Autumn Softly Fell

by Dominic Luke

  Holding her breath, Dorothea peered around the corner. There in the hall was a man tapping his foot on the black-and-white tiles, side-on to her. Tall and thin, he had a pale, gaunt face, like the face of an effigy in church. His dark hair was streaked with grey. There was a hauteur about him – a supreme indifference to his surroundings – that made Dorothea uneasy. Though he wasn’t as big as a house, though he didn’t have a face in his chest, it was almost as if one of the fabulous creatures had stepped out of the pages of that old leather-bound book – a man from another world.

  Bessie came hurrying with his things. Of course, being Bessie, she dropped the hat, fumbled with the stick, almost tripped over her own feet. The man snatched his hat and stick then pushed past her as if she wasn’t even there. Bessie had to dodge round him to open the door. The tall man went down the steps and out of view. Dorothea caught a glimpse of a waiting carriage before Bessie shut the door with a resounding crash. She sniffed, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Dorothea emerged into the hall, daring to breathe again. ‘Bessie, who was that?’

  ‘Humph! Hoity-toity, that’s who he was. Lord Snooty. The Viscount Lynford, to give him his right name. I’ll give him viscount if he speaks to me like that again. Huh! Humph!’

  ‘But who is he? Why was he here?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Why don’t you ask Master Richard? That’s who he came to see, supposedly – though he spent as much time in the drawing room with the mistress as he did upstairs. It’s not surprising, I suppose. Him and the mistress make a right pair – two crabby old miseries together. Well, he’s gone, and good riddance!’

  It was most unlike Bessie Downs to let anyone put her nose out of joint. She didn’t stop to chat. That wasn’t like her either.

  Richard was also out of sorts. The man who’d called was his uncle, he reported. He’d heard his grandfather occasionally speak of an Uncle Jonathan but there had been no sightings of him until today. ‘I don’t like him,’ Richard said. ‘He made me feel unwell. I don’t want to see him again.’

  Richard, of course, never liked anyone – to begin with, at any rate. But this time Dorothea could not help feeling that he had a point. One glimpse of Viscount Lynford had been enough for her. His lordship had now gone back to the unknown places from which he’d come. She hoped he would stay there.

  SEVEN

  WHEN UNCLE ALBERT made an abrupt and unexpected appearance in the nursery, Dorothea was bursting with questions about Eve and the BFS Motor Company, now seven months old. But Uncle Albert was not his usual self this evening. He answered vaguely, leaving his sentences hanging as he paced around the room, picking things up, putting them down, lost in thought. His behaviour was odd – unnerving, even. Going back to her place at the big table, Dorothea pulled a book towards her – one of the big, stuffy ones from the library that the governess seemed to enjoy – and opened it at random. Roger Massingham, she read, acquired a sizeable estate—But which Roger Massingham was this? There had been several, all distant ancestors of Aunt Eloise (and of Richard). One was apt to get confused.

  ‘Mam’zelle!’ Uncle Albert spoke abruptly, making Dorothea jump. ‘A word, if I may.’

  ‘But of course, Monsieur.’ Mlle Lacroix laid aside her sewing and her spectacles and got up.

  They talked in the vestibule. Hanging over her book, Dorothea could not help cocking her ear at the door. Uncle Albert’s deep growl was unintelligible. The governess’s high sing-song voice carried better. One could make out some of the words.

  ‘…ah, you talk of Monsieur le vicomte, poor Richard’s uncle, no…?’

  Growl, growl, growl.

  ‘…every week, sometimes twice in one week. He talk to Richard and….’

  Growl, growl.

  ‘Mais, oui! Le vicomte—the viscount I should say: he takes tea with Madam Brannan, sometimes they walk in the gardens. They are old friends, is it not so?’

  A very deep growl.

  ‘Monsieur, if there is anything I can—’

  A final brief growl followed by the sound of the baize door slamming. Silence.

  Dorothea returned to her book, her heart thumping. Roger Massingham acquired a sizeable estate….

  Mlle Lacroix reappeared. She took up her sewing and her spectacles, resumed her seat, a picture of calm. Dorothea was burning with curiosity, but knew that the governess would never entertain any thought of speaking out of turn.

