcome, for with all the hurrying and calling, searching and inquiring, Delphie’s throat had become very hoarse and sore.
“If only you haven’t took cold your pore self!” said Jenny anxiously. “You didn’t ought to be running about in the rain, Miss Delphie, indeed you oughtn’t, for if you was to take a putrid sore throat, what’s to become of you? You can’t teach them
blessed lambs to sing!”—a fear which Delphie herself entertained but did not dare acknowledge.
“Oh, it is nothing—I am very strong,” she said, sneezing, “but poor Mama! I am worried to death about her. Now, I am afraid, I shall really have to inform the constabulary.”
The sisters had shut up shop, in consideration of the wet weather, and the emergency, but just at this moment a faint tap was heard on the outer door.
“Run, quick, Jenny!” said Miss Baggott. “Somebody’s out there—only think, perhaps some kind person has took Missus up!”
Jenny flew to the door, and, opening it, cried out in a tone of ecstasy, “Lord, if it ain’t Missus herself, but oh! what a pickle she’s in! Lord bless us, ma’am, where have you been all this time, here’s Miss Delphie and all of us in such a pucker and a pelter over you—and you come in looking as if you’ve been drug backwards down the Fleet River!”
“Quick, bring the poor lady to the fire, Jenny, don’t stand there a-gabbling,” cried her sister.
Mrs. Carteret certainly was in a deplorable condition, the feathers on her bonnet hanging limply down her back, her hair all out of curl with wet, and her soaked clothes clinging to her “for all the world like a drowned rat’s fur,” as Miss Jenny said. She tottered to the fireplace, hardly seeming to know where she was, and sat down abruptly on an upright chair as if her stiff legs would hold her up no longer.
Sipping a hot toddy which Miss Anne quickly mixed for her, she gazed at her daughter and the Miss Baggotts vacantly over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were strangely bright, and there was a hectic flush on her cheekbones. Kettles for a mustard bath, Delphie thought rapidly, a hot brick for her bed, warm flannel to wrap round her chest ... Will she survive this? Will the congestion return to her?
“Mamma dear, where were you?” Delphie asked gently, as the spirit began to take its effect and a faint spark of understanding returned to Mrs. Carteret’s eyes. “Don’t you remember I implored you not to go out, because you are not well enough? What did you have to do that was so important, that I could not have done for you?”
“Where did I have to go?” quavered Mrs. Carteret at last. “Why—of course—need you ask?—of course I went to St. Paul’s!”
“St. Paul’s? But that is over two miles from here—nearer three! You mean to say that you walked all that way? But why?”
“My dear Mamma would always go to evensong in St. Paul’s when she was in town—or so I understand,” said Mrs. Carteret firmly.
“You walked all the way there? And all the way back?”
“In course I did! When I was young we thought nothing of a six-or seven-mile walk. It is not right in you to nag and reproach me, Philadelphia,” said her mother, with more spirit. “Particularly since it was you that I had in mind when I made the expedition.”
“Me, Mamma? What can you possibly mean?”
“I cannot tell you that in front of these strangers,” said Mrs. Carteret with dignity.
“Strangers? Lawk, and she’s known us any time these twelve years!” exclaimed Jenny indignantly, but Anne whispered,
“Hush, Sister, can’t you see Missus is not herself! Come, Ma’am, let me and Miss Delphie help you up the stairs, the best thing you can do is get into a hot bath directly, and I’ve a pair of kettles on a-boiling this minute. Indeed you should not have run out like that, Mrs. Carteret, frightening your poor daughter so dreadfully, and putting us all in a tweak!”
Somehow, very slowly, poor Mrs. Carteret, now trembling with weakness, was helped up the stairs, and the Baggott sisters then tactfully left her alone with her daughter, but promising to run up directly if required. When they were alone Mrs. Carteret fairly burst into tears.
“Why do you all scold me so,” she sobbed, “when I only did it for the best?”
“Did what, Mamma? What did you do?”
“Why, went to St. Paul’s to pray for a husband for you, naturally!”
Delphie hardly knew whether to laugh or weep. What a hopeless quest! What a piteous pilgrimage! At least it had not involved Mrs. Carteret in any outrageous, wild expense, but it seemed highly probable that she might have caught her death from wet and exhaustion.
“That was a very kind, thoughtful thing to do,” Delphie said, giving her parent a warm and loving embrace, and then proceeding to whisk off the sodden shawl, “but, you know, I don’t want a husband, I would rather by far remain with you.”
“Of course you want a husband,” said Mrs. Carteret, shivering miserably as the draggled silk was peeled away from her shoulders. “For if you had a good one, we could all live together and he would support us!”
