Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow

by Catherine Bowness

  “I can promise you, my lord, that I have not – and will not – trifle with your cousin,” Endymion said gravely.

  “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” the Earl returned with a sharp look.

  Chapter 28

  Cecilia declined to enter Miss Godmanton’s chamber with the doctor, telling him that she had made the lady’s acquaintance only recently and was of the belief that her presence would only exacerbate the patient’s suffering.

  “I see. Is there someone who could accompany me?” the physician enquired. “If the lady’s malady is characterised by tearfulness I believe it would be advantageous to have a female present.”

  “Yes, I daresay you are right but there is only one other female in her party and she is the one with whom there has been a difference of opinion. Lord Waldron might be willing to come in with you.”

  “I am not afraid of seeing a patient by myself,” the doctor replied a trifle snappishly, “and see no benefit in being accompanied by another man. Is there no maid who could support the lady?”

  “Yes – and indeed it was she who told me of Miss Godmanton’s indisposition,” Cecilia said with relief. “I should think it likely that you will find her already in the room. I suggest you knock and enter and – if you find no one but the patient there – inform me of the matter so that I can fetch the maid.”

  This whole conversation had been conducted in the doctor’s language. He said now, “Is the patient English?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the maid?”

  “She too.”

  “Does either of them speak Italian?” The doctor had been fetched from some distance and was an Italian speaker, not a French one. “I do not speak English.”

  It was beginning to seem that the man had very little wish to see the patient at all and was inventing one excuse after another to avoid doing so.

  “Oh, I own I had not thought of that. I do not think so.”

  “In that case I believe you will have to come in with me for, in view of the nature of the ailment, it is essential that we are able to understand each other – unless you know of anyone else who could act as interpreter.”

  “I don’t know of another female. My brother can speak your language – and Lord Waldron too – but you have already indicated a reluctance to involve another man. In any event, in the circumstances, I do not think my brother would be much help.”

  “Has he had a difference of opinion with her too?” the doctor asked.

  “Not exactly,” she admitted. “But I do not consider him an appropriate chaperone.”

  “My reluctance to see the patient without a female present has nothing to do with chaperonage,” the doctor said testily.

  Cecilia gave up, shrugged and knocked upon the door.

  It was opened by Hannah who greeted Cecilia with evident relief. In the background, Miss Godmanton could be heard desultorily sobbing rather as though she had run out of tears but felt it incumbent upon her to provide evidence of her prostration.

  “Here is the doctor,” she announced unnecessarily as the man followed her in, clasping his medical bag in front of him like a shield.

  Miss Godmanton greeted the new arrivals with a shriek. Whether that was on account of Cecilia’s presence or the doctor’s was at first unclear.

  He, casting a look of entreaty at Cecilia, approached the patient, who was not in bed but sitting in a chair beside the fire, wrapped in a blanket. The woman’s appearance was ghastly, her face red and swollen, her eyes almost lost between puffy eyelids. Her greying locks were unbound and hung about her shoulders in what seemed to Cecilia to be a touchingly vulnerable manner and, beneath the edge of the blanket, two gnarled feet protruded.

  “I am Dr Pallini,” he began and looked to Cecilia for translation.

  She duly complied but, at the sound of her voice, Miss Godmanton repeated the shriek, this time accompanied by words.

  “I will not have that trollop in here,” she cried, shrinking dramatically into the folds of the blanket.

  “What did I tell you?” Cecilia asked the doctor, before saying tranquilly, “The doctor cannot speak English and has requested that I act as interpreter.”

  The physician, clearly having come to a swift diagnosis, asked a few questions and recommended sal volatile be administered. Turning on his heel, he added in an undertone that it was his belief that a sharp slap would not go amiss and prepared to leave the room.

  “Do you have any sal volatile?” Cecilia asked the maid.

  “I think Miss Lenham probably does,” Hannah replied nervously.

  “Good. I will ask her when I go downstairs.”

  She backed out of the door, closely followed by the doctor.

  Downstairs, she found Lord Waldron had returned to the breakfast room where he was drinking another cup of coffee in company with Miss Lenham and Endymion.

  Seeing the physician hovering behind, the Earl assumed more money must be expended and rose at once to attend to the matter.

  Stepping nimbly out of the way, Cecilia allowed the two men to retreat to the corridor to complete their business. With every moment that passed she was becoming more consumed with guilt about the costs the Earl had incurred ever since the moment when she had knocked upon the window.

  “The doctor thinks it is merely a case of Miss Godmanton refining a little too exactly upon a sense of grievance, probably as a result of a misunderstanding,” she said to Helen. “He recommends sal volatile, which your maid thinks you may have amongst your effects.”

  “Yes, yes, I have. I thought I was the most likely person to suffer such a crise de nerfs.” She pulled the bell and went on, “It is all my fault. I said something unkind to her and I am afraid it was my choice of words which cut so cruelly.”

  “Very likely,” Cecilia agreed in a pragmatic tone. “Words can cause a wound quite as deep as that wrought by a rapier. No doubt she will heal eventually. In the meantime, we must place our trust in the sal volatile.”

