Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow

by Catherine Bowness

  “They have attached themselves to me and Helen.”

  “Have they, by Jupiter? I suppose the old one is after you. I don’t like him – do you?”

  “Not a great deal. I can’t help but suspect there is something a little sinister about him, not least in his pursuit. I am afraid he may be about to spring us.”

  “Perhaps, but he may just have fallen in love. He is too old for you, but I suppose he has plenty of money – and a title. I believe he is a Viscount. Do you prefer our benefactor?”

  “I don’t think it is a question of choosing one or the other,” she returned tartly.

  He laughed. “No danger of your forming an attachment to Merdle then. But what about the young one – does Helen favour him?”

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “Quite a lot as a matter of fact. I am trying to avoid her because I know there is no future for us, but I own I will not be happy when she forms an attachment to another.”

  “I wish I could say that I thought she would,” Cecilia said seriously. “There is no future, as you say, but I am much afraid that the tendre, if you can call it that, is mutual.”

  “Perhaps she will marry her cousin after all and we will both be heartbroken.”

  “Perhaps.” She did not pretend to misunderstand him and went away, her heart by no means eased although her conscience was.

  The days – and evenings – passed in a flurry of social engagements. There were morning coffees, luncheons, rides, expeditions into the increasingly snow-covered mountains, concerts, operas and of course evening parties, dinners and balls.

  Neither Helen nor Cecilia had had a come-out in London so that such a packed diary was new for both. Helen, emerging from her chrysalis as a young woman of unusual beauty, and Cecilia, more conventionally ravishing but beyond the common age for a first appearance, were much sought by hostesses to add lustre and exoticism to their parties.

  Mrs Moss, taken up with her work amongst these same ladies, was accompanied on her visits to their grand houses by her younger daughter, whose nimble fingers and eye for colour were much welcomed. This occupation kept them at a safe distance from fashionable parties where the parent’s vulgarity might have scuppered her elder daughter’s chances of acquiring suitors and the younger might have attracted too many loose screws for the elder’s peace of mind. Neither seemed to resent this and both – particularly the girl - seemed happy to be gainfully occupied. Mrs Moss, in spite of being so busy, did not neglect to remind her elder daughter of her duty.

  Cecilia, so long as she could prevent her mother from making such comments in his lordship’s presence and refrain from pushing Phyllis in front of him as though the girl were a sweetmeat which she was certain he must want to sample, endured this almost daily pressure with equanimity.

  After her exchange with Endymion, she felt sufficiently reassured to leave him to manage his affairs without interference, concentrating instead on keeping an eye on Helen. She did not perceive this as particularly taxing, so long as she was able to deter her own suitors from dragging her away, since Miss Lenham, having conceived a passion for Endymion the moment she set eyes on him, appeared to have no desire to flirt with anyone else. Poor Mr Merdle pursued her in vain.

  She was not perhaps quite so assiduous in her vigilance as she should have been when they attended coffee mornings and luncheons where the guests were all female. She permitted Helen to acquire a habit of drifting off into a different room with one or another of her new friends without either questioning her or intervening, convinced that the only danger to her charge would come from men.

  It was after this had happened several times that she noticed Helen had become more evasive and less confiding. Although she had never admitted to her attachment to Endymion, she had always been prepared to exchange pleasantries about her suitors, including in particular Mr Merdle. Cecilia was not fooled by this, knowing that discussing Mr Merdle and his vagaries was designed to prevent her noticing her charge’s much more serious feelings for Mr Moss. Both young women had something to hide in the matter of the gentlemen for whom they had conceived attachments, and both employed the Merdles as diversionary tactics.

  The diminution in this light-hearted jesting was not at first apparent and it was only when Helen began to look anxious as they were preparing for a party one evening that Cecilia taxed her with it.

  “Has something occurred to make you uncomfortable?”

  “No, nothing. Why in the world do you think so?” Helen asked, endeavouring to inject an air of innocence into her voice.

  “Because you have begun to wring your hands again – something you have not done for weeks – and because – not to put too fine a point upon it – you look ten years older than you did a week or two ago.”

  “Well, that is a kind thing to say!” Helen exclaimed, this time affecting an air of outrage.

  “It was not meant to be unkind; you wanted to know what had alerted me to the change in you. Has someone said or done something which has upset you?”

  “No, of course not, although you are upsetting me now.”

  “Yes, I can see that, but I conceive it as part of my job to keep an eye on your demeanour, and recently I have noticed that you look unhappy.”

  “It is nothing; only that I wish Mr Merdle would not hang about me quite so much! It is fatiguing to have him always there staring at me.”

  “He has been staring at you for weeks,” Cecilia said, refusing to be diverted by the usual Merdle excuse for anything which the other wished to conceal.

  “Yes, but he is growing more insistent.”

  “It would be odd if he were not,” Cecilia returned. “I suppose a man cannot be expected to moon about staring for ever. He is bound, if he is not deficient in some way, to wish to make a more determined move upon his prey. Has he tried to kiss you?”

