Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (17 page)

He swept off his hat and made her his best bow, although embarrassing memories of the goldfish pond brought a faint flush to his thin face.

“I have finally and definitely managed to remove dear Edward from my life,” began Lady Blenkinsop without preamble. “Isn’t it splendid! I’m celebrating by buying… oh!… lots and lots of pretty things.”

Her face was still haggard but her eyes sparkled as she looked up at the tall figure of the marquis. They chatted easily for some minutes, although neither of them mentioned Westerman’s.

Eventually the marquis said, “I must get to the travel office to cancel my bookings. I had planned to go to France but I have changed my mind at the last minute.”

Lady Blenkinsop looked at him with interest. “Really! What a pity to waste the reservations. How many of you were going?”

“Just myself and my man, Browning.”

Lady Blenkinsop felt her heart beginning to pound as a daring idea sprang into her mind. “My dear Marquis. What a pity to cancel them. I will buy them from you. I had been planning to take a holiday with a… a friend.”

The marquis handed her the packet.

“Then have them by all means. My present, I assure you. No, no! I insist.”

But as Lady Blenkinsop’s trim figure moved off along Piccadilly, the marquis looked thoughtfully after her. She had always shown a fondness for Polly. He suddenly hoped that Polly was not the friend Lady Blenkinsop was taking to France.

The blue spring light hung at the corners of the winding City streets. Far away across the river, Big Ben bonged out six golden notes releasing all the City slaves from directors to office boys out into the mellow, incredible evening.

Mr. Baines neatly cleaned his steel pen and put it in the brass stand on the desk. He took out the sheet of stained blotting paper and replaced it with a fresh one. He removed his cardboard wristband protectors and rose wearily to fetch his jacket. He felt disappointed.

He could not say why he felt disappointed. All day he had been feeling like a child on Christmas morning. All day he had been sure that something really tremendous had been going to happen. It was there waiting for him, he had been sure, something absolutely marvelous hovering on the edge of the golden day. But work had gone on as usual, a steady progression of bills, letters, invoices, and complaints.

He suddenly could not bear to wait to see that the clerks had completed their work and tidied their desks. He walked to the glass doors of Westerman’s and without so much as a “good-evening” walked outside.

A slim white hand beckoned to him from the window of a heavy traveling carriage.

Bertie Baines hesitated. In his very, very private dreams sometimes a slim hand beckoned just like this one. He walked on.

“Bertie!”

He turned around slowly.

The marquis, leaning languidly against a pillar at the door of Westerman’s, reflected that he had never seen such an ordinary face so transfigured.

His heart beating fast, Mr. Baines ducked his head and plunged into the carriage, to be held by a pair of welcoming arms and enveloped in the almost forgotten aroma of Fleurs d’Antan.

The carriage rattled off.

“Oh, Jennie,” whispered Mr. Baines when he could. “We should not be doing this.”

Lady Blenkinsop laughed like a very young girl. “You don’t know
what
we are doing Bertie—or rather what I am doing with you. I’m kidnapping you, my dear slave. We’re running away to France and you are not going back to Westerman’s again.”

“But I
can’t
,” yelled Bertie, sitting bolt upright and running his hands through his thin hair until it stood up in spikes. “I’ve worked all my life—”

“Think about it,” said Lady Blenkinsop, withdrawing into the far corner of the carriage and turning her head away. “I can always drive you home any time you wish.”

Bertie thought. And the more he thought of bills and invoices and letters and shipments, the more his life stretched out in front of him as long and as heavy as Marley’s chains. Slowly the new idea took over.

What
would
it be like never to work again? What would it be like to see all those fabulous places which up till now had merely been names on a piece of business stationery. What would it be like to hold this woman in his arms every night until the end of time?

He reached out his long, bony arms and grabbed Lady Blenkinsop to his thin chest and then bent his head and kissed her until she was breathless.

“Why Bertie!” she said laughing. “I believe you’re as bad as I am.”

And Bertie Baines stretched out his arms as if to embrace the carriage, the spring evening, the whole world.

“I’m every bit as
good
as you are,” he cried, and began to laugh as the whole novelty of the idea filled his mind. “I’m every little bit as
good
.”