  Le vicomte…. They had been talking about Lord Lynford, Richard’s mysterious and unsettling uncle. Any hopes that his visit last October would be both his first and his last had been short-lived. He had returned many times since – including that very afternoon. Dorothea had only learned this after he’d gone. Returning from her walk in the gardens, running ahead of the governess, she had overheard Bessie Downs and Tomlin tittle-tattling (as Nora called it) in the morning room.

  ‘And has his high-and-mighty lordship gone yet?’ Bessie’s voice had carried loud and clear out into the hallway, making Dorothea wince to think of who might be able to hear: Mrs Bourne, for instance.

  ‘He’s been gone a good while,’ Tomlin had replied. ‘He didn’t stay so long today.’

  ‘Good riddance. I can’t abide him, with his nose in the air.’

  ‘The mistress likes him well enough.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that, Mr Tomlin?’ Bessie had asked archly. ‘Have you been eavesdropping again, you naughty boy?’

  ‘What if I have? You’re as bad yourself, Bessie Downs. At my last situation, the missus used to h’entertain gentlemen regular in the afternoon, and was not to be disturbed in the drawing room. She forgot about the keyhole, though!’

  The sound of giggling had come from the morning room but at that moment Mlle Lacroix had caught up with her and Dorothea had not been able to linger to hear more.

  She looked down now at her book. It really was the dullest thing she had ever read. Her eyes kept going over and over the same words without taking them in. Was it her imagination, or was there an atmosphere in the nursery this evening? Not just the nursery, either. It seemed to be seeping through the whole house.

  Polly could feel it too. Without warning she broke out with, ‘Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!’

  As if on cue, Nanny burst into the day room, back from one of her quick words with Cook.

  ‘Well! What do you think? You’ll never guess!’ Her eyes were popping out of her head as she looked from Dorothea to the governess and back again. ‘There’s such mayhem downstairs, I’ve never known the like! The Master’s gone off, not five minutes ago, and all out of the blue. Cook says it’s because of the glove and—’

  ‘Excusez-moi.’ Mlle Lacroix broke in rather stiffly. ‘What is zis glove?’

  ‘Why, his lordship’s glove, of course. The glove that he left behind this afternoon. That girl Downs found it and – what do you think! – the silly thing only went and took it to the Master and asked what she should do with it. And that’s how it all came out – about his lordship’s visits and everything!’

  ‘But Monsieur Brannan, he know all about the visits, no?’

  ‘No. I mean yes. I mean, he didn’t until just now. And Cook says he was so angry you could hear him from down in the kitchen, and it’s no wonder he was angry when—’ Here Nanny paused, glancing briefly at Dorothea before enunciating her words slowly and clearly as if by doing so she would render them meaningless to anyone except the governess. ‘—when at one time his lordship wanted to marry the mistress! Well then! What do you think of that!’

  ‘It is none of our concern—’

  ‘Cook knows all about it, you may be sure. Mr Brannan just took off, then and there, she says, and Mrs Brannan was on the doorstep begging him to stay, and Mr Brannan more or less accused her of carrying on with—’

  ‘S’il vous plaît! L’enfant!’ Mlle Lacroix’s razor-sharp voice made Dorothea jump. Nanny stared, open-mouthed. Her face showed first shock, then incredulity, then anger. Her mouth snapped
shut. Blotchy red marks appeared on her cheeks, matching the red of her nose. Finally she drew herself up.

  ‘Well! There’s no need to use that sort of language, I’m sure!’

  The governess did not reply, carrying on with her sewing as if nothing had happened.

  Nanny sniffed, stuck her nose in the air. She said, to no one in particular, ‘Pardon me for breathing. I don’t know nothing about nothing.’

  ‘Hello! Hello! Hello!’ shrieked Polly as Nanny took her seat by the fire with injured dignity. Dorothea stared down at her book, burying herself in it as the day room lapsed into silence. Roger Massingham acquired a sizeable estate in the mid-sixteenth century following the dissolution of Lawham Priory…. She had read the same sentence at least eight times without understanding a word. Her head was in a spin. Had Uncle Albert really gone away? Why? When would he come back? What did Nanny mean when she said that Aunt Eloise had been ‘carrying on’ with his lordship? Was it the same as h’entertaining (spoken in the sly tone that Tomlin had used)? Was it really true that the viscount had once wanted to marry Aunt Eloise?

