Vintage Love (183 page)

Mary gazed up at Edward in terrified despair. “She must have heard me come by her room and followed me up here!”

Edward frowned. “It’s too bad! But don’t worry! I will speak to her and explain!”

“Will you?” she begged.

The handsome Edward kissed her on the lips. “Count on me,” he said softly.

And she did. So she was ill-prepared when a stern Mrs. Higgins called her into her parlor the next morning. She was summoned to the housekeeper’s room directly after breakfast.

Mrs. Higgins faced her grimly. “You know I saw you last night.”

She held her head down. “Yes.”

“It didn’t shock me. It’s not a new game but it’s a shame you were taken in,” the housekeeper said. “As it is I have no alternative but to dismiss you without references.”

Dismay turned Mary’s knees to water and she glanced up at the old woman’s stern face. “You can’t do that! Edward has promised to explain to you! He wants to marry me. He waits only his father’s consent!”

Mrs. Higgins said, “Mister Edward went to Brighton to be with the Prince Regent early this morning.”

Startled, she managed to gasp, “He promised! He must have had to go quickly! He’ll tell you as soon as he returns!”

The housekeeper sighed. “Poor little fool! How do you think I knew where to look? I went directly to that room because this has happened before. You are perhaps the fourth servant girl Mister Edward has toyed with in that same room!”

“No!” Mary sobbed.

“Yes. He expects me to dismiss you. To rid him of you. That is the way it went before,” Mrs. Higgins said.

“It’s not fair!”

Mrs. Higgins looked less stern for a moment. “I know that to be true, also. But I know my duty. You must leave this house by noon today!”

Mary found herself now in a completely different London. The mean streets along which she made her way bore no relation to the stately magnificence of Benjamin Square and Blake House. She clutched the satchel with all her worldly possessions in one hand and her reticule in the other. She had only a few shillings as she’d received no money for her labors at Benjamin Square.

Mrs. Higgins had come to her and offered her some coins before she left, saying, “The mistress will pay you nothing since you have not stayed out the month. But I would like to give you this.” She thrust the coins at her.

Mary had turned away. “Thank you, no.”

“Have you any money?” the housekeeper wanted to know.

“A little,” she said.

“A little isn’t enough for a girl alone in London,” Mrs. Higgins worried. “I don’t want you on my conscience. Have you any friends you can go to?”

It was then she remembered the actors, Peg and Hector Waddington, and with a show of pride, she’d said, “Yes. I know a fine married couple who will take me in.”

“Heaven be praised,” Mrs. Higgins said. “And mind you’re wiser with men from now on, my girl.” With that the housekeeper withdrew.

Mary didn’t even take time to say goodbye to Emma. She could not do so without giving away the truth about herself and Edward and she was too shamed to do that. She left the house silently and with a feeling of disgrace.

The Waddingtons had given her an address in Beckett Street and she was now seeking out the house. Meanwhile she found the street crowded with poorly-dressed men, women and children. It was obviously a shabby section of the great city. The lower levels of the tumbledown wooden houses were occupied by shops. She passed green grocers, chemists, wig makers, fish shops and bakeries.

The odor of fish and chips and other delicacies seeped out into the air of the street and made her hungry. There were vendors with pushcarts shouting their wares and occasionally drunken men and women staggered by her. Barefoot urchins jostled her and shouted.

She finally found the house number she was seeking. The door was close by a pub. Mary went up the narrow, dark stairs and knocked on the first door. A sound of a dog barking loudly came from within.

The door was opened and a toothless old man with a shiny bald head peered out at her. “What do you want?” he asked in a surly tone.

“Forgive my bothering you,” Mary said. “I’m looking for the Waddingtons, a theatrical couple.”

The toothless one looked sour. “Those two!” he said with disgust.

“Yes. I understand they live here.”

“They did,” the old man said. “But not anymore!”

This was bad news. “They’ve moved?”

“Yes. This place wasn’t good enough for them now they’re important London actors,” the old man said bitterly.

“Where have they gone?” she asked.