Amy stood on the worn steps of Westerman’s and eyed the Marquis of Wollerton with dismay. If Bob Friend snubbed her, she did not want
any
sort of audience, particularly this haughty marquis. The ill-assorted pair stood on either side of the steps and each wished heartily that the other would go away.

The door opened and Bob Friend stepped out. He settled his bowler on top of his crisp curls. He said, “Evening, my lord. Evening, Miss Feathers.” He started to walk away.

“Bob!”

Bob Friend turned slowly. Amy looked piteously from Bob to the marquis and the marquis tactfully turned away.

“Bob,” said Amy desperately. “Will you walk me home?”

The spring sunlight rushed in from all parts of the dusty City and flooded Bob Friend’s soul. “I’d be delighted to, Miss Feathers,” he beamed. “Absolutely delighted.”

They stood smiling at one another for a few minutes and then Bob Friend tucked Amy Feathers’s skinny, birdlike arm confidingly in his own and they both walked off, surveyed by the marquis, who felt a sudden pang of envy.

The couple walked in silence until they reached the narrow canyon of Fleet Street. “Would you like a cup of tea before you go home?” asked Bob Friend.

Amy nodded her head, so Bob looked around this world of taverns until he espied a small flyblown tea shop. He pushed open the dingy glass doors and ushered Amy into a small dark room. They sat looking at each other in ecstatic silence until Bob became aware of the reproving stare of a fat, white-faced waiter.

“Two cups of tea,” he ordered dreamily.

“We don’t serve cups of tea ’ere,” said the waiter repressively. “Pots of tea or nuffink.”

“Then bring us a pot of tea,” said Bob, not bothering to look up.

“Sure yer can afford it?”

Bob stared up at the fat face with amazement but before he could speak his outraged beloved had got to her feet. “What did you say?” said Amy, quivering and bristling like a little cat. “Less of your sauce, my man. Fetch that pot of tea instanter and take yourself off. Cheek!”

The waiter slouched off and Amy sat down, breathless and triumphant.

Now there is nothing so effective in the sealing of young love as a shared triumph over the petty humiliations of the social order. The long winter was forgotten, Polly was forgotten. The clerk and the telephone girl sat with their hands joined across the table, king and queen of the oldest kingdom in the world.

Polly Marsh looked at the elegant figure of the Marquis of Wollerton and then looked down at her boots. She wanted to stay, she wanted to run away, she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

Feeling ridiculously like Amy Feathers, the marquis cleared his throat. “Will you walk with me for a little, Miss Marsh?”

“Why?”

“Because it is a nice evening for walking.”

“Oh.” Polly looked up at him, irresolute. He was holding out his arm. She ignored it and they walked on, each on far sides of the pavement.

Polly had been late leaving and the City had already entered its evening quiet. He was leading her away from her route home, through various winding lanes, down toward the river. The lights shone in the blueish twilight along the Embankment as the silent pair walked side by side.

“This is ridiculous,” said the marquis finally. “You know why I want to see you, Polly.”

“Yes,” she answered drearily, looking across the river. “You want me to go away with you and live in a maisonette in Saint John’s Wood, where I will walk my poodle and play bridge with the other ladies of the demimonde.”

“You’ve been reading too many bad novels,” he remarked, momentarily diverted. “Some time ago you thought Saint John’s Wood a most respectable suburb.”

“It was you who enlightened me,” said Polly crossly.

“Oh, Polly, come and sit down on this bench and listen to me for a minute—”

“You want me to make love to you in goldfish ponds,” said Polly tremulously, sitting down, her back as straight as a ramrod and her straw hat shadowing her face.

“Don’t be silly,” said the marquis. “It may interest you to know that I am not in the habit of making love to ladies under water.”

“Nonsense!” snapped Polly childishly. “That’s probably why you lot go to Cowes… so that you can galumph around taking each others clothes off and prance through the water in the altogether.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

“I
am
vulgar,” said Polly infuriatingly. “I come from Stone Lane.”

“And never, ever are we going to be allowed to forget it,” said the marquis, with his quick temper beginning to rise.

“And why should I want to forget it?” said Polly, becoming angry herself. “There’s nothing up with Stone Lane.”