  Questions, questions: and no answers. There was no one to ask.

  Roger Massingham acquired a sizeable estate, she read. The clock ticked. Polly bit the bars of her cage. Mlle Lacroix’s needle bit into the cloth.

  Outside, the May evening faded into twilight.

  There was an unsettling, breathless mood in the house. The usual routines seemed to fall into abeyance. People spoke in whispers. Dorothea took the risk of following Nanny down to the kitchen, which she would never normally have dreamt of doing. Cook was there, and the scullery maid, and Milly Carter the kitchen maid. Bessie Downs was lounging against the range. Dorothea lingered in the doorway, listening.

  ‘Come to hear the latest?’ said Bessie Downs to Nanny.

  Nanny was affronted. ‘Me? Listen to gossip? I’ve never heard the like!’

  ‘Nor me, neither,’ said Cook. ‘The very idea!’

  They nodded and winked at each other, looking superior.

  ‘Well, I say what I think and I don’t care who hears,’ said Bessie Downs. ‘And what I say is that his lordship came looking for money, and the Mistress let him have it and all!’

  Nanny and Cook tutted and shook their heads. What a saucy wench, they said to each other, talking out of turn like that! Who did Downs think she was? You’d never catch them tittle-tattling, oh no! In any case, Downs had it all wrong. Why would his lordship come looking for money when he was one of the richest men in the country (he was a viscount, it stood to reason)? His father was richer still. No, the truth of it was – and far be it from them to tell tales, but really! Downs needed to put straight! – the truth of it was, his lordship had never ceased to pine after the woman he’d wanted to marry all those years ago and now he’d come to win her back. But (Nanny and Cook dropped hints in meticulous detail), although the mistress was torn in two, her agonies impossible to describe (Cook did her best), she had remembered her wedding vows just in time and would stay with her lawful husband – and no wonder, when you considered that the viscount, though fabulously rich, was also unbearably snooty.

  ‘Then the Mistress is a fool,’ said Bessie Downs. ‘I’d marry the viscount at the drop of a hat, if he is as rich as you say.’

  Nanny and Cook threw up their hands in horror. Of all the brass-necked cheek! It was shocking, the way young girls talked nowadays. In any case, it was Downs who was the fool, for the mistress could not possibly marry the viscount, not unless she got a divorce.

  Divorce! The word sent a shudder through the whole kitchen. It was unthinkable, said Cook; the scandal would be impossible to live down. She herself would never stoop to working in the home of a divorcee. The shame would kill her.

  But it seemed very likely that someone else would kill her first, because at that moment Mrs Bourne appeared as if from nowhere. There was considerable carnage in the kitchen from which Dorothea barely escaped with her life.

  ‘Oh, Dorossea! I am so forgetful! I have left the letter from maman in the garden!’

  ‘I’ll fetch it, Mam’zelle!’ Dorothea jumped up from her chair. It was a welcome relief, the way things were, to run errands rather than sit at her lessons.

  More than usually wary of Mrs Bourne after the massacre in the kitchen the other day, she edged her way down the back stairs and out of the side door. In the stable yard, she was surprised to find Henry tinkering with the engine of Uncle Albert’s own copy of Eve.

  ‘It’s not running smoothly. I promised your uncle that I would take a look at it. I rather expected him to be here today, but when I asked after him I got some very shifty looks. Your aunt,’ he added with a wounded air, ‘seems very out of sorts, I must say.’

  Dorothea could not stop herself. She had been bursting to talk to someone about the goings-on and this was too good an opportunity to miss. One could say almost anything to Henry, he took it all in his stride – although she thought it wise to leave out some of Bessie Down’s more lurid details.

  ‘Ah. So that’s it,’ said Henry. ‘Viscount Lynford.’

  ‘Henry, who is Viscount Lynford?’

  ‘He’s the son and heir of Lord Denecote.’

  But she knew that. What she itched to know was different, less tangible. She gave him a questioning look.