“Why should they tell the likes of me?” he snapped. The dog, a mangy black and white terrier, came out on the landing to sniff at her skirt suspiciously.

“They didn’t tell you their new address?”

“They didn’t tell me anything!” the old man told her. And he gave the dog a kick and snarled, “Go back in there, Spot!” Spot whimpered and ran back inside with his tail between his legs as the old man slammed the door on her.

Mary stood there forlornly in the fetid darkness of the landing for a moment. She had hoped so much to find the Waddingtons, only to end with this shattering disappointment. Slowly she made her way down the stairs.

On reaching the street she almost bumped into an old woman who had emerged from the pub with a jug of beer in her hands. The old woman went on to enter the door from which Mary had just emerged.

Mary called after her, “One minute!”

The old woman turned and stared at her. “What?”

“I’m looking for the Waddingtons,” she said.

The old woman shook her head. “They left here a week ago!”

“Do you know where they went?”

“Somewhere closer to the theatre where they’re acting.”

“Can you tell me the name of the theatre?”

“No,” the old woman said. And she turned and slowly made her way up the dark stairs.

It seemed hopeless. Mary stood there trying to make her mind what to do. A young thug came out of the pub wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and leered at her. She at once turned her back on him and rushed on down the narrow street. She was trembling and feeling ill.

She wandered aimlessly through drab streets filled with derelicts. They stared at her with everything from curiosity to avarice. There had been no such places nor people in the country to match the sordid squalor of the houses and their occupants in this London slum. As the day wore on she became weary and the pangs of hunger began to torment her.

The cries of an itinerant fish and chip vendor caught her attention and she salvaged some pennies from her purse and went to the man with his pushcart.

He served several ragged youngsters and then turned to her. “What’s it to be, Miss?”

“I’ll have some,” she said. “A penny’s worth!”

He curled up a cone of newspaper and filled it with the savory food. Handing it to her with a smile, he said, “You’ve got yourself a double portion because you’ve a pretty face!”

“Thank you.” She handed him the penny. Then clutching the cone of fish and chips and her satchel she found a deserted doorstep on which to sit and eat.

She was finishing the snack when she suddenly became aware of a yellowed sign posted on a building directly across the street. There was something about it which seemed familiar to her.

She picked up her satchel and crossed the street and read the announcement. It was an advertisement for
Pilkington’s Circus, the World’s Greatest! Now featured in London on the vacant lot opposite Covent Gardens. Featured attraction, Madame Goubert, the Strongest Female in all the World!

Mary couldn’t have been more pleased if she had just read the name of an old friend. For she was sure the strong woman would remember and befriend her. The thing now was to find her way to Covent Garden. She remembered with bitterness it was one of the places which Edward had shown her on his tour of the city, the tour which had ended so disastrously for her!

It was already late in the day. She made enquiries from various shopkeepers and people on the street and gradually made her way towards the circus grounds. Dusk came and then darkness and she was still plodding along. Fog had set in late in the day and now the streets were murky, frightening labyrinths. She tried to follow the directions given her but lost her way several times. The few street lamps burned faintly in the fog casting their glow only a short distance.

She felt like bursting into tears but she refused to give in to her distress. At last she reached Covent Garden and saw the lighted tents on the opposite side of the street. She made her way towards the circus with renewed hope. Just as she reached the fringe of a crowd listening to a barker on a platform orating about a mermaid to be seen inside she felt her satchel rudely snatched from her hand.

With a cry of dismay and outrage she turned to see three dirty-faced lads running off with the satchel. She ran after them and managed to seize the one who was holding it. At this he and his companions began to pummel her. She fought back and would not give up the satchel.

One of the lads uttered a loud curse and hit her squarely across the face. She fell back and let go of the satchel. The three shouted with glee and started off. But they didn’t go more than a few steps.

Their way was barred by the stout Madame Goubert who demanded of them in a raucous voice, “Just what do you scum think you’re up to?”