  “I suppose I should apologise,” Helen muttered. “She slapped my face.”

  “In that case I should think the apology should more properly come from her,” Cecilia said, shocked.

  “Yes, but what I said – that was what prompted her action. I daresay she feels ashamed of hitting me as well as insulted by the accusation. What in the world can I do? We will be obliged to drive off in the next few minutes – or is she, do you think, too ill to travel?”

  “I don’t think she is ill at all, merely miffed. I suppose that she must feel her world has come tumbling down around her shoulders and she does not know how to salvage her pride.”

  As she spoke, Cecilia thought of the wiry grey hair, together with the whole unbuttoned and dishevelled appearance of the woman who, previously, had struck her as almost impregnable, girded, as she had been, with a sense of rigid propriety that repelled any approach.

  Cecilia, also poor and without prospects of much amelioration in her future, was overwhelmed with pity for the woman whom nobody loved; she feared she would end similarly, only she would be unlikely still to possess the comfortless veneer of propriety with which to clothe herself.

  Helen said, “Have I been unconscionably cruel?”

  “I do not know what you said, but I think her life has been harsh and I suspect that your remark tore a hole in the carapace she had built to protect herself.”

  Helen nodded. She, like her preceptress, had, since the arrival of the Mosses, been affected by gradual erosion of the prideful misery in which she had been confined all her life, but in her case the laying-bare had been accompanied by the heart-stopping, limb-weakening experience of falling violently in love with a wholly unsuitable person, so that, uncertain as her world had become, it was also subject to the dazzling light of a brand new passion.

  “I will take her the sal volatile myself,” she said, “and try to undo some of the damage I have done.”

  Cecilia, who had momentarily forgotten her promise to return to Phyllis, went to sta
nd by the window. She wished it were possible to gather up her family and set off without being forced to accept yet more charity from Lord Waldron. She was certain that none of this would have happened if only her family had not arrived at the same inn as his lordship’s party two days earlier. He would not have known that they had fallen down the mountain and – although the result of the accident without his intervention might have been grave – they would not now be beholden to him for paying the doctor or for conveying them to Switzerland, a country they had decided to visit only because it was one of a vanishing number of places they had not been to before.

  She had no idea what they would do when they arrived and was afraid that the Earl would continue to keep them under his wing. She was also perfectly aware that Miss Lenham had conceived a tendre for her brother and was afraid he reciprocated, which meant that two persons would shortly be suffering from broken hearts which, if only they had not called at that cursed inn, would have been avoided.

  Miss Godmanton was perhaps the most injured party of all, for her charge, who had given every sign of disliking the woman from the outset, now loathed her and appeared to have mortally wounded her. She supposed the outcome of that situation was not her concern, but she suspected that it was the two women’s simultaneous attraction to her brother which had caused the fault line between them to widen into a rift. In any event, she held him responsible for spending too long hanging upon the old woman’s words the first night and abandoning her the second to hang upon the young woman’s.

  She heard the door open and close behind her and a moment later the Earl was standing beside her.

  “The doctor seems to think Miss Godmanton will be ready to travel soon,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You do not sound optimistic. I understand you went in with him to see her – was she very bad?”

  “She is distraught, but not ill in any sense that would make travelling dangerous. I am afraid meeting my family has led to considerable vexation for yours.”

  “On the contrary, it has been nothing less than thrilling!” his lordship responded.

  She laughed rather bitterly, “I assume you jest, my lord. Your kindness led you to rescue us – for which I am enormously grateful – but I am afraid that we have set the cat amongst the pigeons since.”

  “I cannot see how you can blame yourself for Miss Godmanton’s malaise. She has quarrelled with my cousin.”

  “Yes, but she would probably not have done so if you had not met us. Miss Godmanton does not approve of us, although I think she made a partial exception for my brother on the first evening, only to be cast into despondency the second night when he turned his attention upon your cousin. I am sorry.”

  The Earl let out a loud laugh at this but, seeing from Cecilia’s expression that she saw no humour in the situation, sobered immediately.

  “Good God! Are you telling me she conceived some sort of a tendre for him only to find her nose put out of joint later by Helen?”

  “Yes. You are falling into the usual trap of assuming that old people do not have the same sensibilities as young ones, my lord. I know it seems absurd from the outside – and I am convinced it never occurred to my brother that he could cause so much damage – but it’s my belief that the old only differ from the young in their appearance and their strength, both of which put them at a disadvantage. I must apologise too for the effect which I am afraid he has had upon your cousin, although I daresay she will get over it as soon as we have gone our separate ways.”

  “No doubt – and I daresay Miss Godmanton will too when she has had a period of calm reflection. For my part, I am, as I said earlier, beguiled by your family. You display admirable loyalty and affection between you – as well as, at least on your part, commendable sympathy for others.”