  “No!” Helen exclaimed with such a degree of disgust that Cecilia was even more convinced that, whatever Helen’s problem was, it had nothing to do with Mr Merdle.

  “Is it perhaps that you wish he would leave you alone so that you can engage with another gentleman?”

  “I wish he would leave me alone!” Helen exclaimed but she did not answer the question.

  “It is odd, is it not, that both the Merdles are so very persistent – and with so little encouragement? Although I think you do encourage yours a little because you know that he is both too gentle and too inexperienced to proceed to the next stage.”

  “I like him,” Helen said to Cecilia’s surprise. “I don’t think you like his father though, do you?”

  “No. There is something sinister about Merdle père, some dark secret to which it’s my belief his son is not privy.”

  “Does that mean you are not striving to make a match between us?” Helen asked.

  “No; or at least I would like to know a deal more about them before I did.”

  “Well, then!” Helen said with a flounce. “We will be late if we do not go down soon – the carriage must be waiting for us.”

  “Indeed.”

  From ten years of managing her family, Cecilia had learned when to leave a subject, but she did not cease to seek an answer to her question for Helen had by no means set her mind at rest: on the contrary, her evasiveness and defensiveness had convinced Cecilia that she was concealing something.

  Chapter 34

  The party was a large one, which involved every sort of amusement from dancing to card-playing and was attended by almost every fashionable person whom they had met since they came to Switzerland.

  The Merdles, father and son, were of course present and it was only a few minutes after the Earl had shepherded his cousin and her chaperone into the room that the two English gentlemen presented themselves. Lord Waldron, handing them over with a good grace, much to Cecilia’s annoyance, wandered off to speak to one of his friends.

  The dancing was not due to begin until later so that, at the start of the evening, people milled about greeting acquaintan
ces, making promises about standing up with each other when the dancing began, drinking champagne or orgeat and eating exquisite little morsels, most of which were more ravishing to behold than to taste.

  The Merdles, in spite of their irritating habit of attaching themselves to Cecilia and Helen, were not permitted by the other guests to monopolise them. Both young women had acquired a number of admirers and were soon steered around the room by a variety of these, only managing to escape from one when another presented himself.

  Cecilia watched her charge out of the corner of her eye and saw nothing to cause her anxiety. Helen was behaving much as she was herself: talking to a number of people, having her glass frequently refilled – Cecilia supposed with an innocuous liquid – and moving around the room, closely pursued by Mr Merdle.

  So accustomed had she become to Mr Merdle’s shadowing of her charge that she had almost begun to feel that his presence was a sort of safeguard for, convinced as she was of the young man’s attachment, she did not think he would permit any harm to come to the girl.

  She herself was popular amongst most of the guests and consequently found herself the centre of a lively group, one of whom, as the dancing began, insisted on leading her out in the very teeth of Lord Merdle who was in the process of sidling up to her.

  Separated from Helen by their respective circles of admirers, she kept an eye on her charge as best she could and noted with whom – and how often – she danced with each gentleman. She also, and for entirely different reasons, kept an eye on Lord Waldron and the ladies he led out to dance. She knew he would seek her hand at some point – because he always did – but was also perfectly accustomed to him not paying her a great deal of attention most of the time.

  There was no sign of Endymion although she had thought it more than likely that he would attend the same party.

  Helen’s early delight in the joys that Swiss society had to offer had been gradually evaporating over the past few weeks.

  At first, she had rejoiced in the company of her new chaperone, the acquisition of a vast quantity of new gowns as well as a surprising number of admirers who sought her out at every party and sent her flowers and billets doux. These had at first required her chaperone’s help for translation of the meaningless compliments which seemed to flow so easily from their pens. Not all her admirers were French-speaking: there were men from Lombardy, Piedmont and Rome – where she had enjoyed her first success – and some from Bavaria and the Austrian empire too, but none of their myriad languages appeared to present Cecilia with any difficulty. Helen’s admiration for her chaperone grew apace, enhanced by her connexion with the man for whom Helen’s heart still beat.

  The only disadvantage of the joint succès fou of chaperone and ingénue was that she saw very little of Mr Moss; she understood him to be working hard in his new employment but was not so naïve that she supposed he spent every night in his office as well as every day. It was clear that he had found his own milieu where he got up to all sorts of masculine pursuits about which she knew very little, although she suspected that he spent a good many evenings gaming. He said nothing of this but, on the rare occasions when he did attend the same parties, she noticed how very well-dressed he was and supposed that his apparel must have been purchased with his winnings because she was well aware that his job, junior as it was, was unlikely to pay the sort of salary that would enable him to have his coats made by fashionable tailors.

  Of course, if Helen had spoken more to Cecilia about her feelings for her brother – or had confided more about the conduct of some of her new, female, friends, she would almost certainly not have ended up where she was now. But, knowing that everyone, including his sister, frowned upon her sentiments for Mr Moss, and desirous of avoiding the oft-repeated mantra that he ‘was not for her’ from both her chaperone and her cousin, she kept her thoughts to herself.