The lad with the satchel cursed again and tried to push past her. It was a signal for her to reach out and lift him by the scuff of the neck and heave him about twenty feet in the air. The crowd who had gathered roared with laughter and the other two youths ran wildly off, leaving their companion still unconscious in the street.

The stout woman picked up the satchel and came over to Mary who had just struggled to her feet. “This is yours, I believe,” Madame Goubert said. And then recognizing Mary the big woman gasped, “The little girl from the stagecoach!”

“I am that same girl,” Mary said taking the satchel. “I have fallen upon misfortune. I badly need help and I’ve been looking for you.”

“Glad to help you, dearie,” the big woman said. “But just now I’m due back in my tent to perform my act. You come along and watch the show for nothing.”

She accompanied the stout woman into the largest of the several tents. There was a square in the center of it roped off and a crowd of people were gathered around the ropes. Madame Goubert proudly took her place in the middle of the roped area while Mary stood outside with the strong woman’s audience.

Madame Goubert went through her performance of lifting a huge table with several people standing on it, lifting various other heavy objects with her teeth and tossing them several feet away. She finally allowed an anvil weighing four hundred pounds to be placed on her stomach as she lay flat on her back. Two male assistants pounded the anvil with sledge hammers and the stout woman did not even flinch. She stood up and bowed at the finish of the act and received wild applause from her satisfied audience.

After the people had left the tent Madame Goubert sat down in a big wooden chair in a private room at the rear of the tent protected from the main area by a wall of canvas. There was a table with a candle on it and some glasses and a jug of beer. Mary sat in the one plain chair by the table.

Madame Goubert poured herself some beer. “Care for some, dearie?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

“If I hadn’t come along as I did those three rascals would have had your satchel,” the madame said.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” breathed Mary.

“What happened to the fine position which you came to London to take?” Madame Goubert asked as she sipped her beer.

Mary felt in fairness she had to tell her staunch friend the truth. With bowed head and burning cheeks she faltered through an account of what had happened at Benjamin Square.

When she’d finished, Madame Goubert said indignantly, “What a villain! I’d like to have my hands on that young man’s throat.”

“I’m afraid I made it all easy for him,” Mary admitted.

“Because you were an innocent,” the strong woman said. “You poor dear!”

“Now I need to find employment of some sort.”

“Of course you do,” Madame Goubert said. “But you’re welcome to stay with me as long as need be. I want to help you.”

“I don’t want charity. I’d prefer work,” Mary said.

Madame Goubert poured herself a second beer. “You might act as my assistant. Or you could get one of the Gypsies to teach you palm reading and have a try at that.”

“I’m not sure I’d be any good at it,” she worried.

The big woman nodded. “I know. And this is not any life for you. You deserve something much better.”

“I’ve lost any feeling of pride,” she said. “No work is too menial for me. I’ll try anything. Even the palm reading.”

“Do you know anyone else in London?” she asked.

“The Waddingtons,” she said. “You remember. The theatrical couple who were on the stage with us.”

“Of course!” the strong woman exclaimed. “Now they were most well-mannered. I’m sure they could find you a more proper occupation than you’d find here in the circus.”

“They’ve moved,” Mary lamented. “I don’t know where to find them. They’re playing in some London theatre and living near it.”

“Not too much to go on,” Madame Goubert speculated. “There are so many theatres in London.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I saw your name on a poster and I came here to find you.”

“And you did exactly right,” the big woman said. “You will stay the night with me and in the morning I’ll take you to Pilkington. He’s the owner of the circus and has plenty of contacts. He’s the one to help you! I’m sure of it! Pilkington!”

So she went to bed in the room behind the tent on a makeshift cot leaving her future in the hands of a man whom she had never met. Madame Goubert in her own bed opposite snored loudly all during the early hours of the night. And Mary, remembering Emma, thought the strong woman would have made a bad roommate for the redhead.

Next morning the sun was shining. Mary breakfasted with the massive Madame Goubert and then the strong woman took her to another tent. Here, they found a short man with a brown beard seated at a table covered with handbills and smoking a large cheroot as he folded the yellow papers.