Pugg's Portmanteau

by DM Bryan

  “In stories,” said my Betty, scenting my downfall. “Roxana’s daughter was long lost in Mr. Defoe’s book. That was a story. And wicked Mrs. Flanders was lost and found by her own mother. She claimed it was the truth, but we all know better. Hers was as naughty a story as anyone ever told. Pretty Miss Ardelisa was well and truly lost to the world, if we believe Mrs. Aubin, but Mrs. Aubin does not intend that we do. Now, your Miss Moll’s just plain lost,” said my Betty, “and she’s nobody’s daughter—at least nobody like to come out the door of the Bell. No, I see no stories coming true in that yard. All I see is cracked plaster, piles of stone, and a rat like to scurry under Miss Moll’s skirts. What do you see, old woman?”

  I saw what I chose to see. Sometimes we save ourselves with stories, but I knew better than to say so to Mrs. Betty when she was in that sort of mood.

  “I swear,” Betty says to me, “the longer I look at that stack of pails there, the more it looks like a gentleman’s upright member.”

  “Betty, I am shocked,” says I. “I won’t go discussing books with you, if you carry on in that vein.”

  And no more would I, but I finished hanging my stockings and went back inside, and saw no more of what came of that pretty little Miss and her kind old father.

  London’s a big city, Justice Gonson, and I’ve lived here all my days. I didn’t always bide in this room by the Bell, and sometimes I’ve lived in worse places and other times I’ve lived in better. But for all its size, this city sees us running in shoals. A hake or a haddock swims surrounded by nothing but its own kind, and so it is with Londoners. From Petty-France to Blackwall, from Shoreditch to Southwark, we drift along with those we most resemble. In streets, we pass lordly steps of assembly halls, but we can no more flow up those staircases than can water. We stick to our rightful channels, banked in by those most like us. Hardship parts us and rejoins us, like tributaries of the same river. Fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters must needs keep a watchful eye on any new fish in the stream. Courting is fraught with all manner of peril in our narrow streets. Who knows when family feeling comes garbed as sentimental partiality, or sibling affinity hides beneath robes of love. Sometimes what looks like providence isn’t even coincidence. There’s wheels within wheels, your honour—we’re all taught that—but some of those wheels aren’t very big, and the ones holding the likes of us never run very far. Not even the wheels on the York Coach.

  As for the girl arriving by that contrivance—to be sure, I don’t know. It’s none of my business, but I’m willing to bet my cap she’s as good as any girl who ever took breath in a romance. If I give her a good father, a mother waiting at home, a brother and sister who wreath her neck with kisses, am I to blame? She’s a good girl, I’m sure, and she deserves as much as any girl to be revealed as the child of the Count de Blanchisserie, or the infant lost by Lord and Lady Washingdone. You can be sure of that, Justice Gonson, and I’ll say nothing against such fantasies.

  I was young when I was read those books, sir, but I like them as well as anything Betty reads me now. Perhaps you’ve got a different ending ready for that poor country girl—and the way you and your constables are looking at me, I suspect you might—but, sirs, I don’t wish you to tell me that story. I don’t want to know what goes on at the Bell. I can’t help what spills out of the prodigious gut of the York Wagon. And while Betty and I pity those girls standing lost in that grimy yard, there’s no story ever wrote that can do justice to what they must feel, as they face into the wind and wonder what will come next.

  There now, I’ve made you a poor repayment for my time resting in this comfortable chair, and the Constables have wasted an hour in coming to fetch me when I had nothing fit for anyone to hear. As recompense, I shall tell you a story of my own, and you may apply it as you wish.

  It also starts on my balcony where I was hard at work, hanging out laundry. A gentleman came by and stood for a while, looking at the sign of the Bell with his hands on his plump hips. The York Coach had come and gone, and the yard was empty, save for we two, him on the ground and me in the gods. The gentleman stood so long in the rain, and looked so hard at the signpost, that at last, I began to make him my business. I asked him if he was lost, and I told him if he desired a warm fire or nourishment, he might go through the Inn door and ask the landlord. He’d been gawking so long I thought him simple, but he rapped back at me so quickly that I immediately conceived a very opposite opinion of him.