  Henry rubbed his chin, looking round the yard uneasily but there was no one about, apart from a horse regarding them with some interest over the top of a stable door. ‘Look, Doro, I really can’t tell you much, I’m afraid, only what Mother has let slip, and some things that Milton has told me. You know Milton – my chum Giles Milton? He’s got about a hundred brothers and sisters, and one of them, Philip, was great friends with Lord Lynford once upon a time. Philip was something of a black sheep, by all accounts. His father turned him out of the house in the end – got fed up of paying off his debts, so Giles said.’

  What had this got to do with Uncle Albert and Aunt Eloise? Dorothea was used to Henry’s penchant for going off at a tangent and decided to let him run on for a while in the hope of learning something useful.

  Lord Lynford and the black sheep Philip Milton, she gathered, had also been friends with Frederick Rycroft.

  ‘Richard’s father?’

  ‘And your aunt’s brother, that’s the chap,’ said Henry. ‘They met at university and lived something of a wild life, or so one is given to understand. The Three Musketeers, Mother called them. Her idea of a joke, I suppose. Drinking, gambling, wom—er, yes, gambling. Gambling and so on. All that sort of dissolute behaviour. Young rakes. Nobody took much notice. It’s expected of men of their sort when they’re at a certain age.’

  Dorothea hesitated to interrupt again in case Henry clammed up (he looked like he might do so at any moment). What, she wondered, did it mean to be dissolute? Had Henry also been dissolute when he was at university? Doubtful, she thought. She remembered Becket once saying that Frederick Rycroft had been a rapscallion in his youth. Was this the same as being a rake? Or different?

  The three friends, Henry continued, had often stayed in one another’s houses and had got to know one another’s people – which was how Frederick Rycroft had come to marry Lady Emerald Huntley. She was Lord Lynford’s sister.

  Lady Emerald, said Dorothea to herself, slotting the names into place. Lady Emerald was Richard’s mother, of course. Becket had said of her long ago that she’d had no sense and had not fitted in. Henry now added that she’d been something of a hedonist (which meant what?) as well as a headstrong sort of woman, whilst Frederick, after his marriage, had been notoriously uxorious. (Was this equivalent to rake and rapscallion or did it have an entirely different connotation?)

  ‘Lady Emerald was five years older than Frederick,’ Henry added tangentially. ‘Mother seems to think that was the root of all their problems. But I … I don’t think age matters when two people are … are fond of each other—do you?’

  ‘No, Henry, of course not,’ said Dorothea patiently. (What ha
d this got to do with anything? She had been out of the nursery for ages and ages. Someone would come looking for her if Henry didn’t get to the point.)

  Henry resumed. Frederick Rycroft and Lady Emerald – Richard’s parents – had got married in 1880. Henry knew the date off pat because it was the same year that his father had lost his seat in the election. (Lost his seat? In what way?) ‘My father took up Fred as a sort of protégé.’ (A what?) ‘Of course, he would have liked to win his seat back himself but – reading between the lines – I think he knew that he didn’t have it in him. He had realized by then that he was ill, hadn’t much time left. So he pinned all his hopes on Fred.’

  This was interesting in a way. Dorothea had often wondered about Henry’s father. But if (she thought) she had been writing an essay on Viscount Lynford and had included all these superfluous details, Mlle Lacroix would have crossed it all out and written not relevant in the margin. Time was getting on, and even the horse had now grown bored and drawn in its head.

  Sifting Henry’s words, she understood him to be saying that after the wedding Frederick Rycroft had stopped being a rake and/or rapscallion, and had become sensible and respectable instead. Partly this was due to his wife, who stood no nonsense (‘unless it was her own nonsense,’ Henry added), partly it was because he saw less of his dubious friends, Lynford and Milton. Mainly it was due to his newfound interest in politics. Politics was to have been Frederick Rycroft’s glittering career (did Richard know about this?) but unfortunately everything had come crashing down round his ears when he lost in the election of 1885. And that, said Henry, had been that.

  ‘Father was terribly disappointed, I remember,’ he went on, toying with a spanner, a distant look in his eyes. ‘Our house was rather under a cloud for weeks. It put me off politics for good. Put Fred off, too. He was not a sticker, Fred, he got easily discouraged. After the election he went travelling with his wife all over the continent – leaving, if Mother is to be believed, a trail of unpaid bills.’