Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (58 page)

To her amazement, Tilly became aware that she was being confronted by yet another handsome man. “May I introduce myself?” said this vision in a drawling voice. “I’m a friend of Heppleford’s. Toby Bassett at your service. Dance, Miss Burningham?”

Toby had drunk himself slightly sober. He had had a sudden impulse to dance but did not know who to ask. He was too lazy to begin to solicit all the pretty girls only to find at this late stage of the ball that all their dance cards were full. His friend Philip had seemed to be entertained enough with Miss Burningham; therefore, he had decided to ask Tilly.

He danced solemnly around and around on the same spot until the waves of wine began to encompass him again and he began to reel slightly. He hardly ever danced and he slowly began to remember why. It was because he always fell down.

“I am very drunk, Miss Burningham,” he said, performing a graceful turn and scrunching down on one of Tilly’s feet.

Tilly was used to very drunk men from her days on the hunting field and found nothing amiss. She only considered him very much a gentleman to tell her so.

“Perhaps we could go out into the garden?” she suggested. “The night air might clear your head.”

“Splendid idea,” he said amiably, holding tightly onto her gloved arm for support. “Lead the way!”

Feeling more comfortable than she had done all evening, Tilly propelled him through the long windows and helped him to negotiate the steps.

Behind them in the ballroom the stunned eyes of Lady Aileen and the Marquess of Heppleford watched them go.

“Now, just sit down here,” Tilly was saying, guiding him to a rustic bench. A large pale moon stared down on the garden and a light, balmy breeze sent the shadows of the leaves dancing on the silver grass. The garden was empty apart from themselves and Tilly gave a sigh of relief and leaned back and closed her eyes, imagining herself back in the peace and quiet of the country.

A gentle snore from her companion made her open her eyes and turn around. Toby Bassett had fallen asleep, his head resting on his chest and his gloved hands neatly folded in his lap. He would be better for his sleep, thought Tilly, feeling maternal. The leaves and flowers rustled in the night wind and the jaunty sound of a polka echoed faintly from the ballroom upstairs. Tilly was content to sit silently beside the sleeping Toby, glad to be away from the hard stares and heat of the ballroom.

Lady Aileen thought the polka would never come to an end. First Tilly Burningham had taken the marquess off to the supper room and now she was flirting with that gorgeously handsome Toby Bassett—walking off with him into the garden without so much as a by-your-leave. The polka at last swung to a noisy close and Aileen’s partner joined the rest in crying for an encore. To Aileen’s dismay, the band struck up again and she was pulled back into the dance.

The Marquess of Heppleford was also wondering what on earth had happened to Toby and Tilly. Toby rarely danced, and drunk or sober or in between, he was never in the habit of squiring young ladies in the moonlight. And Tilly Burningham of all people. But hadn’t he himself found her rather endearing in an odd way? The dance at last came to a close and Aileen, followed by her court of admirers, hurried down the stairs into the garden. Unfortunately for Tilly, Toby had, but a moment before, come awake and had been overwhelmed with gratitude that this young female whose name he had forgotten had let him sleep undisturbed. Just as Aileen was descending the stairs he was saying, “You know, you’re a very good sort of girl,” and he followed it up with an affectionate kiss on Tilly’s cheek.

“
Miss Burningham!
” exclaimed Aileen, forgetting her usual silvery tones in her wrath. “You appear to forget that you are employed by me as a companion. Back to the ballroom
immediately
.”

“Of course, Aileen—I mean
Lady
Aileen,” said Tilly, jumping to her feet.

“Allow me to escort you,” said Toby, rising languidly and staring down at Tilly with those brooding eyes that made all the watching female’s hearts beat faster.

“That will not be necessary,” said Aileen. “Come, Tilly.”

And Tilly went, head bent, listening to an acid lecture on her
forwardness
, her impertinence, her lack of duty.

“Aileen’s
jealous
of her Beast,” cried a girl from the garden with a maddening giggle. Aileen heard the remark and vowed that something must be done with the infuriating Tilly to put her in her place and keep her there.

Tilly regained her former seat among the staring, whispering chaperons and bent her head. She felt very tired.

Slightly flushed, Aileen was claimed by her next partner. Dance followed dance, hour followed hour. Would the ball never end?