  “Do you know why this signpost boasts a Bell?” he asked, stamping his feet in the mud. Tadpole splotches decorated his stockings and hemmed his greatcoat.

  I shook my head so vigorously my cap slipped. “Indeed, sir, I do not,” I said, wishing Mrs. Betty was home. She’s the bright one, is Bet.

  The gentleman hemmed—one long note, in his throat. He looked a bit like a bulldog, with round eyes and a flat nose. “I suppose you know no French,” he said.

  Again, I shook my head, my hand to my cap for safety’s sake.

  The man squinted at me. “No matter—no man ever painted a signpost in your honour,” he said. “Ugly bitch.” And then he went away, leaving footprints in the mud.

  When Betty came home, she found me by the fire. “He meant Belle,” I told her, after I’d recounted what the Bulldog said. “Not Bell. There’s far too many Frenchmen in London, not to know that much.”

  Betty went out in the rain, and she walked in the wet street to find a constable, but when she found him, he told her there’d been no crime. Calling an ugly bitch by its rightful name was no more than using language in the very way God intended, and what’s more, the great Mr. Locke agreed with him—or so the constable said. And when Betty suggested they arrest Mr. Locke too, both the constable and the beadle laughed at her, and so she came home.

  On second thought, your Honour, Justice Gonson, I don’t much care for this story either. It loses something in the telling, and I’m sure it never had much charm to begin with. It ends flat and never gives the satisfaction a body gets when wrong things are put right. That’s the problem with stories that contain only truth, and so we prefer those that intermix the plain fact with a little cordial to make it taste the sweeter. Or we cut strong drink with a measure of water, so it’s not so heady as to do us damage. However we do it, we always mix romance and true history so the tipple is most to our taste. But begging your pardon, your honour, I’ve told you two tales, and I can see by your face that neither sits easy with you. And here comes Mrs. Betty to find out why I’ve been so long away from home. Ask her what you’ve asked me. Ask Betty, will you, for here she is now, and she knows a deal, she does.

  [

  Ask Betty, says my mistress. Fact is, you’ve fatigued that good lady with your inquiry, gentlemen. Her colour’s not right—why did you have to worry her so? You’ve brought her a wearisome way, and plagued her with questions. She’ll say no more for the time being, although I’ll warrant there’s plenty she could tell you. You wave your printed picture beneath our noses and tap upon faces with your long fingers. What for? That man beneath the constable’s well-pared nail has many names around the yard of the Bell Inn. There’s a hundred stories about that ferret-faced person with his hand in his pocket. Ask anybody. We all know most of them.

  I’ve washing to do, Mr. Justice. We’re women with work waiting and no time to chat with idle constables. But until my mistress breathes a bit more comfortable, I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll talk as long as she takes to regain her strength, and then you’ll call a chair to take her home. These are my terms, gentlemen, and you’d do well to meet them, for it does happen I know a little about the matter at hand. Servants like to bring tittle-tattle along with the worsted stockings—and with the silk ones too. Have you the patience to listen to a little scandal, Mr. Justice Gonson, for the man you’re asking about comes with dirt attached.

  Once he was a fine gentleman. He had come into the world with a good name and family but
very little money of his own, which is so often the case. When the time came for him to take a wife, he looked far and wide for one who might bring him a portion of the size to mend his fortunes, and in time he found just the lady. She was only a young thing, but rich, her father having made his wealth selling the very water God made to sustain us all. The father, having chosen this path through life, could not, alas, be called a good man, and few mourned him when he died. Without friends, he left his daughter all alone in the world, with none to guide her or to discover to her the wicked ways of men. But false advisors aplenty this world contains, and no sooner was the old man dead than many meretricious counsellors began to clamour for the young lady’s ear. Each claimed to be worthy of her unalloyed trust alone, but in truth none of them deserved her faith. One after another they disappointed the confidence she placed in them. One lied about the amount of her rents, while another cheated her of the interest on her capital. A third—a Latin tutor—took a pair of diamond earrings from the box where she kept them. Very soon, the young woman discovered that the world held as many ways to be cheated as it held men to cheat her, and in the end she sent them all away and swore she would be the master of her own purse ’til the day she died.