  “That is very likely a false impression; I believe we are as ready as any family to disagree amongst ourselves, to hold grudges and be subject from time to time to bouts of black despair. If we seem united, it is probably only the effect wrought by being such a small group and so dependent upon each other.”

  “Perhaps, but in spite of that you manage to hold it together – and I admire it – and you, because I cannot help noticing that the person who works hardest to maintain familial solidarity is you – and you have done so at the expense of your own happiness.”

  “Oh, no, my lord: you go too far. I am not unhappy, although I own that sometimes I am a touch frustrated by the quantity and nature of some of the obstacles we encounter. But I think you deserve an apology for the disruption we have caused to your peaceful journey, the distress suffered by Miss Godmanton, your cousin’s soon-to-be broken heart and the vast amount of expense you have incurred on our behalf!”

  “The money is nothing,” he replied. “I have plenty. My cousin will no doubt recover, as you say, and so will Miss Godmanton. As for disrupting our peaceful journey: it was not particularly peaceful; Miss Godmanton and Helen have been at each other’s throats ever since I met them in Venice, although it is true that it was in a more sniping and less explosive sort of way until last night.”

  “You wish to make me feel more comfortable,” she said, “and I appreciate it.”

  “I am aware that I seem to have assumed the mantle of benefactor and that it must seem to you that I have no idea of the harshness of your circumstances nor of the means by which you attempt to manage them. I saw you flinch just now when I told you how unimportant the money was and realise that such an attitude must strike you as yet another instance of the differences between us, but I ask you to consider that, if I was as insensitive as I suspect you judge me, I could simply offer you a sum which would tide you over your present difficulties whilst having very little effect upon me.”

  “For all your kindness, my lord, and all your sympathy, I dispute that you can have the least idea of what life for the poor is like.”

  “I readily admit that, but I have a very good one of what it is like to be in my position where a great number of people – particularly members of my family – resort to every kind of toadying in their attempts to make use of me. You affect a desire not to take advantage of me and I am aware that such a manner is vastly more appealing than the more usual litany of needs, begging of favours and throwing of young women in my way in the hope that I will marry one of them.”

  She drew in her breath sharply and threw her head back, fixing him with her turquoise regard grown stormy.

  “Affect a desire?”

  “I apologise; I did not mean that you were dissembling; I am certain you are not, but I cannot pretend not to have noticed that your mother is bent upon thrusting your sister at me in the hope that I will provide not only for her but for all of you. I will not.”

  “I did not for a moment suppose that you would – and I would do everything in my power to wrest my sister from your clutches if you made such an attempt,” she said, still facing him with her eyes blazing and her cheeks flaming.

  “Indeed, I do not doubt that you would if you thought I meant to seduce her. But it is not your sister in whom I am interested.”

  “What precisely do you mean, my lord? Do I understand you plan to seduce me – for it surely cannot be my mother?”

  He smiled. “After your earlier remarks, I am surprised at the prejudice you are displaying.”

  “I did not imply that I supposed men to be indifferent to youth or beauty,” she answered in a stifled tone.

  “No, but your subsequent presumption that I would be interested in your sister and not your mother show you to be as prejudiced as the next person, although I am surprised it has not occurred to you that I might be taken with you, who are both young and beautiful – just what I imagine makes you so angry.”

  “It is not that which makes me angry.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Your assumption that your money can buy me.”

  “Ah, now I know you have entirely misunderstood the situation. I know that money cannot buy you and, if
I thought it would, I would have little desire to make the purchase.”

  “What then do you want? To seduce me without setting me up comfortably and supporting my family for the duration of our liaison?”

  “I am perfectly prepared to ‘set you up’ as you put it,” he agreed pleasantly, “if those are your terms, but I own I had something different in mind.”

  “What?”

  “Good God, was ever a man so attacked for admitting to having formed an attachment? Cannot you simply reject me politely like every other well-bred female or must you criticise my sex, my position – which is no more my fault than your is – and my intentions before even I have had a chance to make them clear?”

  Chapter 29

  “I am not well-bred.”

  “No? Who and what was your father? You behave like a well-bred female.”

  “I was sent to a select seminary and learned my ladylike ways there. My mama is not well-bred, barely educated and plainly not a lady, as you know from her conduct last night.”

  “I noticed nothing ill-bred in her conduct last night. She was, in any event, insensible. If you mean drinking a quantity of brandy, I can assure you that I have met many well-bred females who do so.”

  “No, I don’t only mean last night; I mean her – oh, I cannot speak so ill of my mother although I own I often feel ashamed of her.”

  “Tell me something of your father.”

  “He died ten years ago. It was not until after his death that we discovered the extent of his debts; before that we believed – we children believed, I do not know what Mama thought or knew – that, although we were not by any means members of the Quality, we were respectable.”

  “Are you not still respectable? You told me that your older brothers have the sort of jobs which are generally considered the height of respectability. You went to what you call a select seminary; your older brothers went to Harrow which, although the sworn rival of my school, is perfectly respectable and indeed highly thought of. Attending one school or another is often merely a matter of family tradition; neither is more nor less highly ranked than the other.”