But at long last they were all in the victoria again, bowling homeward. A gray, pearly dawn was rising over London and thin, ghostlike wreaths of mist hung in the branches of the trees in Hyde Park. The scavengers were out sluicing the pavements, which turned from gray to watery blue as the rising sun burned away the mist. Somewhere a blackbird sang an ecstatic song to the new day as the carriages of the rich rolled on, bearing their burden of jaded faces homeward. Aileen’s mouth was folded into a thin line. She had not yet had a chance to tell her mother of Tilly’s disgraceful behavior.

Perhaps, after all, Aileen might not have complained to her mother about Tilly, since she was of too shallow a nature to sustain any emotion for long, be it love or anger, but the duchess opened her great hairy mouth as the carriage rolled along under the trees to remind her daughter of the startling information that Heppleford would have to get married to someone—anyone—before the month were up, or he would not inherit.

Aileen remembered the marquess’s strange interest in Tilly. Good Heavens! Perhaps he meant to marry Tilly and that would
never
do. She, Aileen, would be made a laughing stock if her Beast were to go to the altar first—and with the handsomest man in London!

Accordingly, as soon as the victoria had rolled to a stop in front of the duchess’s town house, Aileen asked “Mumsie” to trot along to her bedroom for “a little chat.”

The duchess was much gratified. Her daughter hardly ever seemed to want her company these days.

She listened in amazement to the tale of Tilly’s forwardness.

“I felt it was wrong of you to have such a
young
girl as a companion,” said the duchess, shifting her great bulk around on the end of Aileen’s bed and trying to make herself comfortable. “That girl, Tilly, needs a firm hand. And those balls and parties have gone to her head. You’ve been too soft with her, my puss. I’ll take her over. She can help me with my committees. That’ll instill into her a sense of gratitude. Don’t worry your sweet head, pet. Let Mumsie see to everything.”

Aileen stretched and yawned and pouted and wished her mother would go away now that Tilly was going to be taken care of, but her mother was still mulling over the news about the Marquess of Heppleford.

“Do you think he’ll propose to you, Aileen?” she asked anxiously.

“I’m sure he would if I encouraged him,” said Aileen, yawning.

The duchess drew her brows together in massive thought. “A little dinner, I think, my poppet. We’ll invite him for next week. And it will be good for him to see Tilly in her proper place, you know. After all, she
is
only a sort of glorified servant….”

But Aileen had fallen asleep, serene and content as only a very beautiful debutante with rich and powerful parents could be.

“Miss Stapleton will read the minutes of the last meeting,” intoned the duchess. “Hand me my reading spectacles, Tilly.”

Tilly complied and settled back in her hard chair to endure yet another of the duchess’s committees. “Don’t
slouch
,” hissed the duchess, and Tilly jerked her spine bolt upright. The duchess had taken to strapping Tilly into a backboard for two hours each day to “stiffen her spine.” And, as if the mahogany slab were not enough agony, a violin string was tied around Tilly’s shoulders so that it cut painfully into her flesh if she so much as moved an inch.

The Taking Over of Tilly had started the day after the ball and Tilly tossed and turned at night, tortured by dreams in which the duchess’s great, hairy, disembodied face mouthed, “Don’t slouch!” over and over again.

The committee meeting was taking place in the boardroom of a home for Disreputable Women. The duchess and her equally militant companions would often drive about the streets in search of disreputable women and, having found them, thrust them triumphantly into a home. Several members of the Fallen were lined up against one wall, eyeing their tormentors sullenly.

Miss Stapleton droned on with the minutes and Tilly reviewed the events of the past week. Gone were the balls and picnics and parties. Instead she had to read to the duchess, massage the duchess’s muscular shoulders, and follow her to committee meetings, carrying all the duchess’s paraphernalia of patent medicines, improving tracts, and reading glasses in her reticule.

Tilly’s face, scrubbed free of makeup, shone in the warm, musty air of the boardroom. Her hair was scraped back into a bun at the nape of her neck and she wore a hot serge skirt, a striped blouse with a hard celluloid collar and tie, and a straw boater, all of which the duchess considered suitable wear. Tilly’s only pleasure was in eating, each large meal with its attendent glasses of wine serving to dull the humiliation of her existence. She no longer found any enjoyment in the penny dreadfuls and had taken to reading romantic novels, substituting, in her imagination, the marquess for the hero. She had daydreamed so intensely about him since the night of the ball that it was almost a shock to hear the duchess discussing him over the tea and biscuits after the meeting.