  Well, Justice Gonson, you will guess that this lady, Miss G— we might call her, did not keep her vow or else I would have no story to tell to you today, and as you are undoubtedly a canny judge of men, and maids too, you will have guessed aright. The gentleman of whom you inquire, hearing of the lady’s wealth, determined to discover a way to crack open the lady’s heart and her strongbox alike. He found himself well suited to this endeavour, for he was still young, neatly formed, and with a noble name.

  He made inquiries and soon discovered that Miss G— was paying a long visit to a distant cousin, who was a determined card player with a particular passion for ombre. Accordingly, the gentleman made inquiries of those of his friends who passed their time playing cards, and you’ll not be surprised to learn, sir, that the young man knew many of these. Without much trouble, he found a rogue who would introduce him to the house where the cousin also went to play, and as soon as he passed through those doors, he made use of his noble name to engage himself at the cousin’s table. In short, sir, the gentleman wasted no time in engaging Miss G—’s relation in a hand of ombre, at which he so charmingly lost that he won from her an immediate invitation to play cards with her on any occasion. The gentleman—he was not a lord for he was only a younger brother, but he was a colonel and so I will call him by that name—accepted the cousin’s offer with many bows and fine words, and lost no time insinuating himself into her drawing room. Before long, he found himself fully in her favour, and she soon considered him one of her closest confidants and dearest friends, although in truth they were hardly acquainted at all.

  Visiting, as he did, the cousin’s house daily, the colonel hoped to catch sight of the young lady, the object of his field manoeuvres, but here he found himself disappointed, for unlike her cousin, Miss G— did not venture at cards and did not risk the contents of her strongbox on games of chance. The colonel admitted that he had suffered a sharp check to his play, but he did not think it sufficient to prove more than an inconvenience, and indeed, in this he was right.

  You might ask how I know so much of the tale, Mr. Justice, sir. The truth is I heard it all patchwork, and while it was happening too. I heard one part from the cousin’s housemaid, who used to bring that lady’s linens in a basket for us to boil up in our pot. I heard a second part from the gentleman’s man who brought all his stockings, his neckerchiefs, and his handkerchiefs—about which he was most particular. The third part came from an unexpected person, but more of that in its time.

  The colonel rarely endured a setback long, and soon enough he saw his opportunity, for while he was leaving one morning after a full night’s entertainment at the card table, he met at the door the virtuous Miss G—, who was just leaving for matins. He immediately swept off his hat, for they were now in the street, and taking the lady’s hand, he helped her into a carriage. In the midst of this act of gallantry, he stepped ankle deep into the brown-flowing street and besmirched his finest lawn stockings, and so I came to know of this first meeting, for the gentleman’s gentleman told us the tale when he brought us the dirtied garments. “I swear, Mrs. Betty,” he said, “it cannot be love that makes my master so careless of his hose, but it might as well be.”

  The next I knew of the courting came in the shape of an apron stained with claret. This bib was a lovely thing made of a pale green silk and worked with golden threads to form flowers, the like of which have never been seen blooming in any field. The claret formed a rusty stain that ran over one of the pocket openings and dribbled toward the explosion of blossoms that marked the apron’s corner. The housemaid who brought it carried nothing else and arrived on a day quite out of her usual time for coming. With the apron spread on the table, she squeezed out a dampish glance at my mistress, asking us in a few words if the pretty piece might be cleaned, for it was a gift her lady valued most particularly. My mistress plucked the apron up and took it to the window, holding the fabric closer to the light. Overhead, the skies hung heavy with rain. The wine stain troubled my mistress—I could read that sad fact as clearly in her face as if she were a broadsheet and I a scholar in a coffeehouse. “What happened, Mrs. Susan, to waste so much wine?” said I to the housemaid, wishing to give my mistress time for her examination.

  The housemaid turned her drowning eyes on me. “Oh Lord, Mrs. Betty, ’twas the colonel. He would teach Miss G— to play at ombre, and she would refuse him, and they carried on so until the decanter was overset and my lady doused, and the colonel would laugh despite my lady’s dismay. Theirs is not a very proper courtship, and I cannot think why the young lady allows it to continue.”