“Oh, salt of the earth!”

“Yes, the people in the market
are
the salt of the earth,” said Polly. “They’re kind and generous and—”

“For heaven’s sake, girl. I didn’t bring you here to listen to you romanticizing a dirty little market.”

“Then why did you bring me here?” howled Polly.

“Because I want to marry you, you cloth-headed little idiot,” he roared.

Both glared at each other, their breath coming quickly.

“Marry…
you
,” said Polly. “Why, I wouldn’t marry you if…”

“… if you were the last man alive,” finished the marquis in a mincing falsetto.

“Well, I wouldn’t. What’s so special about you anyway?”

The marquis was by now so angry he could have beaten her. Who, in the length and breadth of England—provided they are in their right mind—asks a very rich and handsome marquis what’s so special about him?

“If you don’t see what’s so special about me I don’t see why I should take the trouble to tell you.”

“I’ve met some swollen-headed people in my time,” said Polly slowly, “but you take the biscuit. It must be
killing
you to propose marriage. If you could get me any other way you—”

“You forget. I only make love in goldfish ponds.”

“Any other way, you would not bother to propose.”

“Probably,” said the marquis icily.

Both sat glaring at each other as the sun went down in a blaze of fiery glory. Neither wished to leave before they had crucified the other with some splendid last words.

“To think,” said the marquis finally, “that I was about to bestow the honor of my name on a little… a little typist.”

“Good thing you found out in time,” said Polly with pretended indifference while her very soul throbbed and hurt. “You know,” she added conversationally, turning and looking full at the marquis, “if your title and wealth were taken away, you wouldn’t really amount to much.”

“If my title and wealth were taken away, my dear girl, you would be falling into my arms instead of letting your peculiar brand of inverted snobbery turn you into an impertinent minx.”

“Any minute now you’ll be asking me to remember my place,” blazed Polly.

“Yes, why don’t you,” sneered the marquis, looking at her with loathing. He got to his feet. Polly remained motionless, watching him with equal hate as he leaned over the rail and stared at the river. His well-tailored back was almost rigid with distaste and disapproval.

“You know,” he said in a muffled voice, “I feel I owe you an apology.” Polly’s heart leapt but his next words made her blaze again with an uncontrollable fury. “I thought I loved you. I must have been mad. You! Why, you’re nothing but a little…”

But whatever biting and cruel words he was about to say were literally drowned by Polly’s fury. In one second she had leapt from the bench and delivered a mighty shove to the center of his elegant back.

He somersaulted neatly over the railing into the Thames with hardly a splash and sank like a stone.

Polly clutched the railing and stared down. The marquis’s silk hat bobbed jauntily on the muddy water and his cane sailed along beside it. Of the marquis there was no sign at all, and the water turned crimson, like blood in the setting sun.

I’ve killed him
! thought poor Polly. The thought that the marquis might have been holding his breath underwater to make her think just that never crossed her mind. With a terrified cry she threw herself bodily over the railing into the Thames. The marquis’s head immediately bobbed above the water, like that of a sleek seal. “Gotcher!” he said with verve worthy of Stone Lane. “And it serves you right, my girl.”

“I can’t swim!” wailed Polly as her straw hat floated away and pursued the marquis’s silk hat, which was disappearing in the direction of Greenwich.

Two strong strokes brought him to her side and he pulled her to him. “You can stand, you know,” he said gently. “It’s low tide.”

Both stood with the oily, muddy waters of the Thames up to their shoulders and stared at each other.

“Oh,
Polly
,” murmured the marquis, and then he kissed her as ruthlessly and efficiently as he had meant to do all along.

“Wot’s all this then?” demanded a stentorian voice from the Embankment. Both broke apart and looked up into the steely, accusing eyes of an officer of the law.

“It’s quite all right, Officer,” said the marquis pleasantly. “I was just rescuing this lady and—”

“Indecent behavior, that’s wot it is,” said the constable severely. “Out of there, both of you.”

With the marquis pushing from behind and the policeman pulling on Polly’s outstretched arms, she was landed on the Embankment like a very wet and muddy fish. She stood upright and was soon joined by the dripping-wet marquis, who took her arm in a firm grip.