“Heppleford’s coming for dinner,” she told her cronies. “Great hopes there. You know, of course, that he’s got to get married?”

“Of course,” echoed Lady Wayne, a tall, angular committee member. “How did you manage it? We’ve
all
invited him to dinner and he’s refused every single invitation. He won’t even look at those cousins of his.”

“My fairy is very beautiful,” said the duchess in a smug voice.

Lady Wayne bridled. “My little Emily is accounted quite a picture. Perhaps there is some other attraction….” she added maliciously with a sly look in Tilly’s direction. She lowered her voice to a sort of booming whisper. “He spent quite a bit of time with her at the Quennell ball, you know.”

“Nothing to it,” replied the duchess with a massive sneer. “He knew her father. Taking pity on her, mark my words.”

Tilly heard the last words and came down from her dreamworld with a bump. She had been indulging in a glorious vision of the dinner party, where the handsome marquess had eyes for no one but herself.

She was relieved when the duchess suddenly produced a turnip of a watch and exclaimed it was time to leave.

She climbed into the victoria after the duchess and sat with her back to the horses. The hard sparkle of the sun hurt her eyes. It bounced from the white, fluttering blinds of the shops, from the plate glass of the windows and glittered on the burnished roofs. The press of horse traffic was immense and hot smells of manure mingled with the smell of dust. A pieman jogged past, his tray of steaming pies on a level with Tilly’s nose. All London was hot and baking. Flushed faces wilted above boned and celluloid collars. The duchess’s great red, hairy face seemed to burn like a Highland sunset and the sunlight glittered and flashed on her huge steel hatpins. Above the burning city stretched a sky of deep, fierce blue—
Like Philip’s eyes
, thought Tilly with a sudden stab of pain. She wanted to cherish and nurse her dreams. She did not want to be faced with the reality of his presence that evening. She was so absorbed in this novel thought that it was a few seconds before she realized the carriage had stopped and the duchess was barking at her from the pavement “to stop gawking and dreaming.”

The Glenstraith’s house was musty and cool behind drawn blinds, the servants moving quietly through its subterranean light. Tilly longed to stretch out on her bed after releasing her body from its prison of stays and her swollen ankles from the torture of a pair of high buttoned boots. But no sooner had she removed her straw hat when she was summoned again to the duchess’s presence.

The Duchess of Glenstraith was in her bedroom. As Tilly entered, Her Grace was just in the act of plonking her great hairy feet into a basin of cold water.
So
, thought Tilly unromantically,
must the Highland cow cool his hot hooves in the chill waters of a Highland bog
.

“Read to me,” ordered the duchess. “You’ll find
The Times
over there. Read the letters.”

Tilly stifled a sigh. A barrel organ was playing “My Little Grey Home in the West” somewhere at the end of the street, the tinny music rendered poignant by distance. And the unbearably hot world of the outdoors seemed infinitely desirable now that it was shut away behind a screen of thick lace-edged blinds.

Tilly read mindlessly and then suddenly concentrated on what she was reading as the writer’s ironic humor penetrated her tired brain. The writer to the
The Times
was complaining that although the opera management of Covent Garden regulated the dress of its male patrons, it did not do the same for the females. The writer explained that he had worn the regulation evening dress. Tilly read:

“I wore the costume imposed on me by the regulations of the house. Evening dress is cheap, simple, durable, and prevents rivalry and extravagance on the part of male leaders of fashion, annihilates class distinctions, and gives men who are poor and doubtful of their social position (that is, the great majority of men) a sense of security and satisfaction that no clothes of their own choosing could confer, besides saving a whole sex the trouble of considering what they should wear on state occasions….

But I submit that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander….

At nine o’clock (the opera began at eight) a lady came in and sat down very conspicuously in my line of sight. She remained there until the beginning of the last act. I do not complain of her coming late and going early; on the contrary, I wish she had come later and gone earlier. For this lady, who had very black hair, had stuck over her right ear the pitiable corpse of a large white bird, which looked exactly as if someone had killed it by stamping on its breast and then nailing it to the lady’s temple, which was presumably of sufficient solidity to bear the operation. I am not, I hope, a morbidly squeamish person, but the spectacle sickened me. I presume that if I had presented myself at the doors with a dead snake round my neck, a collection of blackbeetles pinned to my shirtfront, and a grouse in my hair, I should have been refused admission.”