  “Shocking,” said my mistress, but her heart wasn’t in her words. “How long since the spill?”

  “Why it happened only last night. And my lady dismissed the colonel as soon as she could make him listen, but I saw him in the street as I came away this morning. He looked very contrite indeed, and he stood by the paling of the house opposite ours. He would have called me over, only I feigned I could not hear him.”

  “That was very well done,” I told Mrs. Susan, and she and I said more in the exchange of a glance.

  But my mistress said, “Did you rub it with some salt, my dear? That is the usual physic in a case such as this.”

  “Alas,” said Mrs. Susan, “I would have done so immediately, but my lady would not let me because it is such fine silk and a gift from the same gentleman that ruined it.”

  My mistress only folded the apron and passed it to me. “Milk,” she said, “then wash it, very gentle, in Castile soap with a little fuller’s earth. Afterwards, clap it quick between the drying cloths.”

  To Mrs. Susan, she only smiled a little and offered her a sip of cordial from the special bottle she kept on a shelf above her bed. While I soaked the apron in a little warm milk, Mrs. Susan took some of the sweet drink, and then she took some more. She was very merry when she went home again, promising to call for the apron and, in reply to my particular request, agreeing to add something to the story of the courtship, if there was anything to tell.

  “I always try to send them away happy,” my mistress told me as we watched Mrs. Susan weave her way across the yard of the Bell, “and if it cannot be one way, why it must be the other.”

  It was the colonel’s gentleman who arrived next, climbing the stairs to our poor room while the apron still dried in its cloths. In his arms he carried a pinned up bundle of regular laundry, which he set on our table with a curt nod to my mistress. When we unpinned his parcel to count each piece before his eyes—a necessary surety with us laundresses—we found, amidst the linen shirts and stocks, a waistcoat made of a tan broadcloth and spotted with a few drops of something like enough to blood to make my mistress pounce like a terrier upon a rat. She shook
out the waistcoat, and then she tucked it tight to her nose, taking a mighty sniff.

  “There now,” I told the colonel’s gentleman, “your master has been duelling, and my mistress has discovered him,” but the gentleman only smirked, watching that lady as she licked the tip of her finger and touched the stain with a delicacy she did not often show.

  “Fie, Betty, hold your tongue,” she said to me. “We’ve had no combat here. The good man’s master has employed himself at nothing worse than a spot of writing.” She turned to face the gentleman’s gentleman and made him a very polite bow, to which he bowed back in a manner every bit as genteel.

  Well, I was a bit put out, to tell the truth, to see the two of them bowing like a pair of granddames at a God-daughter’s christening, and so I pointed out to them what I thought they ought to have seen from the start. “They may be inky dark,” I told them, “those drops, but the stain on your finger is nothing if not the colour of blood.”

  My mistress bugled a little, which was her way of laughing, and the gentleman’s gentlemen gave me a how-do-y’do with his hat, but I held fast to my opinion and crossed my arms firm over my front. “Ink, no matter how red,” said my mistress, “smells of ink.” And then she passed me the waistcoat with her instructions: “Tallow, very pure, allow it to harden on each spot. Boil the garment and spread to dry.”

  When the gentleman’s gentleman was gone, I did as she directed and found the drops came out, leaving only the faintest of shadow to show where they had been. This, I scraped with a knife, rasping the surface of the affected fibres, until the whole was innocent of any stain. Holding up the waistcoat, I teased her, calling her a witch and telling her she’d be sure of a generous tip when the colonel’s gentleman returned. When she heard me, she grew sober-faced and told me she had no expectation of anything extra from that quarter—no indeed, she would not be surprised if the colonel’s gentlemen never returned to collect his bundle, and all for want of the few coins to pay us. I was not well pleased at her saying such things, for the labour of cleaning the waistcoat, as well as the stocks and shirts, had been mine, and in truth, I hoped that part of any reward might come to me as well. I could not see what lay behind my mistress’ reasoning, and I demanded that she tell me why she might say such things about a gentleman as rich as the colonel.