And she beamed into her daughter’s face as Delphie guided her faltering steps toward the mustard bath Miss Anne had made ready, which stood steaming in front of the fire.
2
It was hardly to be expected that Mrs. Carteret’s expedition to St. Paul’s, though undertaken from the highest of motives, should not lead to a recurrence of her lung trouble; in fact she was laid upon her bed for more than a week with a sharp attack, complicated by pleurisy, and for many hours her life was despaired of. But by one means or another, partly due to some innate strength in her, partly through Philadelphia’s careful tireless, tender nursing (though herself afflicted with a heavy cold), Mrs. Carteret scraped through.
“She will not achieve full health for a long time yet, though,” said the doctor, on the fourth day, when she had passed the crisis. He glanced about him. “These rooms are not at all suitable for her—no sun, no healthful circulation of air. She should be in the country—preferably in a warm climate. Rome would be excellent—or the South of France.”
Delphie looked at him in exhausted silence. How could she possibly achieve such a removal? His own bill was still owing, and likely to remain so for some time.
“Well—well—do what you can for her,” he said in a kind tone, understanding the situation. “An airing in the park, as often as possible, in a week or so, when it is warmer. And perhaps she might go to stay on some farm? Do not be worrying too much, Miss Carteret—or we shall have you falling sick. And don’t fret about my bill—that can wait.”
Delphie, with her usual resilience, had recovered from her cold, but she was pale and heavy-eyed from long watching at night, and considerably thinner than she had been before her mother’s illness.
“You must get into the fresh air too,” said the doctor. “Take a walk in Kensington Gardens twice a week at least. Don’t trouble your head about your mother—she will do now. I shall return in four or five days, to see how she goes on.”
And he picked up his hat and cane and went down to his barouche.
When he had gone Delphie lifted the lid of the pianoforte and removed from inside it an envelope which had arrived from Mr. Browty some five days previously. In it was a note, written hastily in large unformed characters:
Dear Miss Carteret, Here is the recommendation to Lord Bollington that I promised you. Mind you use it, now, or I shall be uncommon vexed! I am also enclosing 10 Guineas to pay any expenses, besides some good professional Woman to mind your Mother while you are out of town, for I know otherwise you will not stir a Step, out of anxiety for the poor lady. Now do not be troubling your head about post-fees or the servants’ accommodation—I have told Bodkin he is to arrange all that. The village of Cow Green is not a stone’s throw from Chase, and the servants can rack up at the Inn there.
I believe you shd take some Female Person as companion when you go—Ld.B was a very twitty old Chaw-Bacon & wd not countenance a young Lady gallivanting about the countryside unescorted.
Write us a Note to the Hotel Creqy to tell how you go on—the girls and I will be Agog for news.
Yr sincere well-wisher, Jos. Browty
Enclosed were the ten guineas and an open envelope which had another note in it:
My dear Lord Bollington,
You will recall me as had the Honour to do you a small Service when we was both convalessing from the megrims at B
ad Risenback. This is to introduce to your Notise a young Connection of yours, Miss Carteret. Miss C is the best, most scrupulously honest young Lady of my acquaintance & wd no more conduct on Imposture than she wd commit Murder. Her Morals are Unblemishd, her Character direct & Sinsere, her Mind of a Purity the most Unecsepshionable & Limpid. Any that says she is capable of falsehood commits a most Gross Injustise, & in my Opinion she & her Ma has been treated with very Scandalous Inequity, whch I Hope will now be righted.
Inquiries as to my Credentials may be directed to any Bank in the City of London, but most especial the City Cotton & Woollen Bank in Lombard St.
I have the Honour to Subscribe Myself,
Yr Obdt. Srvt.
Alderman Josiah Browty.
Delphie glanced at her mother, who was sleeping peacefully after the exertion of receiving the doctor. Then she slipped downstairs to consult with the Miss Baggotts.
“For sure you must go!” said Anne Baggott when the situation had been explained to her. “Why, Miss Delphie, it might be the making of you, if your Great cousins would be brought to receive you. Lord bless me, if I had rich kin, I’d ha’ been a-knocking at their gates years agone! And the gentleman offering his coach to take you, too—I call that real bang-up behavior.”
Delphie then cautiously opened to the sisters a proposal she had been turning over in her mind—that Miss Jenny might care to accompany her as a kind of chaperone.
“For Mr. Browty says—and I fear he is right—that my uncle will think but slightingly of me if I travel unescorted.”
“Me?” cried Jenny. “Me travel in a coach—to a castle—to visit a lord? Lawks, Miss Delphie, I should just about think I would! Why, that’d be better than a play at the Pantheon—better than a visit to Vauxhall Gardens—better than anything! Oh, wait till I tell Maria!”