  She was not accustomed to having any friends and was rendered weak by what she saw as their patronage and consequently easily led into foolishness, from which either Cecilia or her cousin would undoubtedly have protected her if they had known.

  The truth was that all four were, although ostensibly close, wrestling privately with their own demons. She knew that Endymion was unattainable, not least because she doubted that such a supremely glamorous man could have any real interest in a dull, plain creature like her.

  He, meanwhile, was startled and shocked to discover that he not only had a heart but that he had, quite without meaning to, given it into the keeping of a person whom he would never be permitted to marry. His response to this was twofold: on the one hand, he strove to see as little as possible of the object of his affections, hoping that he might thus tear her from his heart and, on the other, to acquire, by gradual, careful and - so far as possible - scientific means the wherewithal to provide for a more or less dowerless woman.

  The only way he knew to do this was to frequent card parties and gaming hells. With the maturity gained from a combination of his youthful losses and his present ambition, he went about acquiring a fortune with minute focus, eschewing the disabling effects of alcohol when he played. He watched other men closely, honing the perception of character which his ten years of poverty and vigilance had taught him and by this means learned, like any hunter, to watch his prey, observe its behaviour and strike when the right moment presented.

  He did not of course share either his intention or his progress with anyone and, when his sister, who knew him better than most, taxed him with the nature of his evening entertainment, he parried her thrust with his usual light teasing. He doubted he had entirely put her off the scent but believed it would answer for the moment.

  The Earl was pleased with the reports he was receiving from the Ambassador, saw how tactfully his protégé avoided Helen and was, in any event, too focussed on his own heart’s desire to spare much thought for how the young man amused himself.

  Even Cecilia, who did wonder what her brother was up to during the many evenings he was absent, had her own concerns, which included looking after Helen as well as making sure that her mother and sister were happy. She, too, secretly, was wrestling with her heart and beginning to regret her hasty and unfeeling dashing of the Earl’s hopes when he had first voiced them. They had grown close, understood each other well – except in the matter of their deepest sentiments, which neither communicated to the other and both strove to conceal – but that admiration – and ardour – which she had been used to see in his eyes – seemed to her to have ebbed into friendship.

  It was Mr Merdle who introduced Helen to the awful fascination exerted by the turn of a card, although it was the ladies with whom she and Cecilia met for coffee and gossip who drew the unwitting girl into her present anguish.

  Mr Merdle had little luck at the cards; probably he was too naïve, certainly he was inexperienced but, having a father who considered himself skilled at the table and who believed it was the mark of a nobleman to win and lose vast sums on the turn of a card or the shake of a dicebox, he was determined to learn. Although he did not frequent the clubs where his father played, he usually drifted into the card rooms set aside for those bored with dancing and, since his other great interest was Miss Lenham, took her with him one evening after they had danced several times.

  She, on that first occasion, found the atmosphere unpleasant. There was an intensity about the persons, both men and women, sitting around the tables with their faces fixed upon the roll of a die or the turn of a card which she found disturbing. The rawness of their emotions was something she had no wish to share and, rather shocked by what she interpreted as an ugly desire to strip others of their wealth – for she did not interpret their expressions as indicating simple amusement - she tried to leave but Mr Merdle begged her to remain while he played a hand.

  She stood beside him, trying not to fidget, while he did so and watched with a sort of fascinated horror as his stake was swept away. He looked up at her, shamefaced, and admitted that he seemed to have no luck.


  “Unlucky at cards, lucky in love,” he muttered, staring at her beseechingly.

  “Is that true?”

  “I don’t seem to have much luck with either,” he admitted. “Will you try for me?”

  “I? But what am I supposed to do?”

  “Take my place. Put out a few coins and you’ll be dealt some cards. If you show them to me, I will advise what you should do.”

  “But I haven’t any money.”

  “I’ll lend you some, but you’ll have to promise to pay me back because, if you don’t, it will be as though it’s mine and then my ill-luck will prevail.”

  “Very well,” she said, feeling sorry for him and thinking that it might be fun to try once. After all, she would not be able to lose much if she did not stake much.

  She found, once she was sitting at the table, that she no longer noticed the intense expressions of her fellow players for, like them, her gaze was fixed upon the cards and the hands of the person dealing them. She also discovered how exciting it was waiting for the turn of a card, looking at hers, making an assessment, even asking Mr Merdle for advice for – for the first time – she saw him as more experienced than she and began to trust his judgment.

  She was even more excited when she won – and immediately put her winnings back on the table for another hand. By the time he urged her to leave, becoming anxious lest Cecilia, always on the look-out for her charge, notice her absence, storm in and remove her, she had amassed quite a little pile.

  She immediately gave him back the original sum he had lent her and went home with the rest tucked into her bodice.

  From this enjoyable and successful beginning, she became increasingly eager to play. She seemed to be extraordinarily lucky although she soon began to believe it was not so much luck as skill which brought the coins rolling towards her. She also, as her secret pile of money grew, began to think that, if she carried on in this vein, she might make enough to provide herself with a more generous dowry than her father could afford. Perhaps then – oh joy! – she could marry the man she loved!